Groundhog Day

In the strictest sense, what I’m talking about here isn’t exactly the same events happening day after day, as in the film with the same name, but is similar. Since Evie died, each day has been following the same routine, no matter if it is a weekday or the weekend. We get up, shower, have breakfast, do stuff - be it work or shopping - come home, eat dinner and go to bed. The whole lot gets repeated over and over. In some ways, you could argue that when Evie was alive, it wasn’t that dissimilar, but we never really noticed it if it was.

These days, the purpose of the day is to survive it. To reach bedtime and go to sleep again. Each morning for a fraction of a second you forget, then the loss comes crashing back and you start the day. Just like you did yesterday. Just like you will tomorrow. Each night you lay in bed wondering how it all happened and how unfair it is. The same feeling of overwhelming sadness descends once again, and the old question of “Why?” appears once more.

But our Groundhog Day is different to yours if you have one. For not only is one day just like the next, but we are also stuck on 11th January 2018; we can’t move forward with time. We can’t evolve or grow. The memories of Evie’s death are as fresh today as they were on 12th January 2018. The moment that she died is as clear to me today as it has always been. For our friends, their children are growing up, becoming young adults. They are planning for GCSEs, wondering what life will be like when their kids leave home, imagining being a grandparent. For us, Evie is forever 13, never ageing. Having spoken to other bereaved parents, it is almost impossible to break out of that place, stuck in time. A groundhog day where the world that you inhabit is changing around you, but you aren’t.

It’s a weird kind of existence, like nothing else we have encountered before. The prospect of being 75, still with a 13 year old daughter that I can’t hug is terrifying. At least you wake up from a nightmare.