Some Words on Grief

Rather than write a great big missive about what grief is and its effects I'm just going to list some thoughts. Listing this is easier than writing a big post as too much reflection on this is very saddening.

Its not much fun and continues not to be much fun.

I went to a wedding with my mother on Saturday, which was the first time we'd been to a summer event like this without my father. When I saw the groom and his father embrace before the service I had a pang of envy.

I was crushingly depressed on Sunday evening when I got back to London, and on Monday I lay in bed all afternoon staring blankly at the wall.

Grief has this effect. One moment you're fine and then it smashes into you and I become completely incapacitated. It is like depression lasts for a day or two rather than weeks/months on end.

I had a funny thought. I may be getting better (ish) but my father never will. He remained in that awful place we were all in October. He never recovered. Its obvious but such has been the effect on me that I have to rebuild emotional responses to it all.

Every now and again he'll flash into my mind and it stops me from what I was doing.

At the wedding I suddenly thought about him on his bed once he'd died. That's not right but these are memories that have to be processed. I can't pretend it didn't happen. Its quite peculiar really. There you are doing something and then the worst thing you've ever seen is there for a split second. It completely throws you. Him dying wasn't the worst part of it. I mean, it was bad but there had been worse moments when he had been ill.

Yesterday was a year ago to the day when I was told that he would probably die within four months. I only know that because it was the same day that Felippe Massa headbutted a shock absorber at 160mph.

Home is painfully quiet.

I find it difficult to discuss certain aspects with my mother as I know it will upset her. 

I haven't cried since October. Strange really. I think aspects of his final decline were so horrendous that I had expended all that emotion by the time we got to the funeral.

Two things I thought after he had died:

1) I'm glad I don't have to watch my father die again
2) What a terrible shame that everyone's father dies

Things I don't do now:

1) Watch anything to do with hospitals.
2) Go into hospitals

The thing that I hold on to and refuse to subject to any thought regarding its existence:

The afterlife

The thing I definitely believe in

Ghosts

Things I'm even more ambivalent about than before:


God