Guest blogs

Ten Years Of Grief

TEN YEARS OF GRIEF

by Paul Wilenius
(Former BBC and Fleet Street newspaper journalist)

Paul and Alison Wilenius’s son Daniel died a decade ago and they have been coping with the terrible grief of that loss ever since. But The Compassionate Friends group in Swindon has been the one organisation which has helped them to come to terms with that grief.

“We lost our boy Daniel 10 years ago on November 28th.

He was only 4 days short of his 35^th birthday, and it was the most devastating event in the lives of, my wife Alison, daughter Laura and me.

Out of a clear blue sky, we were hit with a devastating emotional hurricane.

In an instant our lives changed forever, and we have never really returned to the life we had before he died of a cardiac arrest.

We were once a family of four who laughed, travelled and grew together. Then suddenly we were only three, left with only memories of our funny, beautiful, sport loving and kind son and brother.

In some ways it seems like only yesterday, but at other times it seems it was a lifetime ago.

For someone who has never lost a child, they may think that after ten years we would be over it. Many would assume that over that length of time, grief fades, that the pain has eased and you can just go back to living in the same way you had before.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As everyone who has lost a child will know, you never get over it.

At any time, any day, any week, any month it can hit you, and sometimes like a sledgehammer. You can listen to a piece of music, look at a photograph, or a video, wander into their old room, see someone who looks like them, or for no reason whatsoever you get a sudden feeling of deep sadness or longing, and then the tears flow.

Indeed, I have been walking down the road and for no reason started to well up and cry, or I can feel breathless, or have a dull twisted knot in my stomach. It is like you are overtaken by a nameless darkness or anxiety.

There is no amount of support or counselling which can change that. It’s just part of grief.

So no, you can never get over it.

But you can learn to live with this terrible grief. You can learn slowly but surely to cope with it. You can let the grief and the pain become part of your life. Of course, the intensity of the pain does ease. It’s the soothing waves of time which help. But every single day I think about him, sometimes many times. I don’t cry every day, as I did in the beginning.

Now I realise that I don’t want to get over the death of my son, as I want him here with me. I want to be able to embrace the hurt and the pain, to remember how much I love him and miss him. It gives me comfort.

But I have to admit that it’s hard to come to terms with grief on your own, and this where Compassionate Friends comes in.

In the immediate shock after Dan’s death I went for counselling with a nice young girl at my local GP surgery. She had obviously just done a course of bereavement, and showed me the circles of grief which are meant to help. It didn’t really. We both ended up in floods of tears.

By the second session I was almost having to console the counsellor. My wife also found the counselling didn’t help.

We felt lost and increasingly isolated.

But then one day my wife came across a mention of Compassionate Friends in Swindon on the internet, and she persuaded me that it might help. I was very sceptical at first, but after Alison had seen the wonderful volunteer who ran the local group, I agreed to go to a meeting.

I didn’t really want to go, as it was so soon after Dan’s death (about 6 months), but I have never regretted it.

The strength of the group is that you are with people who know exactly how you are feeling. You don’t have to explain it to them. They have all lost a child. They get it.

You are are able to talk freely and in confidence about your deepest sorrow and feelings, and they understand. You can just talk or listen contribute, or not. There is no religion, no pressure, no expectations. And it gives you comfort to know there are others who are in the same boat. They are suffering or have suffered the same as you.

We became members of the club we never wanted to join, and indeed nobody wants to join. In this safe space, you can cry one minute and laugh the next, and not feel guilty. In fact, it is more than that for my wife and me, as we feel that we have met people who are now lifelong friends.

You can go or not to the monthly meetings, or the social events like walks, meals out, summer BBQs, skittles nights or just a coffee with people in the group. There’s no pressure.

Yet an important time of the year is the candlelight ceremony before Christmas, which brings most of the members of the local group together to remember our lost loved ones and console each other. It’s especially important at this time of year, as Christmas and New Year can be a terrible and painful time. It is particularly difficult for us, as our lovely son died on |November 28^th, only four days before his birthday on December 2^nd. We dread it.

But Compassionate Friends has helped ease the pain. It has helped us come to terms with the loss of our son. It has also helped our wonderful daughter Laura cope with her grief. In fact, she has met and made friends through Compassionate Friends with another young woman who lost her sister. Sometimes siblings get forgotten, as people often ask how the parents of their lost child are doing, but forget that it can be devastating for their sisters and brothers.

So, what has happened to our grief over the last 10 years.

It isn’t as raw and totally debilitating as it was.

It is something we have learned to live with, although Dan is still a part of our lives every day.

We can function and live our lives, up to a point.

But it does change you. It has certainly changed us.

I hope it has changed me for the better.

It has made me more considerate of other people’s feelings and made me more aware of the fragility of the lives we lead and how quickly it can be wiped out.

So I feel you have to grab what life you can and get the most out of it. It isn’t the extravagant things, but the simple things such as family and friends. A smile, a hug, a gesture of kindness.

It’s what will help keep our son Dan close to us and alive in our memories and hearts for many more years.

We will miss him, always.”