WHAT GRIEF FEELS LIKE ONE YEAR ON
I debated over whether to write a one year update since losing my mum at the end of last November. Why? Because there have been pockets of time when the sense of loss has felt all consuming and I’m conscious of not being one to whang on about it all the time. Either here or in real life.
But dealing with it becomes real life and sadly I know a few people who are going through it or have recently experienced the same. Coping with the loss of a parent or loved one seems to be the flagship standard that accompanies this stage of adulting so I felt it was important to give it some air time.
And on the subject of adulting I recently realised that, aged 50 plus a few months, on the inside I still feel like the same person I was in my twenties, thirties and forties.
The notion you have as a kid whilst observing your own adults at close range, the one that dictates that some day, you too will grow up and become “one of them” - that feels somewhat farcical to me now. At my core I’m still the same. Except perhaps for the life luggage I now carry about from day to day and the fact that my sharp edges have been repeatedly buffed into more rounded forms by life’s abrasive episodes .
Resistance turns to acceptance a lot quicker these days - a “Why??” can become an “I guess that’s the way it is” a lot sooner and a sense of what’s truly important is regularly held up for closer inspection.
And that’s what losing someone close to you does. It not only forces you to face your own mortality square in the face, which if I’m honest I find somewhat disconcerting, but it slaps you around the head with a healthy dose of perspective. Sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
Mum and I had a complex relationship to say the least and so under those circumstances, you might wonder how much it’s possible to miss someone when they’re gone. It seems my answer would lie somewhere along the spectrum of infinity.
That edge buffing thing I mentioned continues to do its job and over time, difficult memories fade. Gradually they’re replaced by softer moments from your young years - moments that maybe only loss has the power to recall, like unexpected but painfully compensatory gifts.
And those moments - the ones where you suddenly feel like a small child minus a parent in some vast unknown space - they’re the ones that are accompanied by tears you didn’t know you were still capable of. Those are the moments that have the ability to bring you to your knees.
Sometimes you can go for days without registering any kind of pain and you can almost forget that you’re in it. And then out of nowhere, the gnawing in the stomach creeps in, followed by a sense of foreboding that something isn’t quite right with your world. I find that not being able to name it at first is the thing that serves to increase the anxiety.
I remember sitting in the garden in the summer with Patrick, sobbing, because out of nowhere I felt like I was back in Week One again. Week One was my ground zero. The place I sat amongst, trying to pick through the wreckage and make sense of what had just happened. To find yourself suddenly back there some seven months on is a shock to the system… but I’m guessing its part of the process. Its funny how we can label something so nuanced as grief a process but that’s what it is in its crudest form.
I realise lately that I’ve come to admire those who in conversation, tell me they lost their mum or dad (insert number of years ago) and they’re able to do so without showing any outward signs of emotion. I wonder when I’ll be able to achieve that more often. Sometimes I can, sometimes not.
My husband and daughter’s shoulders and the dog’s neck, have all absorbed their fair share of tears and provided a steady shock absorber to counteract body-shaking sobs. My close friends have been with me every step of the way and provided the kind of comfort that only comes from years of seeing each other through highs and lows of life. The kind that sometimes brings with it that oddly appropriate emotion, laughter through tears. And the online friends who exist here and in the community of Instagram have provided a supportive net when I’ve brought grief into the conversation. A strange and wonderful benefit of the modern age if ever there was one.
Maybe at this point you want to know if the cliche of time being a healer really is true. My answer would be in lots of ways yes, but others no. On the whole and I guess on a daily basis, it does get easier to bear - a fact I occasionally stop and feel grateful for because it facilitates life carrying on as it did before. And when you find yourself thrust back into those all too familiar dark moments, the trick is to remind yourself it is only that - a moment in the grand scheme of things - be it an hour, a day or perhaps two. And it will pass.
That’s the one I’m currently working on. Remembering and trusting that it will pass and that after the night there is tomorrow… and tomorrow always holds the promise of being a new and different day.
