Ruth Grilly shares her story of loss and sadness and I hope this helps someone in similar circumstances:
Grief, Disbelief and a Survival Technique
I’ve been procrastinating for days over
whether or not to write this post – everything is still so raw and sad –
but I feel as though it will allow me to at least move on with my work
and, at the moment, work is a very welcome distraction.
I lost my Dad last Thursday. Which makes
it sound as though I misplaced him – perhaps in the supermarket, or in
the library. I wish with all of my broken heart that I had merely
misplaced him and that I could turn a corner and he would be standing
there, waiting for me, but unfortunately I’m using the term “lost” in a
more permanent sense. I just can’t bring myself to write the word that
means that thing that’s so final and irreversible.
Not yet.
Does it get any better? I didn’t ever
think that grief could be so confusing, so complicated. Because before
you can miss the person you’re grieving, you have to first rid yourself
of the many “what ifs?” and “when dids?” and “why didn’ts?”. Why
didn’t I just call him that evening? What if I had popped round to say
hello? When did it happen? Did he think of me? Does it make me selfish
to want to know that he thought of me?
This is so intensely private, but at the
same time I have always found writing to be the most therapeutic thing I
can do. And for the past few days, all I’ve really wanted to do is to
talk and talk, to share my feelings, but I can’t do it face to face
because I cry and I can’t honestly cry any more because my skull itself
has started to ache, and sometimes I open my mouth and no sound or even
air comes out for long, long moments of time. It’s as though I’m just
letting the grief out, like it’s a big black bird with its wings slowly
unfolding as it emerges into the air, or some sort of fabric that has
been balled up in my mouth that is suddenly being released. No sound,
just the feeling that the entire contents of my head and body want to
make an exit except they can’t because it’s as though everything has
turned to stone.
And I don’t even know why I’m writing
this, really, because I could absolutely have carried on – publicly –
without the majority of people having even the faintest inkling of any
sort of life trauma taking place. I could easily maintain my usual tone –
not least because I have about a dozen posts ready that were written
pre-catastrophe and just need photos adding to them – and nobody would
be any the wiser. But a crazy, irrational part of me is thinking that my
Dad might be somehow observing what is going on, and thinking bloody
hell darlin’, you’re jabbering on about body lotions without a care in
the world and I’m up here being forced to wear sandals with socks and a
semi-transparent white robe!
I feel as though I can’t move on with
work (and I desperately need the distraction that work will provide)
until I have at least somehow acknowledged the momentous thing that has
happened – that has changed my world – and so here it is. It seems like
the briefest of pauses, really, when I think that I am only committing
these words to one little post, but it’s all I can bear to do.
Privately, in the offline world, the pause is so big it threatens to
swallow me up whole – it’s difficult to imagine life returning to
normal, though it gets slightly more bearable each day – but here,
online, I’m going to maintain the state of semi-denial I’ve lulled
myself into, which seems to be my survival tactic of choice.
So on with the show – and if you are reading, Dad, I have a bone to pick with you. You left without saying goodbye.
Grief, Disbelief And Survival Techniques
Grief, Disbelief And Survival Techniques
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