Nine months is a long time. Three quarters of a year. Changes of season from the end of Winter through all of Spring, into Summer and then the start of Autumn. It’s enough time to grow a whole brand-new tiny human in fact.
You can do a lot in nine months.
I’ve spent the last nine months, amongst other things, learning how the world works now that my Dad isn’t in it. No, I’ll rephrase that. The world works the same. It’s just that my view of it is different. I’ve spent the last nine months learning how MY world works now that my Dad isn’t in it.
Part of me feels like it was a whole lifetime ago that I got the phone-call. And part of me wonders where all that time has disappeared to and what on earth I’ve actually done with it.
I’ve learnt that the vast majority of the time, I’m ok. Life continues, just without him. My tangiable world isn’t all that different to how it was before simply because of the nature of the relationship we had and the geographical distance that was between us. It’s the conversations we had on the phone that I miss the most. It’s kind of hard to write that actually, because somewhere inside I feel like I should be struggling more than I am.
On the flipside of that I’ve learnt that grief is unpredictable. It comes out of nowhere. No warning. No care for where I happen to be or what I’m doing or who I’m with. It just hits me, square in the chest and suddenly I can’t breathe and tears are coursing down my face in an unstoppable torrent and I’m on my knees on the floor. It might be a song, a photo, seeing someone on the street who looks a little bit like him. The smell of a freshly lit cigarette (even though they were, in effect, the thing that killed him, I sometimes still inhale deeply as I walk past someone smoking. And at other times I hold my breath for as long as I can, absolutely desperate not to suffer the same fate that he did, even after years of passively taking in all the toxins whilst on my weekend visits with him as a child). The girls talk about him quite a lot, which, considering they only met him twice (that they can remember) still surprises me. I answer their questions as best as I can, sometimes managing to keep it together and sometimes losing it completely, drawing them in for the tightest cuddle I can give them.
I’ve learnt that life is short. He was only just shy of his 64th birthday when it happened. I think he had probably been sick for a long time and either didn’t know or kept it a secret from everyone. His death from advanced lung cancer was down to him having smoked since he was 13 years old. Even so, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t expecting it – there was still more he wanted to do. During one of the last (longest and most precious) conversations we had he shared with me that he wanted to write a book – his memoirs. He and his wife had a holiday booked in October. He’d just started a new job. You never know what is going to happen. Of course, I knew that before. It’s just that this time it’s really sunk in, and it’s changing the way I’m choosing to live my life. I’m making different decisions. Not putting things off so much – that ‘someday’ might not come. Doing stuff that I actually want to do rather than things I think I should do.
I think that the most important thing I’ve learnt is that there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. It’s a process and it’s different for everybody. However I experience it is ok. Even if that’s different from how other people experience it. It’s ok that I can go for days or even weeks now without crying. It’s ok if I then cry every day for a week. It’s ok if I don’t think about him because I’ve got too many other things going on in my head. It’s ok if he’s all I can think about. It’s ok to want to talk about him and share memories. It’s ok if I don’t want to talk about him. It’s ok if I want to spend hours looking though the few photos I have of him. It’s ok if I can’t bear to see my wedding photos because it reminds me that it was the last time I saw him. It’s all ok.
I know that several of my friends are experiencing grief of their own at the moment, and the chances are that some of you are too, or know someone who is. These three articles have really helped me get to this point – I’ve read and re-read them several times over when I’ve needed to. I share them with you now in the hope that they might help you too:
~ How to help a grieving friend
I have no idea what the next three months will bring – what Christmas will be like without being able to call him and hear his voice say “Happy Christmas Bunny!” in his usual gravelly, slightly Bucks-Fizz-influenced way. I don’t know what the anniversary of his death will look or feel like or how I’ll cope.
I just know I will.
I know that I’ll get through it and be ok.
And I guess that’s all I need to know for now.
Phone: +44 (0) 7794 595783
Email: chloe@openmindhypnotherapy.co.uk