12 Sep The changing shape of grief…
September 2022 – almost 4 years without Ben
I often wonder why I keep writing – why after almost four years I haven’t managed to get to grips with grief. Why it’s such a complex and multifaceted enigma!
But of course it’s not that easy – grief isn’t an illness that can be cured or a bad habit that can be kicked – it’s an extra dimension to living that slips into the place where our special person should be. Although it changes shape over time, there is no recovery, no moving on and no getting over it – nor would I want there to be. Life can never ever go back to how it was, so I imagine I’ll be writing forever in some form or other.
Grief is simply love living on…
…a hurting love with the rough jagged edges of sadness shock denial pain trauma…
…a love full of beautiful precious memories intricately woven into the deepest darkest agonising sorrow.
There’s no easy way to do this – grief hurts! It’s a totally inadequate substitute for our darling boy but grief is what we’re left with. It’s simply the price of love. Someone wrote these beautiful words – ‘grief is the last act of love we have to give to those we loved’.
When Ben died a bright light went out and our world dramatically changed shape. Now it feels like we’re living on a slant – constantly adjusting our gait to simply keep upright. Our lives seem to be ‘out of sync’ with those around us and everything requires a lot more effort than it ever did before.
And as if that isn’t bad enough I’ve discovered that grief isn’t static or linear – you never really know what it’s going to do next! It’s a perpetually evolving process that will probably ebb and flow for the rest of my life. Grief is incredibly complex, unpredictable and scary. It changes guise without warning; often from one day/minute to the next!!
C S Lewis writes about the loss of his wife…
“For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?”
“But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?”
⁃ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Having to hit reset at the age of 60 was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Losing one of my precious children must be like having a limb amputated without an anaesthetic!! Excruciating indescribable pain. It still hurts.
Then there is the agonising pull of wanting to be with those I love ‘who are here’ and the one I love ‘who is there’. Often finding myself hovering somewhere around the middle – not really wanting to be anywhere!!
And now October 7th is creeping up on us again…
The beautiful sunny day our darling boy happily walked out the door and never came home. It’s like being trapped inside a terrifying forever nightmare.
How can it be possible…
that he suddenly collapsed on the street! That his apparently healthy heart just stopped beating for no obvious reason. That we received the devastating phone call every parent fears. That we numbly listened to earth shattering words we didn’t want to hear ‘I’m so sorry…’ That we kissed our precious son’s handsome lifeless face. That we buried our beautiful boy. That we wanted to die too. That we were sucked into a dark hole of pain…?
Can you ever be normal after that?
I honestly had no idea how wonderful normal was – until it wasn’t!
So I guess that’s why I’m still writing and will probably be writing for the rest of my life – trying to make sense of something so wrong. Trying to accept what my soul still wants to reject. Trying to live with a broken shattered incomplete heart.
God how I miss him! I miss the sound of his voice, his laugh, his hugs, his opinions, his singing, his stories, his banter… the missing makes me feel sick inside.
And missing him doesn’t get easier. The pain is still so very raw.
If it all sounds complicated or melodramatic – that’s because it is. The disconcerting disorientating conundrum of a bereaved parent – so many of us struggling to survive without our children! The agonising thoughts/memories/flashbacks that swirl around our heads every single day. Unrest, agitation, sadness, loneliness, despair…
I often feel like grief has literally sucked the ‘me’ out of me. I wonder which bits could still be recoverable (if any) or if they’ve gone forever.
I wonder if writing is one of the few things I have left. That I hang on to it because putting feelings into words somehow takes the edge off the pain.
I wonder if writing is my way of responding to the impossible “how are you?” question. If it’s the only way to tell the unspeakable truth about how we really are.
I wonder if writing is a respite from reality. If it allows me to transport myself to the third person because it’s easier to imagine this tragic story must belong to someone else.
I wonder if writing has stopped me from going mad.
“I write because
I don’t know
what I think
until I read
what I say”
Flannery O’Conner
If that all sounds bleak and depressing – that’s because it is – but I want to finish on a more positive note.
I was looking through some photos the other day and came across two very similar shots of Paul and myself taken four years apart. The first was on my 60th birthday a few months before Ben died and the other in July this year. I was surprised to see that despite being a few years older and a few pounds heavier, both photos pretty much look the same.
Yet if you could see behind the happy faces (in the second photo) you would see devastating sadness, agonising pain, broken hearts, weeping scars, hurting souls.
We might look the same but we’re not. We never will be! Grief has changed us.
But I want everyone to know –
those smiles are real!!
Despite the pain and heartache we’re actually learning to feel joy again – it sits right beside grief!!
That photo was taken at a campsite beside the beautiful River Wye. We were away in our camper van with some very dear friends. Friends who are comfortable talking about Ben and ‘get it’ when we’re sad.
In that moment we felt happy – not our old happy – but a new different kind of happy.
We take our brokenness with us everywhere we go; often oscillating seamlessly between laughing and crying. But Ben is there too – wrapped around us like an invisible comfort blanket. He teaches us to enjoy the little things – to make as many special one moments as possible. He reminds us that life is fragile; that it can change in an instant so not to take anything for granted.
His absence is as powerful as his presence.
We see our darling boy in the beautiful sunsets and the night sky.
We see him in smiles and laughter.
We feel him in everything that is happy and beautiful and yellow!
We hear him in the wind and the waves.
And very occasionally we touch him in our dreams.
We celebrate his life because we’re unbelievably thankful for the gift of every single beautiful moment we had with him. He enriched our lives. He made the world a better place. Our lives are broken without him but his light shines on – because we let it.
He left a legacy that belongs only to him.
He would want us to miss him and feel sad (in fact he’d probably be devastated if we didn’t!!) but he would want us to feel joy too. He wouldn’t want us to give up!!
He would want us to talk about him; to laugh at the things he laughed at. To keep telling his stories and singing his songs!! He would want to know he’s still part of our family and that he will never ever ever be forgotten.
Hope tells me I will survive! I look forward to a wonderful reunion – because I believe one day we will all be together again in heaven!
So until then, he would want us to keep living his life for him. I guess that’s his parting gift to us! Our gift to him is that we will!
I’ve said it before – I’d rather the pain of losing him than to have never had him in the first place. Those twenty five years were awesome – but YES of course we selfishly wanted more!! We simply weren’t ready to let him go.
“Grief…
is the love story we keep telling through tears, and laughter and everything in between.
The way we tell it has no bearing on the depth of our pain”
– Franchesca Cox
Credit: Ruth McDonald September 2022