grief -noun
1. keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.
2. a cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow.
It’s one of those things that you worry about when you’re leaving the country for any period of time. There’s so many questions that you don’t have answers to, so many things that you worry about. The things that I was worrying about before I left were all things for me. It never crossed my mind that maybe when I came back some people wouldn’t be there.
On Wednesday morning, one day after his eightieth birthday, my grandfather collapsed in the street in a local town and died. My brother sent me an e-mail that I got that night, 9 hours ahead of UK time so I don’t know when it was in the UK. My grandmother had to go to the hospital and identify him for the police. My uncle burst into tears on the phone when my mum called him and told him. My father and my uncle hugged for the longest time my mother has ever seen – and this is my father, the reserved and quiet rock in my life that I’ve always been able to rely on. This is my family being really upset and that’s what gets to me the most, out of all of this. When I think about my grandad not being there at Christmas it breaks me up. When I think about my father being upset everything is a thousand times worse. He was my grandad. We used to joke about some of the things he’d do, some of the ways he’d act, but he was my grandad and he was great just because of that.
Strange times that I’m living in. I find myself getting upset and crying at the strangest things. I find myself getting upset every time I have to talk to someone about it. I guess with not thinking about it I get through the day and the teaching but then thinking about my family and everybody just makes it worse. Now my whole family is going through hell and I’m six thousand miles away. Everyone here’s been really good about it and everyone back home are trying to make me feel involved. I know that logically if I was back in the UK there’s very little I’d be able to do.
I still wish there was more I could do anyway.
