The Passing of Time
When Ben first died, it felt like this awful Groundhog Day, where we’d wake and cry, after feeling this crushing pain in our chests day after day after day.
It’s been over a year now and as time moves along, the grief changes. Sometimes the feeling of being numb kicks in as the day begins and we just sort of manage through the day. Other days, some innocent remark, or moment will happen which will create the impact; the great tidal wave of grief, which smashes into you, with just as much force as the moment your child’s heart stopped and yours continued beating.
Today, the second I opened my eyes, I felt that crushing pain and have been in tears on and off all day. No warning; no trigger; just life; sadness; grief; heartache and missing my son and missing seeing all my three bears together.
Over the last few months and weeks and even days, there have been lots of good things beginning to happen; just gently. I’m getting to the end of the edit on Family of Five and have selected a date for self-publishing … 14 February 2021.
Last night, I spoke about our story after DKMS at an online Zoom meeting with the Women’s Institute in West Sussex. They are partnering with DKMS this year for their Make A Match Campaign and I presented our story and showed a number of slides depicting family life and what we went through when cancer became an unwelcome visitor. I was proud to have made it into a story of positivity and hope again when I talked about the gift of time Ben’s donor had given us.
The fundraiser we are running this year, despite it being an incredibly difficult year for many of us, is starting to gather momentum, which is amazing.
I’m working on a couple of other projects, too at the moment and they are both slowly taking shape and I will tell you about those as they come to fruition.
However, it’s the gaping void I feel today, not being able to talk to the one person I’d love to about all this going on, as I know that apart from feeling truly mortified, he would also have felt pretty pleased that things are starting to move in the right direction.
It would have been my father’s 72nd Birthday on Monday, too. Grandad. A man with a gypsy in his foot; an eternal traveller, an explorer in life, who I feel on some days when I look back at my life without him really ever in it, was just passing through. He wasn’t meant to be tied down to anyone, not that you are in a family, but Dad was always a free spirit and I understand that now and feel that freedom when I am creative.
All my little projects that I think up on a whim and then tenaciously keep working on until they begin to bear fruit, are actually starting to show signs of promise and I feel good about it all. I feel so blessed and so lucky to have these ideas come to me and the opportunity to grasp them and turn them into something really magical.
I even started writing my film script idea again this evening, though it seems to have shown up as perhaps the start of a book first; we will see.
The thing is, most of these projects I am working on, are because of the situation we now find ourselves in and as much as I feel so grateful and inspired to help others, at the same time, when I re-read Family of Five and look at some of the other ideas that wouldn’t have come about, had I not lost my son to cancer, today I have had to catch my breath several times, not being able to believe that although we are indeed the family that helps others, we’ve always tried to be. But we are also the family who have actually had a child die when he was just beginning to really blossom and that’s something that today, I just can’t get to grips with and I desperately want to wake up, not in Groundhog Grief Day, but back in my life with my three children, when life was simpler and we were all together.
I’m grateful for all I have and all that’s happening and I’ve been blessed to have, but today, I just want to be five again. That’s it. I’m sure there’s other families out there who feel the same and I send my love to you all xxx
On a trip to New Mills Farm, Launceston