The journey of grief, the price we pay for love

I first wrote this six years ago, but didn't publish it.  It was and still is too painful and too raw even now coming up to 8 years since my brother died.  The month of March is when my Mum's birthday is, it is when Mother's Day is and also it is Brain Tumour Awareness month.  And at the end of the month I am organising a fundraising Tea Party for the charity Brain Tumour Research, to raise awareness of this devastating cancer and also to celebrate the life of my wonderful Mum, who died 11 months after being diagnosed with a Grade 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme tumour.   I will be revisiting the thoughts and processes I have gone through in my grief over the next wee while, I hope to show what the deaths of my loved ones have taught me about living.  But for now it seems that it is time to show how I felt when I first wrote about my grief.

December 2011


Yesterday was my late brother's birthday, he would have been 44 years old but sadly he died 2.5 years ago.  Yesterday was also the second anniversary of my Mum's death, she was 67 when she died from a terminal glioblastoma brain tumour.

They both died too young.

About 6 months after my Mum died and a year since Stephen my brother had died, I attended a grief counsellor.  I explained how I had been feeling and she said what I was experiencing was normal.  Normal! surely not?  How were people managing to cope, to deal with everyday life while grieving?  Grief consumes you.  Her advice to me was to write how I felt down.  So I did, along with reading books on everything from life after death to visiting a psychic (which strangely was a very positive, reassuring experience).

What is written below was what I wrote in my journal after visiting the counsellor.  Re-reading it now I can say that I have coped, life does go on but it's still hard.  Writing this is a small way of moving on too.  I miss them every day but now the happy memories are the ones that I have rather than the sad ones of losing them.

Thoughts on Grief

Grief can't be planned or scheduled.
Violently, it sneaks up on you and punches a hole through your heart,
takes away your breath
and leaves a lump in your throat

Or, it comes and stays a while,
wrapping a thick foggy blanket of sadness
and melancholy
around you.
Invisible, of course.

Only the individual knows how their grief feels to them and it is hard for others to see and understand.  You can go for weeks feeling normal, yes perhaps you are 'getting over it', life does move on and is to be lived, and is too short but then grief descends and opens up the rawness and pain you have within.

When I was 17, 27 years ago, I had my first encounter with experiencing the death of a loved one.  My boyfriend and first love died after being fatally injured in a car crash.  He crashed his car on the day of his 18th birthday.

I have no idea how I coped, nobody spoke to me about it.  Friends ignored me, people crossed the street away from me (really they did).  No one knew what to say.  I was asked to be strong and carry on.  I was aware of feeling as if what had happened was a bad dream.  Perhaps some conspiracy had occurred where he had really just left us and moved to Australia (or something).  Being unable to talk to anyone, I ended my teenage years rebelling, on a self-destruct mission, which I'm very happy I didn't succeed with.

Every day now, I suffer from another loss, my dearly loved brother who tragically died of a painful cancer, undiagnosed until too late to save him.

And I am angry, so very angry about losing them both.  A parent's death at any time is a rite of passage, the natural progression of life that our older generation pass before us and as sad as this is I accept it.  To be able to die having lived a long, happy and fulfilling life leaving behind our children and their children is what we expect.  But, my Mum shouldn't have died at 67, that's too young but Stephen dying at age 41 is the hardest loss.   He had so much of life to live and it is so fucking unfair that he didn't.  My loss is an intricate one, my brother and I were both adopted, not related though but we formed a small unit of 2 and we experienced a world growing up in a home with our adoptive parents in a way only he and I understood.  And now he is gone and I am alone to deal with our father, who somehow managed to come through his prostate cancer to survive when my Mum and Brother didn't survive theirs.  I am so angry about that.  And that probably is another blog post altogether.

My wee brother (he would laugh at that, my over 6ft, Glaswegian, biker, tattooed beautiful brother was never 'wee' except to me) should still be here and I rage at that.  I am furious that he is not still here with his wry humour and his wonderful laugh.

Grief is the price we pay for love, and when there has been great love, the grief is visceral and leaves great tears and scars on your heart.

and I have to stop writing now, the tears are too many, my loss is too great

The right thing to say

I received some lovely feedback recently.  It made me realise that I haven't posted on this blog for a while, other projects and generally life getting in the way, but actually revisiting this blog made me still happy that I have it.  This blog is for different reasons than Garden Cuppa or TTouch Ali, far more personal, and much more for me, rather than about me.

2013 is a year for reconnecting, with people I've lost touch with, with projects I haven't pursued or had time for, and with life.  Three years have passed since my darling Mum and Brother passed away, and now I have a feeling that things I plan can happen, life goes on as it should.

Recently I've had a few discussions with friends, based round 'what do you say' or 'what is the right thing to say' when you have been told someone you know is ill, has cancer, has had someone they love die.  The answer is, I honestly have no idea.  What I DO know is that there is no 'right' thing to say, times in life that these don't require the right response.  What they do require is any response.  It's not the time to think about what you are saying, you just have to say something.

I experienced my first real grief (other than losing my beloved pet dog) in life when I was 17 years old.  My boyfriend and first love tragically died after being involved in a car accident.  At the time no one spoke to me, I was told to be brave, not to cry, not one person ever discussed my grief.  Our friends all were suffering their own grief too, a sad bunch of teenagers, we sat around, playing records and trying to make sense of it.  I used to see people I knew cross the road away from me as I walked through our town, people just didn't know what to say, so they avoided me.  Looking back now I don't think I recovered from that experience until I was in my 20's.

Just about three and a half years ago, I sat in the Chevalier (end of life) ward at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey.  My brother, Stephen, was dying, and right up until the end had not shared that his cancer was terminal with me (our Mum was terminally ill at the time too).  Stephen had had counselling via the Marsden, had compiled a bucket list, planned his own funeral and was in a good place, his counsellor asked if me and my husband would like to speak to her.  We did, we spoke with the counsellor for a couple of hours, mostly about Stephen's wishes, his concerns for me and for our children, his niece and nephews, he had things to bequeath to them and things to let me know about.  At one point during the discussion the counsellor asked me what I would say to the children about Stephen dying, (14, 12 and 9 years old at the time), I told her I would tell them the truth and I emphasised that I would talk to them, no matter what they wanted to talk about I would listen, and even if I didn't have the answers that I would support them.  I told her what had happened to me when I was a teenager and she asked me 'what would have been the one thing that would have helped then?'  I replied that I had just needed someone to talk too (or someone to listen to me).  It was being ignored or avoided that hurt me the most, making me retreat into my personal grief, not being allowed to show how hurt I was, and putting on a brave face that took me years to recover from.


It doesn't matter what the right or wrong thing to say is, what actually matters is saying it, being there, listening, hugging, making cups of tea, turning up unannounced to empty the dishwasher, offering lifts to the hospital, posting on facebook, picking up the phone and chatting, walking the dog, sending a text,  making more cups of tea, think about what would help you and offer that.  

In otherwords don't worry about what to say, just say it anyway - show you care, it makes all the difference.

It really does.