Evolution

Posted on April 7, 2012 by annwae

OK so this blog is evolving. Like everything, fog clears, pieces fall into place, what started as one journey ends up at a different destination. I have been reflecting, I do this constantly. I started off on a dream, then a quest, now I think I just have a story to tell. The story of what it is like to live every day with this ‘thing’ called grief, caused by someone, no not someone, my son, taking his own life. I will use any term other than ‘he committed suicide’ as this is so ugly, so brutal. I/we prefer, he took his own life, he died by his own hand, he passed away, I lost him!!!

Whatever happened I know he is not around anymore. I can’t talk to him, well I can but he won’t answer back. I can’t see him, only in photos now or in my mind’s eye. I can’t see his life evolve, see him grow and change and have children of his own. He hadn’t even passed his driving test and I don’t know if he was ever truly in love or had great sex. I don’t know anything except I miss him.

I decided that for the short term this blog will just be about what it is like, what it feels like to live every day with this grief.

For the most part I’m doing OK – if that is the right term. I quite often quote lines from Robbie Williams songs. ‘Suppose it’s just a point of view. But they tell me I’m doing fine’

I AM doing fine. I get up every day and put my face on, I go to work. I finally have a job I like, I have a lovely house, a new car and the cutest little dog in the universe.

I live exactly where I want to be. However, every day is a challenge, just as if I had a physical disability. Every day I square up to the day, and I face up to the many things that day that will provoke a memory or an emotion.

I’m going to get down to the nitty gritty now and this blog is going to tell it how it is. No frills, no pussy footing around. I’m going to tell you what it’s like to live with loneliness, guilt, pain and anger. I’m going to tell you how hard it is to live every day without my son, and with the knowledge that he didn’t want to stick around in this world.

I’m strong, and I will survive and maybe I’ll even be happy again, but it’s time to tell my story. 

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Are you waiting for your dream to come true?

Posted on March 25, 2012 by annwae

Be careful about pinning all your hopes on a dream coming true.

I started to think about this recently when I read about the 12 bus drivers who had all won millions of pounds on the lottery. It was in the newspaper and they were all on Daybreak, everyone beaming and people sitting at home jealous. What would you do with all that money? Buy a house, buy a car, go on a dream holiday?

I know Bus Drivers don’t earn much and I’m sure for a lot of them it will take away worry about paying the mortgage and pay for their kids to go to University but it made me think about the society we live in where we value money and material things so highly.

We have X factor, where young hopefuls think that the pinnacle of their life is winning the show, becoming famous, buying their Mum a house and performing at Wembley.

I am not advocating that people shouldn’t have dreams, nor that they shouldn’t strive towards them and visualise them coming true. I am just making the point that we shouldn’t forget the miracles we experience every day and some people could benefit from feeling more grateful for what they have now.

How many stories have we read about lottery winners saying it was the worst thing that happened to them and how may pop and movie stars are in rehab or dead from drugs.

I really believe we need a shift in our perceptions and learn to cherish love and family above all else.

Have you told your child, your partner, your parent, that you love them recently? Have you taken time out of your busy day to give them a call, or spend some quality time with them? Have you got lots of recent pictures of them? It is all too easy to just drift through life not seeing what is right in front of your eyes.

Do you stop at times during the day and just marvel at the sky, the trees or the birds. Do you take a deep breath and take time to feel grateful for a safe warm home, food on the table and all the people who love you?

I say this to you as someone who had a dream come true, but who also lost her son in the same year. I have learned the hard way that having a ‘dream come true’ means nothing without the presence of our loved ones.

I never realised how happy I was until it was gone. I saw a family today in Sainsburys, a Mum and Dad doing the food shopping with a baby and a toddler in the trolley. The little girl was wailing, that ‘not really crying but just wanting attention’ type crying. She was blasting out the whole shop and she wasn’t going to stop. I turned and looked at her parents’ faces and they just looked tired. I just looked and thought how lucky they were to have two beautiful children, but did they notice today or did they go home cross and tired?

So hold on tight to your dreams, but also hold on tight to what you have in front of you, right here, right now.

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Mothering Sunday

Posted on March 18, 2012 by annwae

My Mum hated the phrase ‘Mother’s Day’, she said it was American and it should be ‘Mothering Sunday’. Every Mother’s Day it was my challenge to find the only card that existed with Happy Mothering Sunday on the card instead.

My Mum was a stickler for so many things, manners, grammar, speech. She drove me mad but I miss her terribly and find myself quoting lots of things she said that I used to scoff at.

She left this world 6 years ago. Of course today is the day where Mums should get breakfast in bed and cards and flowers. I didn’t always get a card when Toby was alive but when I did get one it was full of love and thanks from my beautiful son.

This weekend I went through all my boxes and dug out every card I could find, including ones he made at primary school when he could barely write his name. Each one a special memory with so much more meaning now and so precious.

I am still a Mum and every year I will celebrate Mothering Sunday by looking at the sweet cards my son sent me.

I am quite surprised that not one of my close friends has called me today to offer some comforting words. I am also suprised that people that haven’t known me very long have contacted me, and they have taken the time to reach out to me. It means so much they will never know how much.

Everything gets reframed when you lose a child. Every memory is like precious gold dust, every scrap of paper that your child wrote on, every photo, every school report, every possession takes on a new meaning.

I have found that recently I am connecting with Toby on a different level, every day I include him in my thoughts and my conversations. When I am at home I talk to him all the time.

I walked on the beach yesterday and drew his name in the sand, all the time I imagine him being there with me and seeing what I am doing and knowing that I will always keep his memory close.

To all Mothers new, old, bereaved or estranged, I wish you a day full of peace and love

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I have just slipped into the next room

Posted on February 13, 2012 by annwae

Time alone can be very painful for the bereaved. For us mothers who have lost our beautiful child to suicide it is especially hard.  The house is full of pictures everywhere. On the wall, on the mantelpiece, on the dresser. Some pictures are of them as small boys, laughing and looking so happy and carefree. Others are when they were near the age they were when we lost them.

Their picture is on our wallpaper on our phone and our iPad. I still have all the text messages he sent me on my iPhone. We are torn between wanting to see the pictures everywhere and wanting to put them all away as they are so painful to see

We look at the pictures of the happy little boy and wonder what happened to them in between, in the years that led up to them deciding to end their lives.

When people die we use all different phrases to describe it.  When people ask me if I have children I tell them Toby passed away or that I lost him. I got really upset with the funeral home because they put a sign on his casket saying Toby Thorn Died 10th July 2011. My son didn’t die, he is still very much alive in my heart, my mind, and my soul.  I can’t accept that he is dead, even though I saw his lifeless body

In the early days of my grief I phoned a help line and the person at the end of the phone told me to imagine he had gone away to a remote part of Australia where they had no phone or Internet.  I would miss him but I would know he was there. At the time I thought this was a terrible thing to say, but now later that is how I feel. I know my son is somewhere, he did not die, he just went away and I can’t see him, hold him or hear his voice on the phone.  He is there though and I can talk to him and hear his voice whispering in my ear, telling me not to give up.

There are so many poems that give comfort when someone dies and so many of them are based on this theme.
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there I do not sleep. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there I did not die.’
‘Death is nothing at all, I have just slipped into the next room.’

People wonder how I am coping with my loss, and I think the only way to move forwards is to keep our loved ones very much alive in our memories. To talk to them every day and hear them talking back. To tell them we love them every day. To talk of them often and to keep remembering all the precious memories, after all there are millions to recall.  Some will prick our eyes with bittersweet tears, but that just reminds us we had them we loved them and though they are gone away they are still with us every day.
I’ll always love you Toby

I read the following at my Dad’s funeral. It is an excerpt from a famous love letter written my Major Sullivan to his wife Sarah in the American Civil War and I feel it has a lovely comforting sentiment. I like to think of Toby’s spirit flitting around me.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night — amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours – always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

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The memory of all that; oh no they can’t take that away from me

Posted on February 9, 2012 by annwae

Precious, wonderful, priceless memories can never be taken away even though our loved one is no longer with us, our memories that will always be with us.

I was at work today, feeling a bit poorly and decided to buy a snack from the vending machine. I was looking for Walkers crisps but there were none on offer, then I spied the Bacon flavour Wheat Crunchies. A flood of the happiest memories washed over my body.

When Toby was about 8 or 9 I used to finish work at 5 and we went swimming when I picked him up from the child minder. I used to finish half an hour early on a Friday. After swimming we used to go home and watch Ellen or Cybil, Friends or Sabrina the Teenage witch, sitting on the floor with lots of pillows, and parked in between us was a huge bowl into which we had emptied several packets of bacon flavour wheat crunchies. Just one of the zillions of precious times with my boy that can never be taken away from me.

If I hadn’t gone to the snack machine today I wouldn’t have been blessed with this memory today. I remember another weekend when there was a ‘Sabrina the teenage witch’ marathon on TV and we settled on the living room floor with duvets, pillow and snacks and watched it until we were sick of it. What a cool Mum I was. These memories are so precious and all the more so now. I can’t help but be filled with gratitude for all the precious times like this that I spent with Toby, and reliving these memories is bittersweet but it keeps our relationship alive.

I talk to him still, and imagine him sharing the same memory wherever he is if he is looking down watching me eating the wheat crunchies. But don’t tell his friends, imagine his embarrassment if they found out he used to watch ‘Sabrina the teenage witch’, bless his little cotton socks.

 

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First step on my journey back to a new normal

Posted on February 5, 2012 by annwae

One step on the journey back to a new normal

Everything changes when your child dies. Everything you though mattered, everything you worried about, everything you desired – it all pales into insignificance.

I feel like a caterpillar that suddenly became suspended in time, then turned into an amorphous mass of gloopy nothingness inside a chrysalis before starting the transformation process to reform and maybe one day emerge as a butterfly and find wings to fly into a new world. Who am I now?

I have spoken before about functioning without knowing how, and when I shouldn’t be functioning. I should be a broken, weeping, quivering mess. However in the six months since Toby went away I have nursed my Dad through cancer and watched him die. I arranged his funeral the week after attending the inquest into my son’s death.  I started a blog, went on a retreat, survived Christmas, wrote an article for a newspaper about my loss and found a job.

I joined a choir, started Salsa lessons and am taking a college course in counselling skills. Others comment that they don’t know how they would cope if the same tragedy had entered their lives.

I often think about this. If you had asked me 6 months ago how I imagined I would cope if I lost Toby I would have been 9 million per cent certain that I would not have been able to go on. What does that mean ‘I can’t go on?’ Does it mean you are at the place where Toby was? I did have very dark moments in the early days, and it is still difficult to live every day with the knowledge that I will never see my son again, hear his voice, see him grow older or hold him in my arms. However somehow I get up every day and get through that day and wake up again the next.

Last Monday I started a new job. It is a good job and I am really enjoying it. I feel normal. I have a job.

I faced up to the question ‘So do you have children?’ and I answered honestly while not revealing how Toby died, I told them I had a son but he tragically died. They didn’t know what to say but I reassured them that I am getting on with my life and I am OK talking about it.

Phew – I was glad that this was over with and glad I answered honestly. I have every right to be getting on with my life but I felt guilty at the end of the week as I realised I enjoyed the week and had not thought about Toby very much. I want to feel close to him every day.

So today is Sunday and it is hard when I am here – just me again. ‘It’s a M*****f***** Getting through a Sunday, talking to the wall just me again (from the song played at Toby’s funeral, It’s a M*****f***er by Eels)

But this week was a milestone, a step on the way back to a new normal. My article has had an amazing ripple effect, resulting in a national charity that works to prevent suicide in young people asking me to be a trustee. So I can really start to make a difference.

I am learning new lessons every day, but the most important one being, if you are brave enough to face up to what life gives you and find the gift, amazing miracles can happen.

Toby, I hope you are proud of your Mum. I will always love you and I have to find a way to live without your presence, and find a meaning and a purpose but I will never forget you ever, not even when I am a hundred.

If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together,

there is something you must always remember

You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think

But the most important thing is,

even if we’re apart, I’ll always be with you

Winnie The Pooh

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The Elephant in the room, I want to talk about Toby

Posted on January 24, 2012 by annwae

I really want to talk about Toby, not so much about how he died but I don’t mind talking about that either. I really want you to ask me not ‘How are you?’ but ‘How are you coping at the moment?’

I want my friends to acknowledge that my son died and that just because I bounce into the room all smiles telling them about my latest project, looking good, it doesn’t mean I am not crippled inside with grief.

Am I being self-centred and unreasonable? Well possibly. Just because I am forever changed I can appreciate that others may not want to hear or read about death and suicide, but therein lies the problem.

As a society we are terrified and uncomfortable with talking about the dark stuff, cancer, brain tumours, murder, and suicide.  So when it happens to a close friend how the heck do you handle it?

Top tips

When you phone me or see me instead of asking ‘How are you?’ ask ‘How are you coping at the moment?’ subtle difference but the latter acknowledges my grief and what has happened. The first question is difficult for me to answer as I want to yell ‘How the heck do you think I am – my son died 6 months ago’ The second one gives me the opportunity to tell you that I spent Sunday afternoon looking at photos and crying, but that I am doing OK today thanks.

Say to me ‘Do you want to talk about Toby?’ I can then say ‘Yes, that would be lovely’ or ‘Not right now, but thank you for asking’

Say ‘I haven’t talked to you about Toby’s death because I didn’t want to upset you, but you know I will if you want to’

Say ‘I am so frightened of saying the wrong thing and I can’t know how you feel, but I know you are in pain and I want to help if I can, so just tell me what you need.

Phone me up and say something like ’ I was just thinking of Toby the other day and remembering that time when you brought him to my son’s party and he had his face painted as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, it was so funny and I still have the photos of that day’ Do you want me to send you one?

Practically every other person I have spoken to who has suffered this kind of loss has echoed the same sentiment. That is how it hurts that no one mentions our child’s name any more. I do understand that this is not done intentionally and the irony is that they think they are protecting us from hurt but the opposite is true.

This poem expresses it beautifully


There’s an elephant in the room.
It is large and squatting
so it is hard to get around it.

Yet we squeeze by with,
‘How are you?” and “I’m fine.”
and a thousand other forms of trivial chatter.

We talk about everything else –
except the elephant in the room.
We all know it is there.
We are thinking about the elephant as we talk together.

It is constantly on our minds.
For, you see, it is a very big elephant.
It has hurt us all, but we do not talk about
the elephant in the room.

For if we talk about his death,
Perhaps we can talk about his life.
Can I say, “Toby” to you
And not have you look away?

For if I cannot,
Then you are leaving me alone
In a room – with an elephant.

** the author of the poem was Terry Kettering and I have substituted ‘her’ and ‘Barbara’ with ‘his’ and ‘Toby’

For other useful ways to talk about and remember a loved one click here

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Message to depressed or suicidal young men

Posted on January 15, 2012 by annwae

I have blogged about my loss and there is a personal journey to be lived, where I grieve and remember my son, and find out how to live this new, changed life.

I am not the type of person to turn inwards and shut myself away. I want to reach out and tell my story, not for personal satisfaction, but to find meaning and purpose from loss.

I have two missions, one is to help support other parents and form a network of parents bereaved by suicide.

The other is to send a message to any young person who maybe considering this tragic action, to attempt to give them a glimpse of the pain they would leave behind. It may make no difference if someone is really determined, but maybe, just maybe it may speak to one person, who may go for help as a result.

Here is my message to anyone who has had serious suicidal thoughts; please watch and listen to my story.

Anyone affected who wishes to contact me please go the the Contact Anne page.

To go to CALM website mentioned in the video click CALM

Posted in Grief, Healing, Loss, suicide | 3 Comments

How can I turn loss into inspiration

Posted on January 7, 2012 by annwae

I am aware that I don’t want the overriding theme of my life to be beareavement and suicide, however I do feel that I can use my pain to help others.

To help other parents, to help people understand what I am going through and maybe, just maybe the ultimate goal to save the life of a young person considering this drastic action.

A few things have happened this week. I have been asked to write an article for the Cambridge news about my story. About Toby, about what happened in the hope it may reach out to others affected by this tragic event.

I was also directed to an article in The Guardian about a fantastic organisation called CALM – the Campaign against living miserably, you can read the article here

This organisation specifically helps young men who are suffering depression and is spreading the message that ‘The silence is killing us’, referring to the fact that young men just don’t talk about their feelings.

I keep thinking, what can I do to help? Ultimately the only thing I can do to bring hope from Toby’s death is to reach out and help others.

So I am writing the article, and I have approached CALM to ask if I can post a blog on their site, a message to young people from a mother who has lost their son. To let them know what it feels like, to let them know that if they think they are a burden alive, what burden will they be leaving behind when they are gone. I know it is a cliche we hear all the time, but if it saves one life then my mission will be accomplished.

When I walk my dog I can talk to myself in my head and feel I can express emotions sometimes better in my ‘mind talk’ than I can when I sit down in front of my computer and try to type the words to describe how I feel.

So I have decided to start video blogging and my first attempt is here

I plan to record a series of short videos to try and express what I have been going through. My aim is to connect parents suffering a similar loss with a view to setting up a forum where we can support each other, this is just the first step.

Thank you for sharing my journey and I would love your feedback on whether I am on the right path.

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Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all

Posted on December 30, 2011 by annwae

Well I got through Christmas. Did I take my own advice? It wasn’t easy because I was staying with a friend who I didn’t know very well. However, I was grateful that she had invited me into her home and her family for Christmas so I made the best of it even if things didn’t go exactly as I would have wanted.

I have learned to not take things so seriously as one of my Mum’s mottos was ‘Nothing really matters very much and most things don’t matter at all’. I think it was Edmund Hilary – now I have to go and look it up. No it wasn’t it was Arthur James Balfour, whoever he was.

I have certainly take this motto to heart , as since losing my son it has made me realise that all the things I worried about were nothing. I always remembered that line from ‘Wear Sunscreen’

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Well mine blindsided me at 10 pm on Sunday 10th July. Up to that point how was I to know that everything I worried about was inconsequential. Even before I lost Toby I used to recall this paragraph. I thought about it when the train crashed at Paddington and I always remember the TV showing all the cars left in the station car park somewhere, cars that were never going to be picked up. I used to think about all the husbands and wives, sons and daughters that walked out of the house that morning not knowing they would never be coming back. Or the people that walked out of their houses on 7th July 2005 to travel to London, or 9th September 2001 in New York.

We spend so much of our lives worrying about thing that don’t really matter.

So what really matters to you today?

What really matters to me now as I look forward to a New Year with nearly all my family gone?

Well I think I need to make a difference to others, to help, to teach, to inspire. I need to cherish my times when I am at one with nature out on the beach with my little doggie companion, and I need to be grateful for what I have, and grateful for the people I have loved and who have loved me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012

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