It's a sunny, beautiful day in London and as such, I want to share something beautiful, hard and honest with you. I hope speaking openly about this encourages others to do the same and reach out. Writing is a wonderful form of emotional release. Together, we can comfort each other through sadness in life.
Grief is such an interesting word.
In the dictionary it means ‘intense sorrow, especially caused by someone's death’. People claim there are stages to grief and that it’s a process you come out the other side of... eventually. I don’t agree with that. I don’t think the feelings you experience after losing another human being closely entwined in your life can be just a process. I know it’s a way for experts and others to provide comfort. A half promise that one day, it won’t hurt as much. But I don’t think grief is a process. I think it's a cloud. And one awful day it envelops you in sadness and longing and never leaves. You don’t come out of the other side of it, you just reluctantly learn how to live with it.
Losing my stepdad in September last year was the day I changed forever. The six months running up to his passing, when we got the news that the doctor had found shadows in his kidney and lungs and subsequently, after he had his renal operation to get rid of the cancer was painful enough. But it was the weekend I went home and greeted by my inconsolable family, to learn he had days to live. Then the morning he actually left us – that was when something inside my soul hardened.
I couldn’t comprehend the situation. We had experienced many deaths in our close family and friends, but this was different. This was life changing and unbearably painful. Not only had I lost the man who had brought me up since I was three, but I’d lost my family as I knew it, my mum, sister and brother as I knew them and the future I had imagined for our family was snatched away, never to return. And there was nothing I could do about it.
My brother, sister and me with our dad
Sometimes those moments feel like a dream now, like it didn’t happen to me. But I don’t want to forget those moments because as hard as it is, I want to remember everything about his life….and his death. I really do wonder why our Western society struggles so much with the concept of death. Isn’t it a natural part of life? I appreciate it’s hard and painful, but people hide away from it and you only realise the depth of this when you are the one grieving. Some find it difficult to talk to those who have lost someone for fear of saying the wrong thing or making them sad. What people don’t sometimes understand is that NOTHING can make that person sadder than they already are. So please, say something kind, do anything kind and that in itself will be appreciated.
My mum and stepdad in their younger years
I know when I pass on, I want my life to be celebrated. I hope that I will be missed because that's my legacy, but I don’t want my family or friends to suffer because I am no longer here. We need to face death head on, in all its pain because we will all lose someone that is close to us, whether we like it or not, and we will all, in time, pass on to whatever place is waiting for us. Although it’s not at all easy (and trust me, sometimes it’s way too hard), I am reminding myself to start each day feeling grateful that I am alive, grateful that I had my stepdad in my life for all those precious years and grateful that he was mine.
I feel compelled now to help others who have lost someone and struggling, through well-being therapies and open conversations. I think we are doing ourselves a disservice by not adopting a more Eastern approach to death. We shouldn’t be afraid of it. We must embrace those who are struggling with grief, remember the person lost in any way we can and live, if only because they can’t. We can all be there for each other and cope with things together. I remind myself daily of the beautiful quote, ‘it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ And it's true, isn’t it?
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I want to love deeper, laugh harder and be more at peace BECAUSE my stepdad isn't here. He would want me to keep going, he would want us to be happy again. So I’m getting a tattoo of a sweet-pea flower next month in memory of him and celebrate all that he was – the best kind of person. I can look at it every second and feel comfort. He grew sweet-peas for my mum every summer and it reminds me of the true meaning of love.
Jo
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