Dealing With Grief

Hello so I’m back, I feel like I’m always apologising for how long it’s been but hopefully I will get a schedule together eventually! So this blog post is a little bit of difficult one to write but maybe this will help others in a similar situation.

“Grief is just love with no place to go”

~ Jamie Anderson ~

Okay so this is the most difficult blog I’ve written but I think it’s going to help me in the long run, so here goes.

Grief is unavoidable in this life, and eventually someone will grieve us as we move on. I’m only 21yrs old and haven’t experienced any serious loss or loss that I was old enough to fully remember until a week ago yesterday when I lost Nan. I knew this was coming eventually and was going to be a difficult, but it doesn’t really matter how much you prepare for these times because it’s us just us humans trying to control what we have no control over unfortunately.

My Nan had dementia so you know it’s only a matter of time, so in that way you are kind of prepared and I have spend the last few years so angry at an illness as I watched it take my Nan from me and my family day by day with nothing you can do. But she was still doing well and still remembered all of us but was starting to show signs that it wasn’t going to be long until we wouldn’t even have that.

So I got the call last Wednesday in the morning and it is strange because are brains are wired to panic and consider all worst situations first as a survival mechanism yet somehow it doesn’t do very well at processing bad news because my brain just stopped functioning. All I remember saying after I hung up the phone whilst panicking to get ready to go to family was “no, I’m not ready for this, she’s not ready yet”.

I’ve spent the last week back home with my grandad and Auntie so yesterday I finally came back to my flat.

So the first two days the only word I kept saying was that it just felt strange and it really did, it felt like time just stopped. So the first two days it just didn’t feel like she had died, I just couldn’t understand and I still don’t but it felt like she had gone somewhere and I was just waiting for her to come back, she has her own chair that is always hers and no one could sit in it because it was like we were holding it for her to come back to sit in it. I also found that I couldn’t cry for these two days, I am normally a really emotional person and it doesn’t take much but for some reason I just couldn’t but I think I was just in shock.

By the third day I definitely started to feel really sad and realisation started to hit me plus we heard from the coroner which made it a real reality. The whole week felt like it wouldn’t end as every day just felt so slowly yet somehow a week on, I can’t believe it’s been a week since she left.

I think me and my family spent a lot of days just reading each other and just making sure we are all okay. I think I mainly just spent a lot of time worried and thinking about everyone else, my grandad who just lost his soulmate and wife of 57 years, my auntie and uncle who just lost their mother and the rest of my family who are trying to process what has happened. It just reminded of the quote,

“Death doesn’t hurt, it hurts everyone you leave behind”

I can now realise that it was a mistake to focus on everyone else, although that is important, I think my brain didn’t want to accept or come to terms with what had happened and it every time I was alone or started to feel sad I was having panic attacks or do anything to distract myself. I went to see my sister this Sunday and the minute I was going to bed I had a panic attack and just had this need to go back to my grandad and auntie, I couldn’t fully understand why but I just told myself I’m going through a lot right now and if that’s where I need to be then that’s where I will be, so I went back.

This wasn’t the right or wrong decision but I think it was in reality, a denial of what has happened, because I think I wanted to go back because that’s where my Nan would have been and I felt like if I was there I could stay connected to her but obviously in reality I am always connected to her but she isn’t here anymore and I just didn’t want to realise that.

So on Monday I started to feel ill and it was weird because I hadn’t been anywhere to get sick, and it may have been my body trying to get me recognise what had happened and to actually take some time to process because that is the thing about me, when I’m extremely anxious or there is a lot of emotions going on it does come out in a physical way for me, so I do recognise this now and it only lasted two days and I feel completely normal now.

In the back of my mind I new I had to go home eventually and the life had to resume at some point so I told myself I would give myself a week to just give myself a complete free pass and not have any worries about anything else. So that is what I did and yesterday was Wednesday and a whole week had passed so I finally came home to my flat!

To put it lightly, it’s been horrible since I came home and the minute I walked through the door I burst into tears. I was given a lot of my Nan’s clothes and a box of glasses and ornaments so I spent a few hours just crying, listening to her favourite music, finding homes for all the ornaments and just cleaning up my flat but most importantly I’m finally processing.

Today is been even worse and I still have this panicked feeling to run back to my grandad and family but I’m not going to because it’s not going to make me feel better to see her still not there and I know they will all be okay and so will I eventually.

Death is something that no human can ever understand, it doesn’t matter how much we try to prepare or know something is coming, we are never ready and we never will be because death is the biggest thing a human can go through. From a human perspective I can’t understand where my nan has gone and why I can’t sit and talk to her anymore and I am going to miss her for the rest of my life and so will everyone else who loves her. From a spiritual perspective, second to birth, death is the most beautiful experience someone can go through, I am so happy for my nan that she gets to go the next part of her journey and experience whatever it is next, because god knows she deserves it, that woman was pure love and happiness in the final year and that is how I will remember and I’m honoured to have experienced a part of life with her.

So I hope this blog post has an impact on you and helps anyone who is experiencing a loss of someone. Death is painful and I don’t think most of our brains are built to handle these types of experiences especially if that death is traumatic.

Thank you for reading this post and feel free to comment or contact me on Instagram or Facebook at ‘emilysperspectives’

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