1. Shock & Denial

I wasn’t there when my Dad died, the moment that his heart finally stopped beating. I was in my Mum’s car, somewhere between West London and Welwyn in Hertfordshire. The roads were empty, it was almost midnight and we were listening to radio for insomniacs, plenty of John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Coldplay. I can remember pulling into the hospital car park and my Step-Mother walking towards us. In my memory there’s no sound, she shook her head and I started to sink to the floor. It was bitterly cold and the pavement was damp.

We walked along empty hospital corridors with horrible fluorescent lighting. I remember the ward was in darkness, the other patients were sleeping. The light was on in my Dad’s room though. I’d been close to a dead body before, after my Grandfather died, but seeing my Dad like that was different. I remember someone telling me to be quiet but I had no control over the sounds coming out of my mouth. I cried in a way that I’ve never cried before, or since. Wailing, I was wailing. Wailing in grief, the kind of tears that cause your whole body to shake and vomit to rise up in your throat. If the other sleeping patients had been oblivious to my Dad’s passing they certainly weren’t anymore.

By the time we’d driven home I felt numb. I remember my Mum and I crawling into my sister’s room and whispering to her that he’d gone. I opened the door to my own bedroom. Isabel was asleep in her cot and Carl was in our bed. The look of shock on his face when I told him it was all over gave me a sense of the enormity of what had happened, but I just couldn’t cry anymore at that point.

I climbed into bed and slept very deeply for a few hours. I awoke to the sounds of Izzy chattering in her cot and playing with her toys. Almost as soon as I opened my eyes I felt sick. For weeks afterwards, perhaps even months, you live that split second every morning. The split second where it hasn’t happened, that fleeting moment where your ‘normal’ life is in tact and everything is ordered and controlled. You have to relive the loss everyday. It takes seconds, it’s not even necessarily a conscious thought process, but the first few moments you’re awake can be the most painful ones.

2. Pain & Guilt

The pain of loss is so hard to describe. I felt it physically, my heart hurt, it really did, like it was broken. I went through a phase of torturing myself with all that pain, because in some strange way it felt good to cry over it and feel bad. I would play my Dad’s music and get out all the photos I had of him and just stare at Izzy. Watching Izzy would always make me cry.

Guilt made me feel sick. I went over and over the last few weeks of my Dad’s life in my head. I felt guilty that I had missed phone calls from my Step-Mum, guilty that we hadn’t got him home in time to die in his own bed like he wanted, guilty that I didn’t know how to comfort my sister, or my Mum. I felt guilty because I didn’t visit him enough during his last days, and when I did I felt awkward and embarrassed to see him in that state.

You see, cancer is cruel like that, robbed him of his dignity right at the end. The last time I saw him properly before he died, the last time he was able to talk to me with reasonable coherence, he went to the toilet right in front of me, just got out his bed pan and peed right there. He was totally out of it on morphine at the time, mumbling something while he did it. I wanted to cry, where had my Dad gone? I felt guilty about that, guilty because I felt so disgusted.

3. Anger

I am angry at cancer because it killed him. I am angry at November because it comes around every year. I am angry at Dad because he didn’t beat it. I am angry at the doctors because they didn’t cure him. I am angry at my mobile phone company because I had such poor reception at my in-laws house that I missed the call telling me he’d been readmitted to hospital. I’m angry at myself for not wanting to travel on the tube with a baby and leaving it too long between visits sometimes. I’m angry about the things I said and the things I didn’t say. I’m angry that my children won’t know him except through my memories. I’m angry that my memories of him are fading. I am angry at the people who lost interest in visiting. I am angry at my Mum for feeling she has no right to grieve for him. I’m angry that I have to live without him. I am angry that grief enters into everything because he’s not here to share things with us.

But most of all, I am angry that others have to feel this pain and know this loss.

4. ‘Depression’, Reflection, Loneliness

I sank very low, but I became an expert at ‘putting on a brave face’. Convincing everyone that I was OK, that I was coping.

I wanted to die. I don’t say that for shock value. I was suicidal. I wanted out. It hurt that much. Maybe that sounds melodramatic, he was only my Dad, I guess some people won’t get it. But he died and I felt like my world was imploding. Like the walls were closing in around me.

2 years of anti-depressants and that dirty word… ‘therapy’. I did a lot of reflecting and I felt lonely most of the time. Even knowing other members of my family were going through the same thing was no comfort. Grief locks you up and cuts you off from those around you, isolates you from everything else so that every emotion you feel is heightened.

Fixed me though. The drugs and therapy.

5. The Upward Turn

Izzy. I always had Izzy. And Carl. My Dad always said his favourite emotion was laughter through tears (try it sometime, he’s right, it feels so good). Izzy was my laughter through the tears. It’s hard to feel too sorry for yourself when your beautiful daughter is blowing raspberries at you or dancing along to the Tweenies or singing you Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

6. Reconstruction

When I moved to Devon with Izzy I was completely on my own, I didn’t know a single person. I was forced to make friends and build this new life for myself. It felt like the next chapter in the book of my life. It would be missing a very important character but people would keep reading, keep turning the pages. Because, as much as it pains me to say it because it can sound like the most empty form of comfort at times, it does get easier.

7. Acceptance & Hope

Here and now, this is how I feel, this is where I am. Dad is gone. He died 5 years ago on the 20th of November. I’ve accepted his passing, and I’ve accepted that it will always hurt, that I’ll always, always miss him. What changes is that it doesn’t consume me, the pain I mean. I see him in my children, I hear him in my head and I know he is deeply proud of the people he left behind.

And hope, there’s always hope now.

Loveaudrey xxx