Grief

Grief is not a nice thing to experience. Everyone experiences grief at some point in their lives, but we don’t just experience grief through bereavement. We can experience grief for a numbers of reasons, for example, being made redundant at work, loosing your home, ending a relationship; suffering from ill health or when a loved one suffers from ill health, a new medical diagnosis or a change in body image which could be through an accident or surgery.

I want to start by explaining common symptoms of grief and stages we go through when we are grieving. I will then go onto my own experience of grief.

Everyone deals with grief in different ways, but according to the NHS (2019) there are common symptoms of grief:

👉🏻 The first reaction to loss is usually shock and numbness, or the feeling of “being in a daze”

👉🏻 overwhelming sadness, with lots of crying

👉🏻 tiredness or exhaustion

👉🏻 Anger – towards the person you’ve lost or the reason for your loss

👉🏻 Guilt – for example guilt about feeling the anger, about something you said or did not say, or not being able to stop your loved one dying.

These feelings may not be present all the time but they can appear unexpectedly.

The NHS (2019) describe that we go through 4 stages of bereavement or grief:

👉🏻 Acceptance that your loss is real

👉🏻 Experiencing the pain of grief

👉🏻 Adjusting to life without the person or thing you have lost

👉🏻 Putting less emotional energy into grieving and putting it into something new.

Most people go through all of these stages , but do not necessarily move smoothly from one to the next.

My own personal experience of grief came following the loss of my dad in August (2019). I certainly experienced numbness in the first instance. I cannot really describe fully how I felt without sounding like I had totally lost my mind or had “no heart” for this period. In my head, I knew that my dad had gone. That I would never see him again. That I would never be able to talk to him again. But I didn’t, and couldn’t believe it. I still expected to see my dad walking through my front door & coming to help me to do odd jobs around the house like he always did, or to go for a walk with the dog with me. I still expected to see him sat in his chair at home when I went to visit. But yet I knew this wasn’t going to happen. I was completely in a daze. I guess that is what helped me organise things for dad’s funeral. I had to sort out the medical certificate, ring up & organise the funeral director. Sit down with my mum and brother and organise dad’s funeral with the funeral director. Attend dad’s funeral. I hardly even cried at his funeral. I saw his photo on top of his coffin & I still hardly cried. Even though I had helped to arrange his funeral, I didn’t believe it was my dad’s funeral. There were people at his funeral who hadn’t seen him for years & friends of my brother who cried more than me. It made me feel heartless. How could I not cry? Simple answer: because I didn’t believe I was at my dad’s funeral. I also felt that I had to stay strong for my mum. If I cried, I knew my mum would break down. I had to stay strong for her to help her through it. She was going through so much more. Besides grieving for my dad, she was also grieving for herself. She had breast cancer. She was living with cancer, after seeing what cancer had just done to my dad. She knew she needed surgery to remove her cancer in the near future. Her surgery had been postponed because of dad’s ill health. She had so much more to deal with so it was so much more important to look after her than to think about myself.

I’m really not sure how long my numbness lasted for. After the funeral, all my efforts went onto ensuring my 2 young children were ok. I had to ensure my mum was ok. I had no time to even question how I was feeling. I had to help my mum through everything. I knew I was going to have to help her through her surgery. She was coming to live with us when after her surgery so that I could look after her. She wouldn’t be able to lift anything, or do very much at all initially.

I did not allow myself to grief properly which I now believe did me a lot more harm than good. At the time, I guess it was a good avoidance technique. Trying to avoid accepting the reality that my dad had gone. I really do not recommend doing this. It is much better to allow yourself to grief rather than try to avoid it.

I do remember feeling angry at some point several weeks after he died. I was so angry with dad for smoking. I was angry at him for ignoring our advice and our pleas to stop smoking. I felt angry and guilty at the same time at myself for not making him stop smoking when I knew he was still smoking secretively. I felt angry and guilty at myself for not making him go see his GP with his cough. I knew a persistent cough was a symptom of lung cancer but I ignored it and told myself that I was just overreacting because I was a nurse & knew too much. I was angry that his cancer had been so aggressive & had taken him from us so quickly. I was angry because dad had been suffering for the last 6 months with immense pain and shortness of breath. I felt guilty for not being able to do anything to stop him suffering or to stop him dying. I did not do enough to stop him getting the cancer. I felt guilty for thinking that dad was now in a better place because he (hopefully) will now be peaceful & at rest without any more suffering. I remember being out walking the dog & not being able to breathe for feeling all of this guilt.

More recently, I had been struggling to look at photos of my dad without crying. I could not talk about him without welling up and clamming up. It was too upsetting. I was trying to be strong.

I started suffering from anxiety quite soon after dad died. Everything was making me feel anxious. I was anxious initially about what everyone at work would think about me for taking so much time off work. I had been on maternity leave, and only back at work for 4 weeks before dad died. Now I was taking time off to grieve for my dad and to support my mum, and I didn’t know how long I was going to be off for. Because of this, I was anxious that everyone was talking about me behind my back. Not many people got in touch with me to see how I was doing so I was anxious that they didn’t actually care or that they just thought I was taking advantage and taking too long off work. My anxiety got worse as time went on. The longer I stayed away from work, the worse my anxiety got. I felt I needed to go back to work to get back into a normal routine. At the same time, I was anxious about going back to work, about being able to physically do my job any more, about being able to remember what I was doing. I had been off work for 15 months in total. I have a very responsible job. If I get things wrong, it could really have serious consequences. My self confidence had all gone.

I knew I had to stay off work to look after my mum but I knew at the same time that I had to get back to work for my own mental health.

Mum had her surgery which went well. Her recovery also went well. She was doing amazing! I was, however, beginning to find things harder and harder. My anxiety was getting worse.

I went back to work when mum was more independent and things started improving. The guilt of being away from work for so long disappeared. I was slowly able to rebuild confidence in doing a job that I loved. I had gentle pushes in the right direction from work colleagues who obviously had a lot more confidence in me than I had in myself. I talked to other colleagues and realised that I had been so wrapped up in everything in my own life, that I hadn’t considered what other people go through in their lives. There is an image that people portray on social media that their lives are perfect. Everyone feels the need to live up to this image. The reality is often quite the opposite. It was through talking to other people about what they are going through that made me get my head out of the sand.

I was talking to another colleague at work the other day about how I had felt when I had been off work. She told me that people had been scared to get in touch with me when I had been off because they did not know what to say. A quick message, even just to say hi is all that is needed sometimes to let people know you are thinking about them. Don’t be afraid to talk to people who are suffering from grief. You can not say the wrong thing! But don’t pretend that you know what they are going through, because you really have no idea unless you have been in a similar situation yourself. Even then, everyone deals with things differently. There really is no right or wrong way of dealing with things. Do not let people tell you otherwise. And ignore people’s negative judgements.

My New Year’s Resolution that I made to myself was to put 2019 behind me. 2020 is a New Year. Its time to try to move on. To try to be happy. All my dad would want is for me to be happy. So that is my aim. I also want people to be kind to one another. It really does not take anything to be nice to people you know or to strangers. You really have no idea what they have going on in their lives. Please try not to be so judgmental. An act of kindness is all it can take to change a person’s whole day.

I am painting a picture that things are hopefully looking up for 2020 for my family. Mum has been given the all clear after her surgery. All her cancer was successfully removed. She does not need further treatment. This is fantastic!However, my father-in-law was diagnosed last October time with lung cancer with metastasis. He is currently undergoing chemotherapy. 2020 is still going to be a challenging year for our family. The only thing we can do is to take each day as it comes. We will make every effort to be there for Jason’s step-dad & his mum, and to offer support and help where it is needed.

Reference:

NHS (2019) https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/coping-with-bereavement/ (accessed 13/01/20)