It's is often said that a little bit of knowledge can be a bad thing, and I guess the same can be said for the knowledge of grief.
Last year we went on holiday to Menorca, and apart from the travelling days, I wouldn't describe the holiday itself as tinged with sadness. I naively decided, from this one example, that holidays would always be happy times. Just writing that down makes me see how questionable it seems.
I am only one year into this relentless journey, but I'd managed to convince myself that I'd got it all sussed out. I've fallen into the trap of believing that there are a set of rules, that grief follows a set path. That is the human urge to put some control back into a situation that is completely out of our control.
What it actually did was make me unprepared for what would happen next.
First, let me be clear and state, uncatagorically, that I had a great holiday. The sun shone, the children laughed and the beer flowed. Pretty much the perfect camping trip....except it wasn't and never could be. There was a huge Lauren shaped whole over the hole week. I cried with friends, I cried with Chris, I sat and felt engulfed in the sadness of it. It completely threw me how strong the feelings of loss were.
I know there was probably a myriad of reasons for how I felt, I was there among friends who knew & loved Lauren, we were in a place that Lauren loved, camping makes you incredibly tired, but I'm not going to fall back into the trap of trying to rationalise what I felt and why. Grief cannot be defined in that way. Knowledge is not, in this instance, power.
Grief like all emotion, ebbs and flows to its own tide. It is probably less important to understand it and more important to learn how to deal with it's symptoms.
After all, to be human is to feel, and what we feel will not always be joy and love, it will also be sadness and misery.
To my beautiful, amazing daughter...I miss and love you always 💙💙💙
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