As I grow nearer to forty, I realise, with increasing frequency, just how young he was when he died.
It’s easy to feel robbed; dad spent his 49th year on Earth battling aggressive, stage 4 head and neck cancer. It was nine months from his diagnosis to his death.
I can never truly express how harrowing that time was for us.
Watching someone you love succumb to all the horror of cancer is devastating. The impact of it all lasts long after they die. I still feel it, particularly at this time of year. Whenever it hits me, it smarts as deeply as it did in those early days.
But healing is possible in grief. First, however, you must allow yourself to grieve. And that involves letting yourself feel the pain - the loss, the sadness, the fear, the anger, the loneliness.
Grieving is not an easy thing to do. It requires enormous strength and fortitude.
Most people will try to run from it in some way or another.
I did. Because, aside from the fact that it isn’t socially acceptable to grieve (and people are forever saying things like, “You’ve got to move on!” or, “They’d want you to get on with life and be happy!” or, “You’re still young, you can love again!”) our human instinct is the remove ourselves from whatever causes us pain.
So, I ran from my grief.
The results were almost catastrophic; I did all the things that you shouldn’t do when you’re grieving – the big life changes, the new relationships, the using things to numb the pain… In my quest not to feel what I was feeling, I lost the ability to be authentic. By trying to silence my grief, I silenced myself.
In the end, I was a wreck.
I had mistreated myself and allowed others to do the same. I became a skilled liar. I lied to everyone, including myself. I was telling the world that I was fine. I was not.
It took nothing less than miraculous intervention for me to stop running and lying and numbing myself. In the end, I unintentionally overdosed on drugs I’d been prescribed for endometriosis.
When I realised what I had done, I called to Christ to save me. My prayer was answered.
The kind doctors in A & E couldn’t explain it, but I was alive and, aside from some kidney damage, I was unscathed. It was a miracle, and it gave me my moment of clarity; If I continued to run, I was going to die.
Recovery meant learning to be honest. No more lies. No more pretending that I was fine. No more running from grief. I finally had to admit that I was not ok, that losing my dad had broken my heart, traumatized, and devastated me, and that I felt bad all the time. I was deeply depressed and battled with debilitating anxiety.
One important thing that I discovered, was that grief waits.
It hurt like hell. Of course, it did - I loved him. And his death had changed everything – my life, my relationships, my family, me. I had to grieve the loss of it all and ride each wave of desolation and sadness. I had to cry. A lot. I wish I’d done it sooner; I wish I’d allowed myself to cry. I wish I had known that it was ok to cry every day if you need to.
After I cried for almost a year, and went to therapy, and moved, like a slug in salt, through all the painful memories and sadness and tears, I learned that the waves of grief, no matter how powerful or overwhelming, do eventually pass. And each time you let yourself feel, each time you process a feeling, a moment, a memory, each time you let yourself cry, you are a little more renewed, a little stronger, a little more healed.
And then, finally, I found a truth that changed everything; I discovered that behind all the pain, the grief, behind the tragedy of losing my beloved, beautiful dad, there was a bright light that had not been stolen away by the darkness of cancer and death: Love.
His love.
My love.
Our love.
Death hadn’t changed any of it; just as I love him every bit as much as I did when I could laugh with him, or look into his eyes, or hold his hand, the love he has for me remains unchanged, too.
Love really is eternal.
And ten years on from my father’s death, I feel his unchanged love for me, every single day, just as I feel the love of God, and the love of my mama.
In the end, it was all that love that got me through, and I write this as a contented, peaceful, grateful person, who is far happier than the bereaved 25-year-old who lost her dad ten years ago, ever thought possible.
So, if you are mourning, please don’t lose hope. And I pray that you find the love waiting for you beneath your grief.
God bless you and thank you for reading xx
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