Six years ago today was one of the most precious days of my life. The next morning, after our wedding, Laura rolled over in bed and grabbed me; ‘Now you are mine!’ she grinned. She was so covered in tumors, every movement was hard, so it felt like a small miracle. Six years later she…
Tag: loss
Breaking Through
For me, the dark spaces in my life are springboards to help me find the light. Smashing up my arm three weeks ago, has reconnected me to my body in a way that I desperately needed. After my mum died last year, I felt almost like a ghost walking through my life. I wasn’t really…
Mum – Eulogy
My beautiful mum passed a year ago today. I was at her bedside when she had a massive stroke. She shared a joke with me, as she was losing the ability to speak. We laughed and cried, and within minutes she was gone. Unconscious. Somehow, a week later I managed to read this eulogy at…
Grief
Grief stops the clock on a lot of things. And today the clock stopped literally. My Mum’s watch broke. It’s almost exactly a year to the day since she passed. That little silver watch is my most cherished possession (Mum laughed when she saw me wearing it, ‘That old thing.’) She got it when she was 21….
Momentum
Kindness abounds. Friends invite me on holiday to Palm Beach. The neighbors keep a watchful eye on my 92-year-old dad. And after nearly nine months of flat lining emotionally or worse feeling desolate and sometimes lost since mum’s passing, it’s as if the power is beginning to flicker back on inside. And more than that….
Five Years
Wednesday was the fifth anniversary of Laura’s passing. Five years. And yet she is still as present to me as ever. On Monday, her dive buddy Jo and I had dinner together and reminisced about her – her charm, her quirks, her struggles, her kindness and her compassion. There is something magical about talking fondly…
The Golden Hour
‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.’ Laurence Binyon – (extract from For The Fallen)
Sedona, Snakes & Saviors
‘It’s rattlesnake season,’ the woman rescuing us said, as she and her golden retriever led the way back over the red rocks, through the juniper trees, sweetly scented sage bushes and tangled yews to the Sedona trail head where we had parked our car a couple of hours earlier. We weren’t exactly lost. We were concerned….
Comfort Clothes
My dad wore one of my mum’s sweaters out to dinner last week. He’s not alone. We’ve all been delving into mum’s wardrobe since she passed. An old pair of mum’s black leather gloves is one of my most cherished possessions. ‘They’re falling apart,’ Dad said quizzically when I said I wanted to take them….
Grief & Loss
Grief involves finding yourself again. It is not just the beloved who is lost when someone dies. For a long while, it is yourself too. These are the wretched days of feeling lost and of learning once again to walk in the dark and find my way forward. In a very profound way, losing…
Premonitions
There are things we know without knowing how or why we know them. Call them soul messages or premonitions. I’ve had a few in recent years. The latest happened before my lovely mum passed in May. Eight days before she died, I had a premonition that this was the beginning of the end. Mum’s final…
Disembodied Grief
When mum died, I didn’t see her spirit leave her body as I did with Laura. But I was there by her side in her final hours. And ever since I have a weird disembodied feeling, as if I am not quite here. At first I thought it was a protective numbness. But now I…
Janette Young, 19 November 1931 to 22 May 2018
My dear mum, who surrounded me and my family with unconditional love all her life, has gone. She was the kindest person I’ve ever met and like Laura had a beautiful open smile. Her cousin Isabella recalled: ‘She brought the sunshine into the room with her.’ I was blessed to be with her at the…
One More Day
I’ve often imagined what it would be like to have one more day with Laura. One last chance to look into her eyes and be together as we once were. What would we do? How would we spend those precious hours together? Evidently it is a common fantasy of the bereaved. ‘Meet Me at Dawn‘…
Three Years Ago
In a couple of hours, it will be exactly three years since Laura passed. Three years. It seems impossible she has been gone so long. But there is a beautiful symmetry at work. We were together, as a couple, for three years. And now after another three years the pain of her loss has ebbed…
Soul Love Forever 