10 tcf.org.uk COMPASSION | BOOK REVIEWS Book Reviews I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This by Clare Mackintosh reviewed by Val Holden I am normally very happy to review any book for TCF but a glance at this one when it arrived made me wonder whether I would be able to identify with the author’s situation and whether it would resonate at all with mine. My son took his own life 32 years ago at the age of 21. The author’s baby son Alex died 18 years ago at the age of 5 weeks. How could our experiences be similar in any way? When I reached the end of the book I had been reminded that to lose a child is to lose a child, whatever age and in whatever circumstances, and to all parents it seems an impossibility that there will be any kind of enjoyable life following the heartbreak. Personally I felt all normal life had ended and that I would drag myself through the rest of life, an empty shell. How I wish I had read this book then. Clare Mackintosh speaks directly to the reader in a very calm and forthright way. I felt her writing to be honest and true, and not sentimental in any way. The book is well presented and inviting, comprising short chapters with well spaced script and making it easy to read from front to back or to dip into a chapter which speaks to you personally. The author encourages you to discard without guilt what you do not find useful. Clare Mackintosh makes 18 promises (one for each year without her son) such as “I promise this won’t always be your first thought in the morning”, and of course numbers 1 and 18 – “I promise it won’t always hurt like this.” At first I thought this was a rash claim – after all, how can she speak for us all? But she certainly did for me. She was a serving police officer when Alex, died. She is now a published author of detective stories and has the ability to put into words so perfectly the complex emotions newly bereaved parents experience. She speaks of “surviving but not thriving – and then beginning to live again”, referring to “the effort of just staying alive, something not previously considered but now a daily challenge”. One piece of advice struck home with me. I remember being so terrified I would forget Dominic. Not his being, but little aspects of his personality or the way he spoke and the things he said. The obvious answer, of course, is to try talking to someone else who knew him well. I was also pleased to hear that “grief brain” is now an accepted condition, akin to “baby brain” which we all remember so well! Clare Mackintosh says that she is often sent books on grief for review but she is often unable to do so because they are too good and she feels her emotions “torn from her and placed on the page and it’s too much to take”. I was moved to tears often reading this book, but I am so glad I did. She says that it is a story of hope, not loss, to return to when you’re hurting, or to give to a friend when you don’t know what to say. She refers in the book to the death of her beloved father, and the grief she experienced then, and although the author draws on her personal experience it is a book to help anyone to believe that eventually “grief will be the passenger, not the driver” and that “we owe it to the dead to live the lives they didn’t get to finish”.
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