Grief & Loss

I grew up in a family of four. Mum, Dad, my brother, and me. We lived in a three-bedroom house on a cul-de-sac in Cheshire. Growing up we attended church regularly, socialised lots, music was a huge part of our lives, school was local. My parents always provided a stable home for my brother and I to live in. I’d say we were a relatively ‘normal’ family.

Following in my parent’s footsteps I too found love at eighteen and married at twenty-three. At this point, my parents had just celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Pretty good innings I’d say!

Two weeks after my honeymoon my world shattered all around me. I don’t want to go into all the details, but the news was…my parents were getting divorced…

Like the whirlpool of grief above, I felt SHOCK….NUMBNESS….and DENIAL.

My world fell apart. How could this be? Surely not? Why can’t they work it out? I felt cheated like I had made a decision to marry, following their example to marry, yet, they were not going to continue to be married. Selfishly I began to count all the future losses and how their separation would affect me. My future children would have two sets of grandparents on my side. What if my parents had more children with new partners, could I love and accept them? Would I ever forgive my parents? How would we do Christmas and birthdays? Everything was thrown into question. Life as I knew it was over.

I began to live in the whirlpool of grief. For quite some time actually. I was having a massive grief reaction to their ending. Our family ending. I cried a lot, I was angry, irritable, I suffered from low mood, I had time off work, I lost my sense of humour. My heart ached like it was broken into lots of little pieces.

Everyone had their own opinion about how I should be processing the news. What was most unhelpful, were the people who thought it beneficial to say things to me like ‘well you’re lucky, at least it didn’t happen when you were a child.’ At any age, a broken family is a very difficult scenario to find yourself in. Other comments were ‘just focus on your own marriage now’ but how could I, poor hubby, my foundations had been shook to the core. All my immediate family members were struggling. I couldn’t just turn a blind eye and live out my honeymoon phase. As the older sibling I felt responsible yet at the same time, it felt like I didn’t even know who I was? It honestly felt like a hurricane had swept through the middle of our happy world, messed everything up, broken stuff, and then left. I was left. We were left to pick up the pieces and begin to rebuild our lives once again.

The good news is, that ten years on, I do feel like I/we have rebuilt our lives again. It’s been long and it’s been slow. It’s been painful and extremely hard. I am in a good relationship with both of my parents now and their new other halves. I chose to learn to forgive. I had to decide daily to let go of the anger, the hurt, and the pain. As a Christian, I turned my focus to God, who I believe really helped me walk out the forgiveness journey. I looked to the bible for examples of forgiveness. I’ve found forgiveness isn’t really a destination. It’s a continued journey. Sometimes even now when special times of year come around, like birthdays and Christmas, I remember the times when we could all sit around a restaurant table together as a family and have a good time. At Christmas, my heart pangs when I have to do two different Christmases. 

I was reluctant to share this story, however I felt I couldnt create a resource, ask everyone else to be honest and then for me to shy away. I write this to help anyone out there who may be grieving today, because I understand your pain. I understand your suffering. I understand the emptiness and the heaviness all at the same time. I understand the disoriented feeling of change, and the anxiety for what lies ahead. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss’ wasn’t a phrase that I heard, because nobody actually died. However loss comes in many different forms and we experience loss more often than we realise. If you are grieving today can I encourage you to be kind to yourself and to know that time is a really great healer, but sometimes we also have to play our part in assisting the process. For me it was forgiveness that I had to learn and exercise.