I wonder a lot how to navigate grief.
It's something that I'm still learning about.
I've heard it described like a house on fire.
On some days you can't get away from the flames.
And some days there is just a bit of smouldering at some point.
The greatest lesson in the world is impermanence.
Everything passes. Everything moves.
Nothing stays solid. Nothing stays.
We have deaths in our life all the time.
We lose jobs. We lose friends.
We lose dreams.
And there is a grieving.
Grief is a real human emotion.
I think it's the most human emotion.
It's really tender and raw.
I think grief is precious.
Just give me a wee minute.
Our son Lockie died eleven years ago and seven months.
Still makes me cry.
When your child dies first it just seems wrong.
Everything.
Everything you've ever thought of or thought about
just seems wrong.
I didn't expect to get this emotional.
Sorry.
I don't think I was very prepared at all for losing my mum.
I wasn't prepared for how much of a body hit it was
and how physical it was
and how much of an identity shift.
Antonia was my American wife who died of cancer.
Still touching that one...
Many of us who have lost someone have never fully grieved it.
So I think there's a whole population of people
walking around with unprocessed grief.
Oh, I compartmentalised my grief because
I was just so used to being the person who held everything together.
And it turned out that wasn't such a great idea to do that.
I knew that I needed to grieve from my heart, not just from my head.
You've got to get your feelings externalised.
You've got to let it go.
You don't bottle it up.
You can't afford to bottle it up
because it strangles you.
If we're afraid to touch into that grief
that's a real disconnect from nature and a disconnect from our humanity I think.
There are stages to it that we move through
when we grieve something or we have a loss.
For me, in the past, if I was in grief
I would be disappointed that I was still feeling this.
'Oh, I should be over this by now.'
People do want to expedite it. They do want to move it along and say:
'Oh, they've been dead a year. You should stop talking about them now.'
'Smile, cheer up, be happy.'
And actually, when a death is sudden, there is no graceful way to do it.
It just rips a hole in your whole world.
I feel that that actually could go on for quite a while.
And that there is no way to expedite that process.
Grieving isn't like a cold.
You don't take some Vitamin C and get over it.
It evolves.
It evolves from that really intense grief
that you think you won't ever survive
into more of a mourning... into a...
a way of life really.
The pain is always there.
It's just that you've learnt to live with it.
Grief is a bit like going into the ocean.
When you first walk in, you're continually hit by the waves
and they're breaking over your head all the time and knocking you down.
But you've got to get past the breakers.
Once you're past the breakers
you still get the waves going over your head, it's still difficult.
But you start to learn the pattern of the waves
and you start to learn the rhythms.
Eventually you do learn to swim.
And sometimes there will be storms that come up
but you'll be OK.
Things are always going to happen.
Sunny today. This afternoon we might have thunder, lightning and rain.
You have to recognise that there is a dark side.
There is a sad side. There is an unfortunate side.
You accept them for what they are.
And you learn to live around them,
inside them, outside them.
However it happens, you learn to live.
It's really hard to accept that though...
the fact that it will get better.
You'll get past the breakers and you'll feel OK again.
And that made me feel guilty for a while.
That made me feel like I was forgetting my mum and not missing her as much.
And then someone else said to me that
it's not that you forget the pain
it's not that you've stopped grieving,
it's just that another ring has grown around it.
The pain doesn't go away, the grief doesn't go away,
but you continue to grow around it.
The bereavement process is a living thing.
It's hugely human - it affects every cell of our being.
There is a tsunami that has run through your life
and you're still picking up the pieces.
And everything has changed, forever.
And I think that takes tremendous care
and compassion and empathy and self knowing too.
Don't give up.
Never give up
on each other and your life.
Because it's the biggest thing that's helped Sue and I
through everything.
You actually have to trust.
You have to trust yourself and you have to trust those around you.
You have to trust the journey.
Mostly, you just have to keep breathing
and eventually an understanding will come
and a new normal kind of develops.
You have to go through an amount of suffering.
And I think if you go through that suffering without short circuiting,
if you can honestly get through it,
I think you grow, just a little bit.
And your eyes widen and maybe you see the world
a little bit differently each time.
Everything that we do is imbued with our losses.
And everything that we do is enhanced
and made more beautiful by our losses.
You see much more beauty in the world after
than you did before.
The clouds in the sky.
The sun when it shines.
Everything is beautiful.
Everything!
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Want a kiss?