Trying to Cope With Grief

 

This blog is a bit different and more personal about my experience with grief. I hope that if anyone reading this is going through a difficult time with grief and loss that you feel more seen and more comfortable to share your feelings. Feelings of grief are some of the hardest and most perpetual. Always talk, never hold how you really feel inside.

Death is a really hard thing to process. How can someone be a part of your life and then suddenly be erased? Up until December last year I had never experienced the loss of a close loved one. I had experienced death before but it was always someone closer with my parents or maybe one of my friends relatives passing. I knew what death was, I knew how it affected other people but I was always so scared of the day where someone very close to me would pass away because I didn’t know how to handle something so heavy.

It’s coming close to a year since I lost my granddad. He had Alzheimer’s and throughout the years following his diagnosis it got progressively harder for him to deal with. He began to forget my name. I knew that this would eventually happen but it was upsetting to experience. He had a heart attack a few years ago and recovered well but sadly he had another last year. He seemed to be recovering fine and even got to come home from being in the hospital, but I remember my mam coming to my room on a Thursday evening saying Ada wasn’t well so we would go to see him. I didn’t know that the weekend following would be one that I would remember so clearly a year later. Ada passed away with all of us by his side, me, my parents, my aunties and uncles, my cousins, my brother and my sister. It was the first time since lockdown that all of us had been together, a bittersweet moment.

Saying goodbye to someone that helped me grow into the person I am today was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I remember going into Ada’s workshop with my cousin, Cian, and asking him to make us ‘cool gadgets’ for our spy game. About half an hour later, he came out to us with walkie talkies made of wood and we loved them so much we used them for months. He had the workshop to make ships in bottles and they were amazing. He used to be a lighthouse keeper and he loved the sea. He brought us out fishing so many times.

I will always miss Ada. I will always feel heartbroken when I think of everything he did for me and for my family and how his job is now done. However, I will never stop telling people about him, about the gorgeous ships in bottles that he made himself for hours on end, the chair in the corner of the sitting room that was strictly his, the times at Christmas when he would bring us to the beach at night to spot santa in the sky, when he would always bring me and Cian to the chipper during sleepovers because his favourite thing to do was make us happy.

Grief is weird and grief is hard. Coping with losing someone forever seems like the most cruel thing that life expects of us. We all deal with grief in different ways, I know a lot of people in the world have lost so much more than me and they might feel different about death than I do. One thing is, we are all going to experience it. Grief is everywhere and all that we can do is support each other as we each go through it. It may not be easy and it can last for quite a while but no matter what you feel, someone around you feels or has felt the same and you can be there for each other. Never feel like you’re going through something alone.

If you’ve lost someone, share your memories. Give people a glimpse of the amazing person you once had the pleasure of knowing <3

🤍 HSE Bereavement Support