Guest blogs

As Time Goes By

As Time Goes By: Challenge and Transformation
by Diane Esquerra

Grief shape-shifts over time, and for me, at least, the pain intensity of those earlier years has certainly lessened.  It’s now almost 20 years since I lost Sacha. I’ve accepted that there will always be an ache, a yearning, a missing a ‘where-are-you-now?’ wondering. But I’m also one of the lucky ones. I’ve somehow managed to keep my head above the grimy waters of survivor’s guilt. 

I’ve experienced additional losses during this 20-year period – one of the first being Sacha’s Colombian father, Roberto, who sadly died a couple of years after his death. Two very close friends also passed away in quick succession, and, more recently, I’ve lost my father and my mother. While each of these deaths has hit me pretty hard, if I’m honest, not one of them came anywhere near the life-imploding impact of Sacha’s.  I don’t believe you ever get over the loss of a loved one, but you do learn to live with it. As time has passed, I’ve encountered a different set of challenges. I’ve also experienced unforeseen gains. 

One of the harder aspects of loss is that we find ourselves having to inhabit a different reality and a new personal – and often social – identity. I sometimes find it difficult meeting new people. Topics of discussion invariably gravitate from where you live, to what you do and then to how many children or grandchildren you have. Depending on who has asked the question I might answer it – or I might try to change the subject. I feel I’m somehow betraying Sacha and my own experience of motherhood if I say I haven’t any children.  But being honest can often mean I have to put up with people’s awkwardness and that ghastly, glib phrase, ‘I’m sorry for your loss’. 

I’ve learnt that we can distract our conscious mind from the sometimes inconvenient rumblings of grief – or block them out with displacement activities such as mindless scrolling or compulsive biscuit eating – but we can’t control our unconscious mind. This is where I’ve found grief has become most vibrant and active. Time doesn’t exist in this pesky, unfathomable unconscious of ours, nor is it able to distinguish between a wish and a reality. My dreams, these days, are often vivid:  they feature Sacha as a child or a teenager and occasionally as an adult. The years between his passing and the present time dissolve. Sometimes we’re having fun together, at other times I’m searching for him in vain, or discovering, yet again, that he’s no longer alive.  A heavy loss dream, even after all this time, can affect my mood for the entire day and sometimes beyond, whereas a happy dream is both uplifting and reassuring.

A common later-stage grief conundrum is how many photographs and artefacts that belonged to the beloved do you continue to keep on display once the wall-plastering phase of early grieving has passed. It’s usually a very personal matter – unless it impacts on the life of another. A psychotherapy client of mine complained that his wife still had a bust, a portrait and a large number of framed photographs of her late, revered father scattered around the house 14 years after his passing.  He hadn’t cared much for his father-in-law when he was alive – and even less so now.  His wife continued to sing her father’s praises at every available opportunity. She unfavourably compared her husband to this pedestalised parent, who, in death, had morphed into a demigod for one and a malign presence for the other. 

I’m wary of the home-as-permanent-shrine set-up because it encourages a backward-looking mindset. For me less is more. While there were plenty of photographs of Sacha on display in the early years, now they’re kept, along with other precious items, in a lovely white glass cabinet which sits below the portrait I commissioned my artist sister Sally to paint based on one of my favourite photos of him. A thriving sweetheart vine that Sacha once bought me sits on top of the cabinet. When the mood takes me I open the cabinet and have a chat with him.

Anniversaries, and the heavy moods and memories that often accompany them, still remain hugely significant over time – even when they haven’t been consciously remembered.   In her book Grief and Grieving Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describes how bereaved children in the care system will manifest difficult behaviour on the anniversary of their parents’ deaths – even, extraordinarily, children too young to understand the calendar. The conscious mind may have forgotten, but the unconscious certainly hasn’t.  

I’ve discovered that anniversaries can also be joyful and provide an opportunity to reaffirm the bond. I usually celebrate Sacha’s late August birthday with a bottle of something bubbly, somewhere warm, in beautiful surroundings. As I dust off happy memories I feel him around me, willing me on to embrace life; to ‘live life’ for him.

For many of us who have been bereaved, proximity to death, and the pain of loss, give rise, over time, to existential questions – not simply about what may or may not happen in the hereafter – but concerning the meaning of life.   Is life, in the words of the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, ‘nasty, brutish, and short’?  Or does a brutal wake-up call to life’s transitory nature imbue it with a piquant vitality?  

Some people certainly develop a post-bereavement carpe diem mentality, determined to make the most of every moment to ensure they have no regrets when they die. I’ve seen instances of behaviours that began as grief distractions or comforters transform into passions. One young woman who had lost her paragliding brother to cancer learnt to paraglide herself for the sole purpose of scattering his ashes. This later became a much-loved hobby which she credited with helping her through her grief.   This approach is so preferable to those ‘ashes-to-ashes-dust-to-dust’ depressed clients I’ve seen who have, in some cases, developed a terror of the nothingness they believe awaits them after death – which puts the kybosh on ever finding enjoyment in daily life. 

The loss of someone very close has, I’ve noticed, a tendency to both open up new religious or spiritual paths – and also, sometimes, to abruptly shut them down. Those who abandon their faith are unable to believe that a benign deity could possibly permit the pain they’re experiencing. Others embrace religion and spirituality for the first time in search of meaning and the hope they’ll be reunited with their beloved in the afterlife.  

Deep suffering and loss can also lead to what is known as post-traumatic growth: we forge a deeper connection with, and understanding of life, which, hitherto, we may have taken for granted. Much like travel, loss can enhance our knowledge and appreciation of what it means to be human. It can become a transformative entry into a new life – one of more compassionate engagement and value creation. 

Although it was gruelling, my grief journey with Sacha has certainly deepened my connectedness with, and compassion for, others. To help fill the emptiness left by my loss I took onboard the Buddhist concept of turning poison into medicine and attempted to create some value out of Sacha’s suffering and my own. I set up my own counselling consultancy, Greenlight Healing. Many of the clients I continue to work with have suffered abuse, addiction or bereavement. I find it gratifying that I’m able to offer my abused and addicted clients the help I was unable to extend to my own son until it was too late. Sometimes I tell bereaved clients that I, too, have been closely bereaved. I don’t divulge any details but I’ve found that this disclosure helps promote understanding on a deeper level, and in so doing, strengthens the therapeutic alliance. They know I know what deep grief feels like. 

One of my reasons for wanting to write this book was to demonstrate, with my own life, that it’s possible to survive every parent’s worst nightmare – the death of a daughter or son. Writing and travel continue to afford me much pleasure, likewise my work as a therapist. And after all we’ve been through as a couple, my husband and I remain close and happy. 

I miss my son’s physical presence, but I continue to have a strong sense of connection with him – albeit spiritual. I talk to him still, and ‘hear’ him talk to me. I still enjoy a good moan from time to time, but, overall, I treasure my life.

It is possible to have a life after death – even a more meaningful one. 

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Writer and psychotherapist, Diane Esguerra, lost her son, and only child, Sacha, in 2005. He died of an accidental drug overdose while partying over New Year. She found his body. Sacha developed a drug habit as a result of the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his prep school housemaster. Diane’s memoir: Night Into Light: A mother’s journey of grief and transformation is published by Eye Books.