(There is no Timeline for) Grief

See, this is the thing, right here, that people don't seem to get. I only have a couple of bad days a month now (nearly 20 months after Laston's death) unless there's something special (last Saturday would have been our eleventh anniversary).

It's clear that my last employer didn't get this (or didn't care, being a multi-gazillion dollar company). Most even well-meaning people are like, "hey, it's been more than a year; you should be okay now." But (say it with me) "there is no timeline for grief."

It doesn't work that way.

Even the employer itself; I grieve the loss of that job, no matter how much I despised it at the end of my time there. No matter how much I myself screwed it up at the end. I loved it there for the first year and a half. It was really supportive for almost a year after that, after Laston was diagnosed, and the local folks took care of me, and even corporate wasn't awful. They were ridiculously bureaucratic about leave and stuff, but that's standard for any large company. And I was grateful, because I worked for a company that cared about me as a person.

Until they didn't anymore. Until the bottom line was more important than contented employees. I mean, it's always been that way to some extent, or they wouldn't have needed a union, but we managed to bump along just fine. When did this change? When they acquired DirecTV? When our country elected a me-first man who encourages screwing the little guy, and Corporate America followed suit? I don't know.

All I know is that I grieve for that lost job. Not as much, and not in the same way, that I grieve for my lost husband, the father of my younger child and the stepfather of the elder. 

But it is still grief.

You'll ask what triggered this particular grieving event, and it's that I was denied the appeal I made for unemployment insurance; the appellate judge ruled in favor of the company. Now, I screwed up big, and I own that, regardless of the mitigating circumstances. And the judge ruled correctly by the letter of the law; the spirit of it is more subjective.  I expected the appeal to be denied; I was prepared for it. I also expected Laston's death. Proper expectations don't stop the grieving, and the disappointment, and the anger. Even the feeling of betrayal; by a person or a corporation or the universe doesn't matter.

It. Is Still Grief.

And there is no timeline.