DEALING WITH GRIEF

"At the top of the stairs is a photograph of Melissa.  It was taken in the middle of Liverpool City Centre, three months before she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

we walk past, and look at it, maybe twenty or thirty times a day. 

THE FIRST YEAR

In the weeks and months after Mel passed away we dealt with my own personal grief by keeping busy.  we had plans.  we wanted to raise awareness of the disease and help those that helped others in any way we could.  we decided to cycle from London to Paris and whilst training for that we wrote "One Day at a Time ~ Mel's Story".  There was always a chapter to write, a training ride to be done.  There were other projects too, minor by comparison, but all kept us busy and kept my mind (most of the time) away from what had happened in the previous year.  we couldn't think deeply about the journey we had been on.  The pain was too much and we couldn't go back to that place.  we wanted to remember Mel as the fun loving, enthusiastic young girl she was, not the bedridden poorly young woman who at the end of her life couldn't eat or speak.  we also found (and still do a lot of the time), that wherever we was we wanted to be somewhere else. 

One thing that did become apparent during the first twelve months after Mel passed away was that you get get two shots at every anniversary.  There were so many in Mel's illness, Christmas Eve when her chances of a cure diminished to around 20%.  April 1st when we were told they could do no more for her and then of course, May 11th, the day she died.  May 11th 2008 was a Sunday.  May 11th 2009 was a Monday, so you find yourself dealing with the anniversary on both the day and the date.  The same applies to all anniversaries throughout the year.   we thought that would change after the first year, that you would tend then to remember dates.   we was wrong.  The weekend that Mel passed away was if anything, harder than May 11th, which the second year fell on a Tuesday.  Another significant part of our personal grief was, and still is our lack of energy.  we feel as though life has been drained out of us.  we could walk miles with the dog, but at the same time felt drained.  Everything was an effort.  Even now, over three years after Mel died, there are some days when it takes all we have just to get out of bed and drag ourselves to work, never mind complete a working day.  To this day we still have to make an enormous effort just to go anywhere.  Once we're out it's ok, but the effort in going out is sometimes monumental.

THE SECOND YEAR

Once my cycle ride was finished and the book published I had no big projects to fall back on and it was then that the grief truly hit me.  I remember thinking of all that we had done in the first year, and how futile it had been. Nothing had changed, Mel wasn't coming back.  I hadn't made a blind bit of difference.  I suddenly had a lot more time on my hands and that allowed me to think more.  My thoughts turned back to the illness and how horrible it had all been.  The days in hospital, seeing Mel so poorly, but being so proud of how she battled and managed to keep fighting back.  I cried so much, I was overcome with tiredness and began to wonder what was the point of anything.  I lost my appetite and slowly sank into depression.  Julie was dealing with her own grief, we'd been parallel throughout the first year, but all of a sudden we were in different places and we both found it hard to accept each other's state of grief.  I eventually went to the doctor and was prescribed anti-depressants.  I was close to being admitted to hospital.  I've always been anti, anti-depressants, but the alternative at this point didn't dare thinking about.  I was suicidal. What the medication did was to allow me to get to a place where I was able to fight back once more.

In my darkest hours during my depression I did contemplate suicide, I needed to look after Mel again and the only way I could be with her was through my own death, but then life is precious and Mel didn't have a choice whereas I did.  I still maintain though that if I could have guaranteed being re-united with Mel I would have taken my own life.  I know it's a selfish attitude, but then after all that had happened I believed I had a right to be selfish.  It may sound as though I didn't give Becky and Julie a second thought, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I believed that they would be ok, because they had each other and they would look after each other.  I needed to find Mel and look after her.  Sometimes I still do, but sometimes I know she's still with us.  I realise now my thought process was way off the mark, but at the time it seemed logical.  I listened to a young girl on Victoria Derbyshire's BBC Five Live show the other day talking about taking drugs.  She was so low, but the injection of heroin made all the bad stuff disappear.  I thought back to my time and my depression and realised that I could easily have gone down that road.  Granted, I wouldn't have known the first place to look to buy drugs, but I know it's possible to get to a place where all you want to do is make the hurt go away....

TODAY AND THE DAYS AFTER

We're still grieving, though we sometimes believe that if you're not crying your eyes out, people think that you're ok and over the worst.  Maybe we're being too harsh, but attitudes do change as time goes on, however,  the absolute agony and pain of losing your child doesn't soften.   We've learnt to manage the grief and heartache and that's as much as we'll ever be able to do.  Some days we manage it well, some days it beats us.  We get more irritated by people than we used to and find we have to take a step back with our thoughts and feelings.  We are less tolerant to someone who says their life is over because they can't decide whether to go on a Mediterranean cruise or have their garden landscaped.  We find that we can only deal with so much stress now.  We're still grieving and that takes so much energy, that other stresses in life have to take a back seat and we have to walk away from them.  If we can't walk away, we have to step out of normal everyday life for a while and build ourselves back up.  I feel I'm only ever a step away from depression. Or do I confuse depression with out and out sadness.  I suppose what we're saying is that we can't take on as much stress as we used to.  At the top of the stairs is a photograph of Melissa.  It was taken in the middle of Liverpool, three months before she was diagnosed. We walk past and look at it, maybe twenty or thirty times a day. Every so often she looks back and the reality of what has happened washes over me and I become consumed with grief.  I thought of moving the picture, but firstly I don't want to and secondly, if it wasn't a picture that triggered the emotion, it would be something else.  We want another chance.  We want to go back to June 2007 with the hindsight we have now, because this time we'd get it right and we'd beat the disease.  We'd win and Mel would be ok. 

A while ago my sister contacted us with the news that she was pregnant and I was going to be an uncle again.  My first reaction and that of Julie was to burst into tears and we both said "No, this can't be right, Mel's not here".  Obviously we are delighted for my sister, but to us it felt wrong, because Mel can't share the news.  Mel loved children and loved my sister's two girls. Now there was going to be another child in the family and Mel's not here to share the joy and that's not right.  A happy piece of news and we felt as though we'd been on the receiving end of a knockout punch . Grief strikes again.  It's always there, bubbling under the surface and the triggers keep coming, sometimes big, sometimes small, but always there, just waiting to hit us.  If only we could find a way of forgetting the illness and we could just remember the good things.  We don't want to feel this way, but we can only control so much of our emotion.  We can only push the tide of grief back for so long before, with one mighty wave it drowns us.

If we've learnt anything in the time since Melissa died it is that there is no wrong way to grieve.  We do whatever we need to do to get through the most horrific of times.  Times that will be with us until the day we die.  Nothing prepared us for it, even knowing Mel was going to die didn't help us prepare for the grief.  We were focused on the fact that Mel was still living, rather than the fact she was dying.  We can remember a couple of times trying to imagine what life would be like after she had gone, but we couldn't.  Try as you might, you cannot imagine that amount of hurt and sadness.  It only exists when you've lived through it.  We now deal with the side effects of the grief (depression, etc) a lot better than we did and that helps, but it doesn't stop the hurt.  You will notice that we don't use the word "cope" . we don't feel as though we cope.  We deal with.  Whatever comes our way, we deal with it.  Another misconception is that time heals.  Cuts and broken bones heal, losing a loved one to a horrible disease can never heal.  We believe that time gives you the ability to deal with the grief that comes your way, but it doesn't heal.

When a person dies everyone has this sudden rush of grief like a wave crashing on a shore, but in time for most, that wave rolls back to the sea... for those closest to the deceased though it doesn't roll back, the waves keep coming.  No one sees them, they assume that the person is 'coming to terms' with things, that 'time is healing'.  The bereaved person is left with this overwhelming condition that for most of the time, no one can see or understand.  We don't want people to behave differently with us in our day to day lives, but what we do want is acknowledgement and understanding. 

As with other birthdays, in August 2011 we released some balloons on Mel's birthday, we had family round too, I made a cake and it was a nice family occasion.  The following day we cycled 25 miles with more than twenty of our family and Mel's friends.  There were friends she had known since she was 7 and others she met at university.  It was a lovely occasion and a nice way to mark her 24th birthday.  As usual the only person missing was Melissa.  On the following day we had a birthday party for my sister's little boy.  Another family occasion and a stark reminder that Mel isn't with us.  She would have loved it.  The following morning, I walked out with the dogs and as I often do, I found myself talking to Mel, telling her about the football at the weekend, her birthday balloons, the bike ride and the family gathering on Sunday.... as I walked the tears streamed down my face.  I felt drained.  I wanted to lie down, go to sleep and not wake up.  I wanted the hurt to go away.  I want her back.  The pain is indescribable and it still hurts so much.

I still cry a lot, a sudden thought and the tears flow.  My cycling is helping at the moment and getting me through some tough times.  I wish I could get angry, but don't seem to be able to ... and who would I get angry at.  It's not like I can blame anyone, the only person I seem able to blame is myself.  We have some of Mel's things that we kept in a trunk, I want to open it up and look at the contents, hold her scarf, her football shirt or her jacket, but I can't, it feels like if I open up that box I will consume consumed with grief and hurt and at the moment I can't deal with that.  Everyday life is tough enough, without adding to it, so the box remains closed....

This isn't a definitive guide to grieving.  Each person is different and their experience may be nothing like ours.  I believe grief is unique to each person it affects.  What affects one person may totally avoid another, but recognising it is the point at where you begin to deal with it.  As you've just read, as we approach the fourth anniversary of Mel's diagnosis, I still cry at the thought of not being able to share things with her.  We still wish she would come walking through the door, I still wish we could go to football together, I still wish that Julie, Becky, Mel and I could take off to the seaside or Alton Towers for the day, but we know it's never going to happen and that is beyond sadness, it's indescribable.