Lewis grieving the death of his wife, Joy in July 1960
A Grief Observed – C. S. Lewis (1961)
Grief, regardless of the loved-one lost is a hard path to travel and affects us all in many ways and no two losses are ever dealt with in the same way.
The loss of the Grandmother that had virtually raised me was one that I would never learn to understand because of the circumstances the surrounded me at the time. I was of an age when children were kept away from the truths behind the death and nothing was ever explained about illnesses or the events that preceded it. Consequently, I was blissfully unaware that anything was wrong. I was simply told one day that Nana was dead and expected to just get on with things as if nothing had happened. It was only years later when I got her death certificate that I knew the cause, but although I now know she dies in hospital I will never know anything about the time leading up to the death itself.
The death of my father was sudden. He suffered a massive unexpected heart attack just a couple of days after my youngest son was born and within a few hours he was gone. My mother compounded the grief by insisting that it was all my fault, Life in, Life out was the mantra she spat at me at volume before hospital security removed her. She never forgave me and had as little to do with me or her grandson after that.
The death of my eldest son this year was always on the cards. Although estranged for many years due to his lifestyle choice of drugs and crime, it saddened more than I had ever expected. There was a time when we were very close, when I would have given him the world but whatever I could give him as he became a teenager was never going to be enough. I regret his choices in life because of all the times together we missed out on.
The murder of my partner was something I now can only think about in terms of it happening to the me that was of that time … not the me that is of now.
Ad Nauseam
Life is good …
My life is good
But there are still those moments when I want the world to go away
To leave me alone, to allow me to just be
To let me cry
Not the first throws of gut wrenching anguish
Or the breaking of something deep inside that can never be repaired
Nor the dark, destroying entrapment of depression
Blinding hurt, in time gives way to a dull heavy ache
An oppressive cloud that settles as the years escape
Contained grief … boxed away
The glass lid never quite closed tight, forever fragile
Heart-stopping moments of forgotten tunes
Familiar places
Remembered smells
Uncontrollable daggers that pierce my very soul
Escaped tears, gentle, silent ... unnoticed
Life does move on
My life has moved on …
But just sometimes, that misery is still as hauntingly close as yesterday