Compassion Magazine Winter 2022

Winter 2022 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 9 I’m writing this in mid-October and yesterday I had an uncomfortable reminder of the way you can be ambushed by grief, years, or even decades, after your child had died. My daughter, Claire, had always wanted to be a bridesmaid but, since all her aunties and uncles were already married when she was born, there wasn’t much chance of it happening. So she’d play at weddings. I bought a dressing up outfit for her and knitted them for her dolls, but it wasn’t the same. Then the daughter of a very dear friend of mine asked Claire if she would be her bridesmaid and twenty five years ago yesterday, my very excited daughter was a beautiful, and very happy, bridesmaid. After she died I was so pleased that she’d had that experience, I have a photo of her in her finery which I look at every day; the years have gone by and I love the memory of that day. Then yesterday, when I was at my friend’s, the bride and groom dropped in on their way out to a celebratory meal, and we were all chatting about the wedding and what a lovely day it had been and WHAM, along came the Henry Cooper special in the solar plexus! The memory of that excited and happy eleven year old who never had the chance to be a bride herself was suddenly heart wrenchingly painful. My friend understood straight away, and we talked about Claire, and also about the father of the bride, her husband, who died less than a year ago, and we were saying how wonderful it would be to go back to that day and relive it. If only! Today though I’m ok again; I’ve had a good look at the photos, which I cried over last night, and the memory isn’t so painful any more. Thinking about it, that’s the biggest difference, for me, between the grief I felt in the early weeks and months and years and the grief I feel now; the good days now outweigh the bad days by a long way. The intense pain doesn’t last and, even when I’m feeling really bad, I know I’ll feel better tomorrow. In the beginning every day was painful, I struggled to get through the hours and there was no joy in my life at all. Nowadays my life is mostly ok, there is happiness and joy again but the grief is always there and sometimes, often out of the blue, it will overwhelm me. I am aware though that many of you who are reading this are in the hell of early grief and I know how hard it is to take on board the fact that it won’t always be this bad. One of the first books I was sent from the library News from the Catharine Pointer Memorial Library