LiFE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN…
23 years ago I went through the worse possible thing that can happen to any parent and I lost my 11 month old daughter to a rare genetic disorder. On the day that she got taken into hospital, my life was literally turned upside down and all my plans for the future were taken away from me in an instant. I spent 3 months in hospital with her, spending every day by her side, hoping for that miracle that never came.
EACH LOSS IS DIFFERENT…
After several years, I eventually realised that I had to deal with my grief and face up to what had happened and start living again. Unfortunately, at that time the support services were not as good as they are now and I had some awful experiences. It sounds really cliched but grief is a personal journey and is different for everybody. There is not a right way to grieve and everybody has to work through it in their own way. Sometimes, it really did feel that it was one step forward and two steps back.
It is impossible to tell somebody how to grieve because each loss is different and that is because the life of each person has been different and has taken their own path. With the loss of a child I have found that not only do I grieve for the loss of my daughter as a physical person but I am also grieving for all of those milestones that she will never reach. I never got her first steps, her first day at school, sending her off to college or university, her first boyfriend, her wedding, grandchildren. I never got to see what direction her life would take so, in some ways I am grieving for myself as well as all of those hopes and dreams I had for her were taken away.
TOGEthER FOREVER….
However, I know that many older people struggle when their partners of many years pass away. They have had sometimes 50 or 60 years of having that person by their side every day and it is hard for them to know what to do without them. This can especially be true if the partner who has passed away was the person in the relationship who was more proactive in the day today running of the house. Without them, the person left behind can be overwhelmed by even the smallest task like changing a lightbulb or the batteries in the remote control.
in conclusion….
So, I guess that in conclusion I am going back to what I said earlier on that there is not a right or a wrong way to ‘do grief’ and everybody has their own way of dealing with things but, it will have to be dealt with at some point to allow you to move on and luckily now there is help out there. Give me a call to find out how I can help.
