There Is No ‘Easy’ Way to Lose Someone
When I was younger, I used to think that there was such a thing as an ideal death. Maybe it was from watching too many movies, where a person gently passed away in their bed, surrounded by their love ones and it seemed, well, idyllic.
However, when I was nineteen, my mum died, after a short but brutal battle with cancer. It made me think a lot, about how we lose the people, that mean the most to us. And … if there is such a thing as a preferable death, that makes it easier on the people, that are left behind? My mum’s death was painful, long and drawn out and I thought that was the most horrific thing I could ever experience. Seeing her in excruciating pain each day and knowing that she didn’t want to be alive for the next one, was so intensely painful to witness. Then, last year my dad died, it was unexpected and fast, but his death seemed so much more peaceful than my mums but my grief has been entirely different.
When we discovered that my mum had cancer, which had gone undetected for months, there was a significant amount of anger. How could they have missed, something so life changing? Being so angry didn’t change what we were dealing with and all it did was take up more (of our very limited time) that we had left with her. It was incredibly hard to push that anger to one side and focus on what was truly important, at that moment in time. Although, there was one upside to not finding out three months prior, as we had our last Christmas together as a happy family, who were blissfully unaware that their entire whole world would be shattered eight months later. I’m eternally grateful that we had that last Christmas, but a huge part of me will always wish, that there might have been another option for us if it had been caught earlier. Maybe, there could have been a chance? Maybe, she could have dropped me off at university, instead of dying a couple of weeks before, I had to move one hundred and twenty miles away.
Seeing my mum suffer for months, going through ruthless treatments to try and prolong her short life, gave me longer to accept, that she was going to die, at some point, in the not so distant future. But when that day finally arrived, it didn’t feel any easier. You can never truly be prepared, for the loss of a parent at a young age even when you knew it was coming. Fourteen years after my mum died, my dad followed, but his death was so different. It was a terrible shock and the exhaustion of ten days, spent by his bedside all day, made those early days of grief, so difficult to navigate.
When someone dies, you are left with a lot of questions, so many of them will go unanswered, but I’ve learnt that there is no ideal or easy way to lose someone. Whatever the circumstances you find yourself in, you are always going to wish, that you had more time, or said something differently and it is important to recognise, that this is such a huge part of the grieving process. The what ifs, and those unsaid things, can often drive you to despair, when you are in the thick of it. And often it can lead us to romanticise the other ways, they might have left us, which is something that I certainly never expected to feel, when I thought about the loss of my parents. You’re never going to feel, like you had everything ‘together’, there will always be something to add.