My journey with grief and hope

By Rebecca Warsop

It is said that hope is a match in a dark tunnel, a moment of light, just enough to reveal the pain ahead and ultimately the way out. Each of us, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, as we journey on the unexpected road of grief, can desperately want to find that match, that moment of light. It may only last for the shortest of moments initially, it may take a short or a long time before it even appears or we see it, but ultimately it will show us that there is a way through the excruciating pain of our grief to an alternative road than we had originally planned to travel in our lives.

Today, I offer my own experience with grief in the hope that maybe one small thing may resonate with you and spark a glimmer of light into your life and give you a moment of comfort to assist you on your journey. My son, JB Warsop died instantly in a car accident aged 12 returning home from Knysna after the Easter school holidays in 2004. My life was shattered into a million little pieces. Yet I had a sense from very early on that part of my purpose here on earth was to piece those pieces back together, not in the same order but to eventually create a new version of me and somehow keep going. The days were dark, and it often seemed impossible. I have a mental picture from that day of a road divided, with a vision of a new path that now was before me. And I saw the enormous effort it was going to take me for me to live without my son and honour his life in the only way I knew how. The initial days were a blur of total numbness and shock, of no longer caring what I looked like, what I did, what I said. This was me, broken and desperate. I felt hopeless and helpless as the rest of the world moved on. I don’t know how I got through my days. I would tell myself just survive the next two minutes, the next 5 minutes, the next 10 minutes and slowly, very slowly a few more.

I remember the never-ending questions, why him, why now, what if, why me? And I remember so strongly the answer that came one day, Why not me? Why not me?

A new level of compassion in me was born.

Mourning is the external part of loss – the actions we take, the rituals and the customs. Grief is the internal part of loss, how we think and feel. It’s a very individual journey for each of us that no-one else can truly see or feel and no two people’s grief will ever be the same. It does not end on a certain date, or day or last a specific amount of time. It is unique to all of us. It lives within us forever. And yet although we no longer have the physical presence of our loved one, that love never dies and can never be lost or taken from us. That love is the fuel that kept me getting up each morning and trying to find a new way to live.

I lived in a pit of unknown emotions – despair, darkness, overwhelm, alone, powerless, devastated, angry. Sometimes those feelings came at the same time making my grief so confusing and heavy. I could move from feeling OK in one minute to feeling devastated in the next without warning, giant mood swings suffocating me into tears. That I learnt was how grief works. There was no true way to avoid it, no magic formula to survive or bypass it, only to be with it and work through it.

Grief enters our lives at a deeper level. Feelings of severe despondency and dejection, often called depression, arise. It is not always a sign of mental illness rather the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in the fog of intense sadness wondering perhaps if there is any point in going on alone. Why go on at all? l chose to invite that despondency and depression in like a visitor and allow the sadness and emptiness to start to cleanse me.

The heaviness of grief forces us to slow down and allows us to take stock of the loss. It makes us rebuild ourselves from the ground up and it takes us to a deeper place in our soul that we would normally not explore. Grief is a teacher. It can make us bitter or better? It taught me to begin to surrender and let go. I had to surrender the demand for answers. I had to let go and reshape the plans, hopes and dreams for the future with my boy, with my family, with my friends. I had to surrender time to allow myself to grieve and surrender my independence to allow help from others. I had to let go of the me that I was and open to possibilities of a new me shaped by what I had gone through.

I was like a burnt, lifeless forest and yet small shoots of new life cautiously began to push through out of the ruin. I moved into life from death, without denying the devastation that had gone before. The serenity prayer was my go-to daily prayer as I struggled to find acceptance.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage

to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Little by little I began to withdraw my energy from loss and begin to invest it in life again. I remember distinctly that moment for me I felt it shake through my body. I knew from that day forward that I would choose as often as I could to celebrate the time I had with my JB and not focus on the time I didn’t. The shackles of my intense grief started to slowly, very slowly to fall away. I started to have more good days than bad. On those good days I began to live again and even enjoy life. I knew I could never replace what had been lost but I could make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new interdependencies.

Instead of denying my feelings I could be with them. I could listen to my needs, move, change, grow and evolve. I could gently start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. I could slowly invest in our friendships and in the relationship with myself. I could begin to live again because I had given grief its time.

At a recent compassionate friends support group meeting, one of the participants said – “Losing a child takes you on a journey you never wanted to or thought you would go on, with incredible people you probably would never have had the privilege to meet.”

Sadly, I only learnt more recently the true value of community support as deliberately avoided joining Compassionate friends after my loss determined not to be part of this club. That was part of my journey. To learn to trust and be open to the support from others, to learn the value of friendship and community and the role I had to play.

As I reflected on this, I was reminded of a poem my son wrote at school on friendship which is displayed in the St Peters School chapel.

It said: Friendship is forever. It’s trust, kindness, partnership and loyalty.

Friends are there when you need them the most. When you fall they’ll pick you up. When you’re sad they’ll make you smile and they’ll treat you how you want them to treat you, - just teach them how. That’s friendship.

How true those words are – to ask for help and to overcome our vulnerabilities to show our friends and community what we need.

I started to celebrate my son’s life and be truly grateful for the time and moments I had with him even though I would have loved many more. I cherished each moment I could remember like an exquisite sunrise. And I frantically recorded them in a scrapbook for my daughter so they couldn’t be forgotten.

I know there are parents here tonight who had less time than me with their loved ones, some only had a few moments. I invite you if and when you are ready to amplify those moments, the first knowing you were pregnant, the first kick, a smile, a feeling and hold onto those memories within you and with your partner to bring a flicker of light into your deep darkness.

I know too that there are others here tonight who like me have lost their brothers and sisters. I encourage you in your time to embrace those memories and celebrate what you had however short or long that time was. I often think about where my boy is now. And I can answer without a shadow of a doubt that is he is safe, happy and with me in a different way. How do I know?

We are a society that demands proof for most things, but some things simply cannot be proven. For example, if I asked you to touch your nose or your chin you could do that. But if I asked you to touch the love you feel for your child or your sibling what would you touch. We just know. We can feel it. That knowing is my faith.

One of my biggest learnings from my sons passing was the lesson of choice, a lesson I was slow and resistant to learn!!! I have and still am learning I have choices however impossibly hard they are. I choose to grieve with hope and joy amid my suffering and sorrow.

But how can Joy and immense pain co-exist I wondered? I had to work that out for me. I did not believe it was an either/or, saying either I feel grief or I feel joy. Can I feel both? At first it felt a terrible tension and betrayal of my pain to feel good in anyway. And feeling joy or lighter feelings, even a smile felt like a betrayal of my son and his memory and I would berate myself for feeling happy. But over time I learnt that it was ok for me to feel joy in the midst of my pain and allow those strange and often irreconcilable emotions to exist together. I can smile. I can laugh and I can dance with life fully again.

Research conducted by Michael Norton and Francesca Gina discovered the importance of rituals in grief. They found that participating in rituals returns a feeling of control to the bereaved and a sense of belonging and togetherness.

One of the rituals I still continue to do 16 years after my boy passed is to decorate the Christmas tree. Just like we did together when he was alive I take out all the Christmas decorations which I have collected over the years, place on loud, shop like Christmas music and decorate the tree while singing at the top of my voice. Yes, it’s hard, some years worse than others, yet it connects me so tightly to him that I cherish the experience with warmth and joy in my soul despite the external river of tears and the colossal sense of loss.

Rituals offer an opportunity to bring our loved one’s death into our present and future. I wish on reflection that I had bought more rituals into my life yet its never to late to introduce or reinstate them. There are special times, milestone moments I called them, when the absence of our loved ones is particularly painful. Their birthdays, the anniversary of passing, Christmas and other significant religious celebration dates are obvious ones. I remember the times when I saw his group of friends at the grade 7 leavers dinner, the pictures of what should have been his matric dance, his friends graduations, weddings and the thousands of things in between.

We do not “get over” a death. We can learn to carry the grief and integrate loss into our lives.

And so, a new question emerged, What Now?

My son left me with the most beautiful gift just before he died. He was in a Zulu class at school and his teacher started to cry explaining that she had been visiting a hospice in an informal settlement near Lanseria airport and that she could not believe the level of poverty and lack of resources they were dealing with as individuals of all ages reached their end of life. They needed help. JB put up his hand and piped up confidently – “Don’t worry my mum will sort it out!!!

“ We agreed that we would go out together after the Easter holidays and see how we could help. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be as he died that holiday. However, a few months later I found the courage to go on my own not knowing what or if I could do anything. I started visiting when I could, helped feed children in desperate need, using his birthday money to buy supplies and helped expand the project to upgrade a day care from a tin shack to a beautiful building with running water, providing children with a daily meal and a few toys. I worked with the project for over 10 years and it brought me great connection to my son.

It was then that I started to revisit my contribution and embarked on reskilling from my business to become a life coach and grief counsellor to fulfil an emerging need for me to offer hope and inspiration to others.

It was only then that I actively completed the loop and joined Compassionate friends and more recently became a counsellor for them.

At JB’s funeral my sister read the following poem which continues to guide me on my journey and I hope today that these words might in some small way help you.

“You can shed tears because they have gone, or you can smile because they have lived. You can close your eyes and pray they will come back, or you can open your eyes and see all that they have left. Your heart can be empty or can be full of the love you share. You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday, or you can be happy or tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember them and only that they have gone, or you can cherish their memory and let it live on. You can cry and close your eyes and turn your back, or you can do what they would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

I choose to smile, open my eyes, feel his presence, love and go on.

As we light our candles together in community tonight, may the light of joy and hope shine gently into the shadows of your sadness and despair and help show you the road ahead with love and kindness.

I thank you.