I’m just back from seeing Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (BJMATB) for the second time in 2 days…what can I say…I feel like I’ve grown up with her, and she deserves my time as the franchise leaves her to…LIVE!
Bear with me, this isn’t a film review folks…Transcend Trauma, as we know, “does” trauma…!!!
BJMATB is a study in grief and it is beautifully done (in my humble opinion) and it makes many marvellous statements, but the most striking to me, is the fact that grief can live alongside you as you do just what I’ve left Bridget doing - LIVING!
It will be 20yrs ago for me this year that I lost my Mum all too quickly to pancreatic cancer; it came and took her away from me (diagnosis to death) in 3months, I was 27.
That isn’t supposed to be a ‘shocking’ statement (I have friends who lost their Mum’s aged 8 and 14 respectively); it’s a statement about the impact of grief.
I never viewed what happened to me & my Dad as ‘trauma’ - but that’s exactly what it was. I haven’t made a ‘study’ of whether I have PTSD; I don’t need to - I know I have, but I’ve never ‘labelled’ it…never felt the need.
I had ‘Cruse’ bereavement counselling a few months later (when I was in training as a counsellor myself - as you do…); Dad did too, but he only had a couple of sessions (he felt he had ‘no unresolved issues to talk about’ and decided to instead live by the mantra of “keep busy and don’t think too much”). Whereas I continue to ‘work’ on me every day.
I recognise the ‘5 stages of grief’ (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance); but I have never seen it as a neat, linear ‘model’; instead one that I have vacillated between over the years - and I still don’t believe I will ever accept.
My Mum lost her Mum (aged 42) when Nanny was 66; my Mum was 59 when she died; I am now 46 (do you get the sense I fixate on ages much folks, ask C - she knows!)
I am now experiencing losses for my friends as they begin to lose their parents and some are navigating the loss through dementia too. I currently feel suffocated by the fact that many losses are about to start crashing around me…but you have to LIVE, you must LIVE, right?
The bit that troubled me for the longest time was that Mum’s death overshadowed her life…still does, if I’m with my Dad especially, who now has Alzheimer’s and only has acute memories of the past. I’ve re-lived Mum’s and his best friend’s deaths repeatedly with him. I hate it.
I wonder if he hadn’t kept busy; if he had thought…would anything now be different?!
We have been able to cry in the past together, but my Dad’s world has changed since then; it’s very different now.
As the years have gone by I now see it more like Bridget does in BJMATB - ‘the grief jar’ by any other name - where the grief doesn’t shrink, but your life expands and grief can live, simultaneously, alongside joy.
When I got married (in 2013) I wanted my Mum and I made choices that made it feel like she was included. The date that year was close to Mothering Sunday (a day that used to almost be my “nemesis”) and I did what, as a counsellor, I do - I talked about her a lot (emotional much G?!)…and it helped…she was represented, she was present.
‘cause LIVE is what I have done for 20yrs, I still struggle…but I have my go-to’s; loud music for one (James Bay is currently blasting as I write); I have screamed whilst driving over the years; I have cried - a lot…but I have kept my Mum alive, in a sense, by talking about her and using my experience of grief in my work - repeatedly.
Sharing your grief; is one way “out” in a way, as it helps others with theirs…that’s my experience, at least.
C – I agree with everything G has said. I genuinely believe that talking about them keeps them with you. I never met G’s Mum, but have a sense of “knowing” from how she is still within and part of who G is.
I experienced loss first aged 12 when a close friend of 15 died. It was a mind blowing time as it felt so wrong. The best thing that happened was that adults did not try to explain it, or offer platitudes, they simply joined us in the sadness. Anything else would have seemed false. Later a little boy I helped care for died aged just 10. It was heartbreaking. Both of those were so hard as they were “wrong” due to them being children. Making sense of loss when it makes no sense is hard to navigate.
Losing my grandparents, my Grandad very suddenly when I was 21, and my Nanna much more recently changed me. In both instances I was the one there talking to the medics, in one case delivering CPR. I can’t stand that they are gone, but I talk and think about them every day. I feel lucky to have had them, and aware that the loss only stings so much because the love was so deep.
Time heals? Maybe.
It changes it…the greatest of all the ‘models’ I have taken comfort from is the ‘boiler’ metaphor; some days your grief will burn as it first did…other days it will be ‘softer’ - but the one certainty is that the pilot light will never go out - because that is all the love you will forever carry for that person.
Live Bridget, LIVE!
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