Loss, and what to do with it.

Evening Strumpets,

I`ve no idea where this post will end up, but it`s on a subject which has been on my mind pretty much off and on for the past four and a bit years.

You are all aware that I lost My Mam just after Hal was born. Louise lost her Step Dad, just before Grace was born. For the health of our surviving parents we daren`t try for another one.

When I was younger I`d lost Grandparents and assorted Uncles and Aunts, But I was introduced late into my Parents lives, so I kind of expected that this was what happened. But Mam was so alive and so young in terms of looks both inward and out.

As a child of an "older" parent, I can distinctly being kept awake at night worrying that Mam and dad may die at any point. Christ, at that age eighteen looked old, so you can imagine how old a couple in their Forties looked. But I made a pact with God (mine and nobody elses, go and find your own). If he let me be an adult when they died, i`d be a good boy. I wouldn`t swear, I wouldn`t "nick off" school, and I`d make them proud. If I was grown up when it happened a) I would have had loads of time with them anyway, and b) I`d be grown up, and be able to cope with it. This made sense to me at the time.

As I`ve written many times, Mam was always much younger than her years, which was why it was so unreal when she called me (and me alone, it`s a nurse thing regardless of which speciality) to tell me that she`d noticed something unusual, and had been to see her Dr, who had advised her to have a colonoscopy. Could I drive her to the Hospital, and don`t tell anyone because "It`ll be a whole load of nowt about nowt".

It turned out it was something. Something which spread to her brain before we could cut it out of her Bowel. But she still wasn`t old, or broken by it. She`d simply say "It could be worse, what if it was one of me kids." Confined to a wheelchair, her favourite song at the time became "I don`t feel like dancing" by the Scissor Sisters. I didn`t have the heart to tell her what scissor sistors were, but she loved that song. And of course, by a miracle, she got to meet Harry.

Looking at that picture, you might see a very poorly looking old lady. I don`t. I see a woman who should have been dead three months before that picture was taken, and I see why she was still with us in her arms. Look at the pride in her eyes. Incidentally this is what she looked like three months before that picture was taken.

Quick Bastard isnt` it.

The cancer won, and at the time I will freely admit that I did not cope at all well. But Christ how are you supposed to? So to get back to the title of this post, and the main point of writing it, How do you deal with loss?

The truth is you don`t really, you just get better at distracting yourself from it. Distraction is an amazing thing. It`s the number one way to deal with any type of pain, whether it be physical, emotional, spiritual, or whatever. If you`re doing something you enjoy, or keeping yourself busy, you forget you`re in pain. it`s when you stop, or something reminds you that you remember that you`re in pain.

We use distraction all the time, If you`re reading this with a pair of shoes or slippers or socks or whatever on your feet, you didnt realise you had them on, but now i`ve told you, you have been reminded, and can feel them, you`re probably wriggling your toes in order to feel them.

But the loss never really leaves you. It`s there in your dreams when the person is talking to you, and they`re well (but in my experience you know, in the dream, that they`re dead really). Oddly I never find these dreams scary, in fact they`re,usually,quite nice.

It`s there in Birthday parties, Easter, Christmas and Sunday Dinners, where they should be too Damn it! It`s there in my childrens laughs which I swear are the exact replica of my Mam`s, and her mam`s before her. But most of all, it`s there in me. She made me who I am. I can hear her every day in phrases I use, and humour rooted from me.

I miss her. She was and always will be, My Mam.

Here`s a song, in three parts,which i hope helps and makes sense to people who have experienced loss. apologies for quality of sound, My computer is playing silly buggers.



Till the next one, Learn something new.

Mark.