Hi everyone.

I’ve never written a blog before, so I have literally no idea how this is going to go. I don’t know whether it’s going to be a good read, help anyone or just act as a time filler for somebody procrastinating at work - just bear with me and we’ll get through it together.

So, last year, my darling Mother died from cancer at the age of 54. As you can expect, it’s been a pretty tough year. For some reason, throughout the whole process of pre-grieving (we knew what was about to happen, so I felt myself in this weird place where I was already grieving, but Mum was still with us), grieving and now life without my Mum, I’ve had an urge to write about my experiences. Maybe it’s a way for me to try and move on; or maybe it’s me wanting to help other people going through, or about to go through, something similar, I’m not sure.

I’ll talk through the different stages of my whole experience, will be as honest as possible, and will highlight any tips that helped me through it.

Initial Contact - Diagnosis

So I guess we’ll start with when we first found out my Mum had terminal cancer in 2017. On this day, it didn’t actually hit me that hard to be totally honest. My Mum actually had cancer a couple of years before this, and absolutely kicked its ugly butt. After a hysterectomy and opting to use cannabis oil instead of chemotherapy (another discussion for another day!!); my Mum made breast and sarcoma cancer, what the youths say these days, her “biatch”.

When we found out towards the end of 2017 that Mum had cancer again, I was obviously quite upset, but that quickly was replaced by an optimistic fighting spirit, and I fully believed that if we defeated cancer once, why not do it again?

Like last time, we started Mum on the cannabis oil, but after a couple more trips to the hospital, we soon realised that it was too late for the cannabis oil to work this time; the cancer was too aggressive and too far along. As a family, while all sitting round a hospital bed, we decided that it was time to accept what was going to happen and stop with the cannabis oil treatment (as this causes the patient to be “spaced out” quite a lot, and spend a lot of time sleeping). We decided that Mum’s final few months on this Earth should be spent being as happy as possible, surrounded by family and friends. And then, I found myself in the next stage of this story…

The “Pre-Grieving” Stage

Before I say anything here, just to pre-warn you if you are going to be going through this at any point, it’s bloody weird and an absolute emotional rollercoaster. At times you’re gonna be frustrated, sad, happy (surprising I know!), angry and probably six other emotions too, and that’s fine!

So as I said before, this stage for me began while my Dad, my sister and I were sat around my Mum’s hospital bed. We decided that it was time to stop fighting this, and, no matter how difficult it was, we had to accept what was going to happen. We had to embrace this, talk about it, plan for it, cry about it, everything. Over the next few days, until Mum was discharged from hospital and allowed to go home, we cried, we reminisced, we began important talks which would lead to decisions about the next few months, about the funeral, about everything. It was a tough few days, but so important and a great start to our relatively short time in this “Pre-Grieving Stage”. I remember leaving the hospital, and the daughter of the woman with Alzheimer’s who was in the bed next to my Mum’s hugged us, and said she had loved sitting in the same room as us, listening to our attitude and conversations, and said it was lovely.

The next few months I found very difficult. I lived about 180 miles away from the rest of my family, and worked a 50 hour week. I managed to schedule my work so I worked Wednesday-Sunday every week, and had Monday and Tuesday off; this meant I could travel home after work on the Sunday every week, and spend as much time with my Mum, and the rest of my family, as possible. During this time, we all got as much advice as we could, from the internet, books, the palliative care team from Macmillan (these guys are amazing; they are one of the only cancer charities I’ll give to now, they helped us out so so so much) and friends; and here I’ll put some of the best bits of advice that I’d recommend:

1. Talk.

Talk about everything. I’m not saying talking about how you are feeling will suddenly fix the fact that someone you love is about to die; but I PROMISE you, it will certainly help. Find that someone you feel comfortable talking to, or in my case, venting to, and it feels like a load has been taken off your shoulders. I was lucky; I had an amazing girlfriend supporting me (now my fiancée!), a great bunch of friends, an amazing family there to help - but I still didn’t talk about it.

I read somewhere about the need to talk through what you are feeling; but didn’t feel comfortable talking it through with someone I knew (looking back, I think this was because I felt like, and enjoyed feeling like, I was “the strong one”, there to help everyone else out. This meant whenever someone asked how I was, I’d say “Yep, I’m fine”, when really I wasn’t. My Dad and sister were exactly the same). So I got in touch with a men’s mental health line. When I finally decided to do this, at about midnight one night, the only one I could actually find was a suicide line (I made it very clear I was NOT suicidal, I just wanted someone to talk to).  I can’t put into words how much this helped me through it; I actually only called them once, but just venting it all out so someone I didn’t know made me feel so much better, I don’t really know why.

So yeah, find someone to talk to. Don’t be the big man/woman and try to deal with everything yourself, you can’t do it. It’s okay not to be okay; if anything, it would be weird if you were okay!

2. Set a video camera up at home.

This was a fantastic bit of advice we found; not only does it encourage you to talk through things as there’s now a camera on record, it also means you don’t forget things that are said and also is quite nice (yet incredibly sad) to watch back after your loved one is no longer with you.

I couldn’t recommend this more; buy/find a video camera, and set it up in the corner of whatever room you spend the most time in with your loved one - for us it was the living room. Stick the camera on record while you are reminiscing, or talking about your loved one’s wishes, or just when you are hanging out. I found this so useful in the months after my Mum died; firstly to make sure we did everything that she wanted, but also just to watch her in normal life. It’s so much better than a video or picture of her posing; I got to see her laughing at jokes, crying at the situation, chatting about her first house that she bought 30 odd years ago - just her being a normal human being.

3. Look after yourself.

This one’s important. You cannot expect to look after and support your loved one if you don’t look after yourself. I know, because I tried. For the first few weeks, I didn’t sleep properly, I didn’t allow myself to chill out, or enjoy anything - I basically didn’t look after myself. This meant I wasn’t acting like myself, and it showed. If you go down this path, your mood/behaviour will rub off on your loved one, and that’s not good. You want their remaining time to be the best it possibly can be, and that just won’t happen if you don’t look after yourself.

So, if you want to nip out to meet a friend for a pint, do it. If you want to go to Paris for a couple of nights with your girlfriend, do it. If you want to have a lie in one day, do it! These are all things I did by the way; I nearly cancelled or didn’t do these things, but you need to look after yourself through all of this.

Another thing to consider under this heading is to stop thinking about what other people think of you. My personal example of this would be to do with social media. I’ll be completely honest with you, before this whole ordeal, when I saw people posting about going through this sort of thing on social media, I never got it. I thought it was attention seeking, and didn’t think that posting about how shitty the situation is could make things better. Oh how wrong I was. It’s not for one second about attention seeking, or a “look at me” pity sort of thing. For me, social media was one of the things that really helped me out. Seeing people’s lovely comments really made me smile (albeit through tears), as I got to see just how many lives my Mum touched in one way or another.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is: if something feels good, do it. Don’t think about what others will think of you; if it’s going to help you through what is probably the worst time of your life, do it without a second thought.

4. See as many people as possible.

One thing that we did was post exactly what was happening on social media, and asked for messages for my Mum to read. We also let everyone know that they could come and see Mum before the inevitable happened - and the responses flew in. My sister had to basically become a secretary to fit everyone in at different times so they could come and say hello, and without being too morbid/depressing, their goodbyes.

This was brilliant. Don’t get me wrong, it was really sad at times, but my Mum got to see so many people that she cared about, reminisce about old times and when they last saw each other and just generally have a laugh and forgot about the C word for once.

5. Plan the funeral with your loved one.

Yep, I did just say that. This one is weird, and probably the hardest out of my advice points. We tried to do this several times, but it got too much and very sad most times, so we had to break it into parts. Discuss one bit of the funeral, and then move on, save the rest til next time.

I think this is so hard to do, because yeah, you might have accepted what’s going to happen, but this is directly talking about it head on, and as such, is bloody hard work. The video camera mentioned earlier comes in handy here, as you will be so emotional during this that you’ll definitely forget parts of this.

I promise you it is worth the tears and uncomfortable-ness (may have just made that word up), as by the end of it, you’ll know exactly what your loved one wants. So in a few days, weeks or months, when it comes to that horrible day that is the funeral, you know that you’ve done everything your loved one would have wanted - it certainly made me feel better.

6. Normality.

This one’s a biggie, and has potential to be forgotten about with everything else that is going on. Try and do normal things as much as possible.

I’m not saying you need to dig your head into the sand and ignore everything that’s going on; but if you have done any of the above things I’ve mentioned, you’ll need a break! It can’t be all doom and gloom all the time; so try and do whatever it is your family considers normal. We tried to go for coffees, go shopping, so for a meal, have friends over, watch TV, get a takeaway, and so on. I think the cancer adverts that are on telly raise a good point here - a loved one with cancer is still a loved one, so, when possible, treat them the same and do the stuff you always used to do together.

D-Day

There’s nothing I can say to prepare you for this day, and you’ll remember it forever (despite it being a blur of emotion).

For me it was the 27^th February 2018. I was on a rare day off from work at home, 180 miles away from the family (I think I had a couple of days off together later in the week, and was planning on driving home then). Mum got rushed into A+E in the early hours as she was having trouble breathing, but we had been in and out of hospital plenty over the last few weeks, so although this was scary, it didn’t immediately mean it was the end. My sister or my Dad called me, I can’t remember who, or what was said exactly, but said it might be a good idea for me to drive up, just in case. I had a weird feeling in my stomach, and got ready as quickly as I could and got in the car to drive up.

Unfortunately Mum lost her battle with cancer during my drive up. I can’t remember who called me to tell me (it must have been a horrendous call to make, I don’t envy my Dad or sister), I just remember balling my eyes out whilst driving, and not wanting to stop as I wanted to get to the rest of my family as quick as possible.

I’d never seen a dead body before this day, and I didn’t know if I wanted to go in and see one back then. If you are feeling the same - I have one thing to say, DO IT. My mum looked so peaceful and not in any pain (which made a difference from the last few months), and I cannot recommend it enough.

I don’t know what you are going to feel on this day. I just felt numb, and you get to the point where you can’t cry any more. Just be with your family, and do whatever feels natural. We just decided to keep ourselves busy and plan the funeral.   

Return to “Normality”

This is again, like most of the “stages” you will go through, very weird. Once you’ve had some time to process what’s happened to you, you’ve probably had the funeral and a bit of time off from work/your normal life, before you know it it’ll be time to try and get back to some sort of normality. This is both good and bad; going back to work means you will have a distraction and something else to think about and to be getting on with, but also, sometimes you may feel like you are forgetting about your loved one and just carrying on like nothing has happened - it’s a confusing time!

During this period of time where you are trying to adjust back into normal life, I go back to my first bit of advice from earlier, which is to talk. Carry on talking to that person you’ve spoken to before. Trust me, they will want to help, and they won’t be thinking things like “is he/she still going on about this?”, they WANT you to talk, and you need to. One word of advice too, have a think about what date to go back to work. I went back to work on the weekend of Mother’s Day, and I was working in a supermarket, NOT good planning on my part here!!

Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and before you know it, it’ll be a bit of a chunk of time since you lost your loved one. I’d like to day things get easier, but I don’t really think they do. I think you learn how to live without your loved one, but I personally don’t think you ever get over the trauma of it - but that’s OK!

Why should you get over it? This person has been such a huge part of your life, so it’s 100% completely okay, and right, that you don’t just forget about them, or lose any feelings towards them. You’ve just got to accept that sometimes you’ll fancy a little cry, or want to watch the funeral back (would definitely recommend videoing/live streaming it), or want to talk about them (never stop doing this), or laugh about a joke they used to make or something silly they did; or sometimes you’ll just feel a bit sad that you can’t talk to them, or find yourself reading old messages or looking at old pictures. Do all of these things, because that person was bloody amazing.

I suppose that’s the end of my story/my attempt to help anyone else that is going through something similar right now. As I said at the start, I don’t know if this will help anyone, or be a good read, or make sense, but I tell you what, it’s definitely helped me - and, taking my own advice, that’s all that matters!

Please feel free to comment/get in touch if I can help you with anything, or if you want to vent, or just talk. I’m here to help!