What If? (My Experience Of Bereavement)

Member Name: fruitcake

Product:	My Experience Of Bereavement
Date:	17/04/01 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The only advantages of bereavement lie in openly discussing it, helping to make a time of confusion easier for those you leave behind.

Disadvantages: Bereavement will almost always carry with it unanswered questions that never really go away.

As is always the way in dreams, something was odd about the setting. I was sitting on my dad’s hospital bed, but for some reason it was just inside the foyer, right opposite the automatic doors. My dad had just announced that he was leaving, and I was having none of it. I felt so certain that if he ever went through those doors I’d never see him again, and so, for what seemed like an eternity I wrestled with him, while the doors seemed to open and shut with a will of their own. At last he relaxed, at which point I woke up, terrified by the dream, but feeling sure I’d done the right thing.

In the darkness, I tried to make sense of it all. I’d hardly ever dreamed about my dad, but he’d been in the hospital for almost a week, and no one knew what was wrong with him. Of course it was a worry, but at the time I was still married to my first husband, and his mother had died the previous day. Lightning like that wasn’t going to strike our house twice so quickly in succession.

The following morning I tried, as I’d done every day since he was admitted, to find someone who’d look after the kids so I that I could see him, but as on all but one of those days, there was no one. News from the hospital was encouraging though. He was feeling brighter and had been booked in to have a body scan the next day.

At nine o’clock that evening, my husband came in through the front door, followed by my mother and my sister. I didn’t even have to look at their faces – I just *knew*. I went to bits. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so out of control of my own body. When the shaking and screaming stopped, I can remember sitting down and drinking the some of the last home-brew that he’d ever made. Bizarrely, we were cracking jokes about some of the funny things he used to do – anything, I suppose, to keep him and the good times we’d shared with us for a little bit longer. Today
marks the tenth anniversary of that evening.

One of the worst aspects of the whole thing was that we did not know what he would have wanted in the way of funeral arrangements as he’d always refused to discuss it. Cremation was mentioned, but I found the idea so unbearable that I argued for burial, and got my way. Even today it still bothers me that I might have been going against his wishes.

As my dad wasn’t a believer in conventional religion, we decided that a minister of the Free Church would conduct the funeral. He called round to my mother’s to discuss the ceremony with us all, and I can remember him commenting on how easily we could say that my dad had just died. “So many people use euphemisms, such as ’passed on’. I really don’t think that’s very helpful, and you’ll get over this *so* much quicker.” Hmmm, and this from an alleged expert too. The truth is, I still feel much the same way about the whole thing as I did on that night ten years ago, and would readily announce that my dad had bounced off this mortal coil on a pogo stick if I thought it would make these feelings would go away.

The days up until the funeral seemed to gel together in a blur, aided each night by copious amounts of alcohol, but I can vaguely recall being in the florist’s trying to order wreaths from a woman who seemed unable to deal with the fact that I needed flowers for two funerals, and the Coroner releasing a certificate to say that the cause of death had been cancer. Much more vivid in my mind are memories of my dad in the Chapel of Rest. I’d known that bodies were cold, but I had no idea that they were frozen until I touched his skin – skin that had been pulled so tightly over his bones that he no longer resembled my dad as I knew him at all.

On the afternoon that we buried him, the service inside the chapel passed quickly, and soon we were standing at the graveside.
It was a bitterly cold day, and a sharp wind blew across the cemetery. One of the wreaths was from the kids, in the shape of a teddy bear, and a West Indian friend of my mother picked it up and handed it to me. Apparently, it’s traditional in the part of the world she came from to throw the flowers into the grave instead of leaving them on the top of it, and she wanted me to do the same. She was as insistent as I was reluctant, and I just wanted the whole thing over with, so I did as she asked. As the bear hit the coffin, its head parted from its body, leaving me with an upsetting image that I’ll be in my own box before I forget.

I have learned a few things from these experiences, though. If there’s one thing I can’t shout loudly enough, it’s this – death *is* going to happen to you one day, and the biggest favour you can do for the people you leave behind is to tell them what you want doing with your body. I’m not bothered by dying at all– it’s probably the easy part, and when I’m out of here, I’d like to be buried. Any bits and pieces of me that are still worth using can go to someone who needs them.

I think it’s safe to assume that you haven’t ‘passed on’ yet, though, so if instead you find yourself in the position of one of those left behind, try to talk about it with another family member who’s going through it too, instead of to well-meaning ‘experts’ who see bereavement as something that affects everyone in the same way. Get through it *your* way, and use the words *you* feel most at ease with. Seeing the body in the Chapel of Rest helps some to come to terms with the finality of it all, but for me it only made things worse.

When someone you know loses somebody precious, it can sometimes be hard to know what to say. The important thing is just to *be* there, and not to force the issue. Often words aren’t necessary at all
, and when they are, the right ones will come. Most emphatically of all, remember that you should have planned a send-off for yourself by now, so you’ve got no need to impose your own ideas on the family’s last chance to say goodbye instead.

Death always seems to leave people asking questions. I still ask myself if my dad would have wanted things done differently at his funeral, and even wonder sometimes if he’d still be here if I’d done things differently before he died. Would it have made a difference if I’d found a babysitter? Did preventing him from ever leaving the hospital in my dream do just that? If any good were to come out of this at all, it would be that I’ve answered some of people’s questions in the paragraphs above, or better yet, done away with the need for some of them to be asked at all.

(for my dad – 27.01.18-17.04.91)

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