Boisterous boys on the beach

WRITTEN ON 23 AUGUST 2017

Two boisterous little boys on the beach. — My Uncle Colin (left) and my Dad (right) probably sometime in 1949 with their mother, Olive (middle). I never knew Olive as she died in the late 1960s. I’m sure that Olive and Colin gave my Dad a helping hand up to Heaven when he died, three whole years ago today.

The past three years have been a thoroughly tiring, surprising, sleep-disturbing, disorientating, time-warping, inescapably sad ‘rollercoaster’ period of imperceptible (and continuing) adjustment, which has challenged my perspective on many (if not all) aspects of life and changed the dynamic of the relations between me and every single person in my life (family members, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, members of the Isles of Scilly community where I was brought up) and even the way I have approached new friendships.

The clichés that ‘life goes on’ (if we want it to!), and that time “heals” (or, at least, contributes to doing so) are undeniably true. Since mid-February my grief has, thankfully, become slowly less intense, but I’m still experiencing an exasperating cycle of taking three steps forward then two steps back. My journey of grief is far from being over, much to the undisguised disappointment of people from cultures and backgrounds in which there only appears to be one stage of grief, DENIAL combined with faux jollity and intolerance of others who, like me, threaten their precariously constructed façade by daring to admit (on occasions) that they are ‘struggling’.

Despite that unpalatable truth I am pleased to report that I’ve been gradually regaining my energy, interest in things that gave me pleasure before the emotional earthquake of 2014 (both preceded and followed by lingering tremors), and enjoying improved concentration, laughing more deeply and frequently, and finding that the joy from spending time with people I love, or doing something I love, is less forced and fleeting and more natural and longer-lasting than before. Hopefully this positive pattern will continue (there’s every reason it should!) and at, at some point, I may find the courage within me to learn how to allow the innumerable, beautiful memories of my Dad’s life to merge better with the harsh reality of how painfully it was ended and of all that is now missing. I long for a day when looking at photos evokes more smiles than sadness, and aspire to reaching a point at which my own life can be a celebration of my Dad’s life rather than feeling, a lot of the time, like pure survival!

‘We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey’. Kenji Miyazawa.