Beautiful photos Sue! 
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Hi nell2. You are so rite. We torture ourselves with ifs, buts, and maybe,s.
We carry the guilt or anger around with us as a kind of punishment for loosing our child on our watch.
It does get less and less with the passing of time. My Sam crashed his car when he was 24. But many is the time I’ve wound the clock back in my head to the point he left home at 17. I tell myself, if only I hadn’t let him leave home at 17 he wouldn’t have crashed 7 years later . I know , mental of me. But we do these things to ourselves because we are trying to justify how our son/daughter died on our watch. There are times I go to bed. Something will pop into my head. If only. If only. If only. Where I am on my journey I am able to make these thoughts go away as fast as they come. Which has to be a sign of me getting stronger. I suppose with time passing you can start to gain control. If I think about my boy long and hard enough I will cry. In the beginning that certainly wasn’t the case. I would cry day and night it was never ending. This is another sign that eventually it does get easier. If people are still in the first or 2nd year, this will simply feel impossible. But it will happen for you. Take care nell2. Jim
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Thank you. Sharing on here with people like you and all the others here does somehow show that our feelings are to be expected. This is what it’s like to lose someone you brought into the the world with expectations that they would outlive us. There lives didn’t go according to our plan and they aren’t here like we thought they would be. Our futures aren’t like we thought they would be either. Painful it seems beyond endurance, yet we are enduring. Bleak at it is we are still here and we carry a load that’s way too heavy. We are somehow getting through each day and that’s good enough and what they would have wanted too. I do feel now that there is hope of sorts that we can over time, live some sort of meaningful life, albeit not the one we expected. Until my daughter died I had no idea of how awful it was possible to feel, how bereft and all consuming grief can be. It’s a lesson I wish I didn’t need to learn. I think the other lesson is somehow, sometime we can learn to live with it. Slowly, slowly. X
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Sending love to all you brave people.
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I hope within in time I can feel how you do but I don’t think I will ever get to that point.
It’s nice (not sure that’s the right word) to hear that you’re able to feel like your life has gotten to a place of acceptance as I believe that’s what our children would want for all us grieving parents
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Hi Sarah. Sorry for the loss of your daughter. I’m sure everyone on this site that has read your story will tell you. It’s still very early days for you. It’s perfectly understandable for you to feel the way you do. I’ve learned that most people suffering grief seem to be under the impression that it’s time fixed. Get the first 12 months out of the way and you are home free. People around you telling you it’s time to move on. It doesn’t work like that. It takes as long as it take. B#####ks to what people think!!! What do they know unless they’ve been you and been there. You have lost your daughter. That will take years. I spent a long time thinking there was a limit to my grief. I genuinely thought that one day I would wake up and it would be over. Truth!!! It’s never over. You say that you don’t ever think that you will get to a place of acceptance. In your bio, it says you lost your daughter 22months ago. When she died, you didn’t think you would last another day never mind 22 months. Believe me. We have all felt the same. There are lots of people on this site who are in the early stages. And yes it seems there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You will always!!! Always , mourn the death of your daughter. But in time you will get to a stage where you can manage yourself a lot better than you are at present. The sun is out there Sarah and one day it will find you. Take care.
Jim.
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Jim is one of the wisest souls you’ll ever come across, always finding the right words and sharing them with love and compassion.
Thank you yet again dear Jim.
Love to you, Sarah and everyone here
Ann
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On Thursday 2nd June it will be 13 years since my son was killed in Afghanistan at the age of 19. I know that there will be those who say "what did we expect - he went to fight a war that some say was illegal, etc etc.
The only truth I know is that my son died.
Within the second that we were told of his death our whole family ‘died’. It changed us all in an instant. His brothers became lost, angry, lonely, defeated, sad beyond measure. My husband and I became different people. I stopped being the mother I had been, how could I possibly be the same? My husband lost all his spark, his blue eyes turned grey, he stopped caring about himself. We were swimming against a relentless and brutal sea. No one could help us, no one understood. We knew no one in our situation.
Grief is the loneliest place on the planet.
We too went on a holiday 6 months after Cyrus was killed. Why was the sky still blue? Why were people laughing and having fun? Why did it not make us better? What the hell had happened to my family? How dare they smile when I was never going to be able to smile again? How dare they continue on with their lives when ours was imploding? It was a terrible decision to go away - we thought it would make us feel better…hindsight is a wonderful thing. We came home deflated and alone.
I didn’t dare sleep, I didn’t think I deserved the luxury of my mind not racing at a million miles a minute. So I wrote. I wrote everything down. Confused and disjointed but every emotion, every significant thing that happened. The repatriation, the funeral, the tears, the numbness the sheer agony of living without one of my children. Eventually the pages came together and began to make some sort of sense. I was fortunate enough to have it published as a book. One I have shared with many grieving families since, both military and civilian.
Years passed, anniversaries were reached, Christmas, birthdays, death days. I slowly learned how to breathe without guilt, I found that I didn’t cry every hour of every day. I managed to start to function as a person again. Never the same mother or wife. That luxury has gone. I am forever changed. I now feel that I’m coming up to 13. The day my son died I started a new life…
Then on 15th September 2021 my husband died of cancer. He was ill for 15 months, his last days spent on oxygen unable to talk, the man whom I had loved all my life, my soul-mate, my best friend, the kindest person I’ve ever known was reduced to a shell. My world tilted on its axis once again. We were 5, now we are 3. Losing my husband (whom I’ve known since I was 12) ripped my heart open again. Who will I talk to about Cyrus? We shared parenthood - now he’s gone and I’ve lost that too. It makes me feel utterly selfish but that’s the truth of it. I have 2 living sons, one happily married, one engaged. Their lives are moving forward, for which I am extremely grateful. They need their new normality, their lives to continue, to have children of their own, to become the men they were destined to become. Mine has stopped again.
Grief is lonely, it’s disgusting, it’s debilitating, it’s painful, it’s selfish. But, and I suppose there is always a but - I know that in years to come I will be able to stand the blueness of the sky, hear others laugh and not want to scratch their eyes out and ram my fists into their mouths to stop the sound. I know I will survive this but it is a very hard, very long road.
Losing my son, Cyrus was and is completely different from losing my husband Robin. The grief is different - but it is still grief and it pierces my very soul. I now have a second ‘new life’ and I’ve got to learn how to deal with it… Maybe I’ll write again as I know how cathartic it can be. There is no end to grief only the realisation that we have to learn to live with it, carry our loved ones in our hearts, as broken as they are, continue on as they would want us to do - as hard as that is.
My boots are heavier, my breath is laboured, my soul is shattered but I know I have to continue for my surviving children and also to hopefully share my stories and enable others to glean some hope. Talking to other survivors of grief is empowering - I’m so glad that after 13 years I’ve found this site and that I know I’m not alone.
Helena
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It’s good you’ve found this site, Helena. There are several different threads to follow.
We all on here understand your pain, feel the devastating grief however different the circumstances of our losses.
It’s brave of you to publish your book. (Writing is cathartic for me too, the words pour out and I cover countless pages, but eventually I keep very little.)
I hope you find some comfort from the loving friends on here, they are so kind and caring, knowing only too well how you feel.
With love Ann
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Thank you for your honest and caring way of sharing your heartbreaking story. There is listening and and true kindness and a real sense of community on here. It helps me and I hope it helps you too. Best wishes and respect xx
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Thanks so much for writing this Jim, you make me feel like I am okay, because all you have felt and feel resonates so much with me, and yes on the day I lost Steve my son, I lost me too, and my other son lost the Mum he knew, in my eyes there is always hurt, I can see it when I clean my teeth, brush my hair, have a good Weekend Jim, and thank you again x
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Hello….I lost my son to cancer …will be 20 yrs this September he was 34….and yes it is undescribable pain….but I lost my hubby of 54 yrs of marriage just 14 months ago and this is affecting me more …probably as I had my hubby with me and helping over our David….but now your whole life and hope has just gone…each day is lonely and even family and friends soon forget… but on we go doing our best…take care x
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Hi ladies and gentleman
Been reading all your posts there very moving .we have all been through and going through hell.im so thankful for this site .i hope in time we are a little stronger sending you lots of love love zoe
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