How Do You Cope With Grief?

In the days and weeks after losing my Mom, people who had also lost parents so selflessly reached out and offered messages of love and support. I would always reply to them – how do you cope? It was the one part that baffles me; to go from having this person there every single day for your whole life to wake up and that was it. How do you ever manage to regain a form of normality and how do you get out of bed? The list of questions seem to be getting longer and I’m getting no answers in return.

14 months on – I still don’t have the answer. Sorry if you stumbled across this post hoping to find a miracle cure that would allow you to pack up your grief in a neat little box and bring it out for special occasions. Nope. Sorry. Not that easy. So how do you cope?
 

In all honesty – I don’t know if I am.

The long days of tears and dark thoughts do seem few and far between nowadays but the old cliche time is a healer – is it? No. Time brings with it an ability to smile more and the positives start to outshine the negatives; anger and bitterness still rear their ugly heads but my feelings of complete despair belong more pushed to the back of my head opposed to on the pillow or into a tissue.

Yes I smile, I laugh, I chat, I am happy. But under it all there’s this thing, this thing that at any given moment will trigger and my chest goes tight and my eyes sting with the ever familiar tears that drop from my eyes without making a sound.

What I would give to see your name flash up on my phone, or open a text and collapse in fits of giggles or go to bed knowing tomorrow I would get to see you.

I’ve just spent over an hour reading our old text conversations and for that time I was engrossed and felt like I did two years ago. Life was as it always was so simple and carefree. Cancer didn’t ruin our days and make life so unpredictable and alien. Despite the C word engulfing us all those messages prove that you never waned. Your humour, determination and just awesomeness outshone any disease that took up residence in your body. We carried on; our in jokes, silly sense of humour and mundane everyday chats carried us through. Our relationship did not strengthen – it didn’t need to! It was perfect. So close so wonderful – so us.

I listen in pained silence as people talk about their Moms, acutely aware I have to use the past tense when I passionately champion you. My god I miss you. I hate that it’s almost two years since I got the phonecall that you were in hospital and it knocks me for six knowing I’ve lived on for two years with this stabbing pain pinching at my head and heart every single day.

Losing your mother is so horrible. You see, I have never ever known life without her. As a child your parents are the people you don’t know any other life without them being the constant. She had a life before she had me now I face life after her. And it was far far too soon. These babies should be pointing to the phone or standing at the window and shouting Granny as you come to play but they never will. They will never know how inexplicably excited she was about their arrival completing our whole family. They will only ever know what she looks like or sounds like from photos or videos. Their lives don’t get to be so incredibly blessed with a selfless woman like her in it.

I have found myself breaking down the last few days more than I have for a long time. Grief is a cheeky old thing; it lets you plod along thinking you’re ok then it decides to pull the rug from underneath you and knocks the wind from your sails and the cycle starts again. I will never ever break free from this cycle nor do I want to. I will never ever ever stop grieving for quite simply my favourite lady ever. No one can or will replace her or the legacy that unfairly, is all I have left.

So – how do you cope with grief? I have no bloody idea. It appears that I am. I’ve managed 14 months when 14 days seemed like an eternity but I have to. There’s three people that need to me cope so I will. I must. But you know what I bloody miss you Mom. So so incredibly much. Now and forever and ever – I won’t ever forget you Mrs!

B xx