Coping with Grief

 

For many years I adopted my family’s view of grief. ‘Life goes on so just leave the dead behind.’ My brother Bobby was only 18 months old when he died and that was before I was born. My parents never visited his grave and, as I grew up, I never learned where Bobby was buried. The day before my father died, he told me he did not want to go to the hospital again. He was very ill and had had enough. I respected his wishes and spent the next twenty-four hours with him, while my mother had a well-deserved rest. I slept fitfully that night and he passed away peacefully at ten o’clock the following day as I sat by his side. It seemed that I had done my duty and although I would miss him, I had my life to consider, a wife, children, and a job to get on with. I can only remember one distressing moment: when I returned to work. People were chatting and enjoying a joke, and, in that instant, I felt desolate, as I thought, ‘My dad is dead, and everyone is laughing.’ I was thirty-eight years old. My mother was ninety-eight when she died and had had a long and seemingly happy life. My brother Jack had nursed her through a difficult final year and rang me to tell me she had passed. I went to her funeral but felt little grief and went back to my life without dwelling on her death. I suppose that over the years, I was bottling up emotions that I should have expressed but that wasn’t how I’d been brought up. When my elder brother, Harry died I felt upset for his family but still somewhat detached. He was twelve years older than me, so we had lived very different lives. Two years later, my brother Jack died during covid lockdown so I couldn’t attend his funeral. We had become close during his long illness, and I rang him most days for a chat. I know he enjoyed our reminiscences and that they were helping him through. When my sister-in-law phoned me to say that he had gone, I walked on the field near my house and cried and for many weeks he was in my thoughts. I missed him and for the first time in my life, I felt a deep loss for someone I loved. At last, I was beginning to challenge my family’s view that I had lived with for over seventy years. I felt grief and with it, pain. In November 2021, the unthinkable happened when my wonderful grandson died of covid. He was only twenty-three and I couldn’t bear losing him. He had been the centre of my family’s universe. A disabled but charming young man who was full of wonder and glee. A very special person who everyone loved. I could think of nothing that would ease the pain I felt. No words of comfort seemed appropriate. I spent weeks feeling utterly bereft. My depression worsened and it felt as though my life had lost all meaning. I was floundering in the depths of loss and pain and only regular bouts of crying brought relief. Maybe all the grief I had been suppressing over the years had been turned on like a tap or more likely the overwhelming love I felt for Isaac washed away my long-held view that life must go on. The grief changed me. Nothing would ever be the same again. I could find no upside to this loss. Isaac’s life was short, had ended abruptly, and the pain was felt by everyone. I knew then it was pointless trying to fight the feelings as I would have in the past, accepting the pain was now part of me, and would endure. Today, I am thinking of my good friend John, and I face a new and different challenge in my life. His funeral is in two days’ time, and I am remembering our friendship and all the interesting things we got up to. From the age of ten to fifteen, we were inseparable, and that time still feels magical. To have such a close friend who shared my interests, and my dark sense of humour was a delight. We were choir boys on Sundays and anything but on other days. This was also a time when I was dealing with conflicts within myself and going to the Grammar School just exaggerated my feelings of fear and inadequacy. Who had ever heard of a bright boy who couldn’t read? I was filled with anxiety and shame. So, John’s death has taken me back to a time when I was haunted by a feeling of dread. I can rationalize all this now, I was dyslexic, but no one knew about such things in those days. John’s death has taken me back to those teenage years, and this week, despite all my accomplishments, I feel that fear tightening my stomach again. I was privileged to have such a good friend and some very vivid memories. At John’s funeral, I will delight in talking about those uplifting times that still leave a warm glow but until then a long-gone feeling of unease has returned to remind me of feelings I never showed or shared. This week those subterranean feelings have emerged and that is something else to deal with while I grieve for my friend.