Anniversaries of losing someone is strange.

Why is any day any more important than any other…when missing someone?
Time in some ways helps you cope with anniversaries but never takes away the pain.

I also find that the biggest benefit is that other people give you space, they understand that you may not be 100%, they accept more easily that you are grieving.
The rest of the time although you clearly will never get over the pain, people who don’t understand grief think that you should be progressing back to …what would you say ‘normality’? Mind you that then begs the question what …read more

A wonderful comment came from Rae to the post Happy Halloween about a feeling which I have had on a couple of occasions.  The feeling is that suddenly you forget that they have passed away, that you feel their presence, that you suddenly see them or sense them in the house.
I remember after about 3 months getting so mad that he wasn’t replying or coming through to the lounge when I needed some help to move the television! I had no idea that he had died, to me at that moment he was alive and even annoying (!) as he …read more

Losing someone you love makes you think about the need for love so deep inside all human beings. Last night I went over to stay with mum ahead of a meeting I was having near her…..and it struck me that as a child you spend much of the time wanting others to see you grown up, wanting to fall in love, wanting to be ‘treated like an adult’.
The irony is that as you become that adult, as you go through the joys and sorrows of life, you value that support and looking after of others. Last night I went home, …read more

I often say that in death you learn so much about life. Before being faced with death, you can be so wrapped up with the big things without even knowing it….
For me, grief has highlighted the importance of the little things in life …..when I say the little things, small aspects of life which have a BIG impact. It has highlighted the little things from two perspectives

Looking back, what do I miss the most…the little things. Holding my hand when I don’t expect it, cuddling on the sofa, the smile, their warmth in bed, the laughing at the in joke….
And …read more

An unusual post today as I was prompted to write about this following an email which I received recently.
I have always said I feel lucky to have loved and talked a lot about the pain of losing that love and the greif that follows….but I was asked
“What do you think is worse…losing the love of your life through death or having the love of your life leave in this world?”
Gosh, that is a difficult one and first of I would say they are both grief….both are situations about loss.
I wonder what you all think ?
For me I actually think the …read more

Now a fact not many of you will know but I am absolutely phobic about birds….chickens to be precise but it has now widened to all birds. This phobia stemming from a wonderful cockerel which pecked me beautifully on the knee when I was a youngster.
I digress…
But suffice to say that I never really feel as though I have a lot in common with birds. However, I was reading a wonderful article about magpies and how they suffer grief as well. Wow, you don’t really think of birds as being in pain do you?
“Dr Bekoff said he studied four magpies …read more

One of the most ironic sides of grief is how you think about love….

you desperately want to feel that wonderful feeling again, yet you don’t want to as it won’t be with the right person
you miss the person who has actually caused you pain by leaving you….how often in life do you need and want someone who has caused the pain??
you miss love from the past, yet you fear love in the future
you miss love, yet you know that love is eternal?

There is no way I will ever understand the complexity of grief….grief is full of contradictions, yet whose essence …read more

In grief the feeling of loss often translates into the feeling of being lost…lost in a world which seems to be moving forward and yet no longer inspires you to keep moving forward.
It makes sense really, we have lost our partner, our partner in life. We have lost the person who ignited that fire inside of us, we have lost the person who loved us unconditionally, in a way we have lost our guide.
If you lost a guide in the real world on a mountain trek, then you would turn to a map of the terrain, a map of the …read more

A broken heart hurts as we all know, but a study by Dr Mark Porter shows that if we are not careful then grief can affect our health. In a survey, he found
“When compared with a controlled group of people who hadn’t lost anyone close to them, the bereaved showed significant increases in blood pressure, pulse rate and changes to their immune and clotting systems, which made their blood stickier and a heart attack more likely. The changes were most marked during the first six months after bereavement and have been pounced on by the …read more

Gosh that sounds the most obvious sentence to write! But before understanding the true emotion of losing someone dear, I think despite my romantic, soppy nature…I hid my emotions. In some way I was frightened of them, if that makes sense?
I noticed the change only last week when I left my wonderful mum after our holiday together…my heart felt so full of love and I didn’t want to leave her…I wanted to pick her up in my pocket and bring her home. I felt tears in my eyes, I felt as though I was going to crumble….this was  I am …read more