In 2020 I lost my father, in a plane crash. To say his death rocked my world was an understatement. It has completely changed the person I am today. These are the things I wish I had known about grief, and how it affected me.
It doesn`t happen the way you thought it would.
I never expected to lose my Dad the way I did. The human brain cannot comprehend the sudden loss, and it becomes a confusing wave of emotions. Part of the grieving process is the ability to say goodbye to someone. We never had that. Of everything that happened in those weeks following his death, my experience with grief was not what I expected.
You cannot prepare for it
I remember the phone call when my sister rang to tell me the news. It was just as I had imagined countless times, and I knew when the phone rang it was bad news. At 40 weeks pregnant my world fell apart into more pieces than I could ever imagine. I think I cried initially as a reaction to the news but it took me far longer to realise the full gravity of the situation and what it meant for us all.
Joy and sadness can be felt at the same time
When my daughter was born two weeks later I entered a new mode of survival. The immense grief that strengthened each day with a newborn that wouldn’t sleep properly. The strange thing was, amongst the feelings of desolation and utter hopelessness, there was this immense joy and love I felt. A time when I wanted to share my beautiful daughter with her Grandad who just weeks before was joking around over facetime, now suddenly gone. The confusion of these emotions entwined was a realisation I never expected to feel; it is possible to feel empty and so full of love at the same time.
You evolve as a person.
Grief is all consuming, it literally erodes every part of your life. When I lost my father, I was already evolving as a mother. My main sounding board and voice of reason was suddenly gone. I lost a major part of me, someone who I could literally speak to about anything without feeling judgement. Once the dust had settled and things made sense again, I started to reassess what was important in my life. I stopped caring about insignificant things, and people who made me feel deflated or didn’t add value to my life. My perspective completely changed, it was like the layers had to be stripped back and I had to embrace the vulnerability of grief in order to grow as a person.
You can grieve for the loss of your family dynamic too
The initial promises of keeping in touch and supporting one another slowly fragmented. What once was a family unit was just pieces of a puzzle that couldn’t be put back together. I realised pretty soon the importance of my father and how he held the family together but without him it would never be the same.
It’s true what they say though, the only thing that can make it better is time. Although it never goes away, it sits there in the back of your mind always lingering. The strangest things can be triggering and it often makes no sense. The quote below was read at my fathers funeral and it still resonates with me to this day:
My father and I – May 2014
Lydi x