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My mind went blank; it was almost as if there was an echo in my head, and a voice I didn’t recognise saying: “He’s gone.” He can’t have gone. Gone where? As those around tried to console me, hold me up, stroke my arm and tell me everything was going to be ok, the more my mind went blank. I got up and ran, ran, ran … I don’t know where to but I didn’t want people’s sympathy, I didn’t care if they thought it would be ok. How would they know? He was my soul mate, the love of my life, the father to my three amazing children, he wouldn’t do this to me. It was only a routine operation. I wanted to wake up from the nightmare. 

I will wake up from this soon.

I fell into a heap on the floor, I tried again to take it in, to understand but there was a relentless voice in my head telling me it wasn’t true, it couldn’t be. I wouldn’t get past this. I cried and then stopped, cried again and stopped again, I had to get to my children and be there for them. I just had to tell myself this was not happening to me, it was all going to be a terrible nightmare, I would wake up soon - it was the only way I could think to enable me to put one foot in front of the other. 

I just had to put one foot in front of the other.

I dried away my tears and began to put one foot in front of the other. I was on autopilot. My children were the most important part of my life, and I had to carry on. I went back to where I had begun to run from - people waiting for me to react, looking at me with sympathetic eyes, sad eyes. I asked what needed to be done now and made it clear that I needed to go to be with my children. 

Stages of grief…

This is a very moving reflection of someone’s story, their reality of a traumatic, unexpected loss of a loved one. This is a very common scenario, and in the initial shock of hearing about a loss, an example of how often this can trigger denial, the initial stage of grief. Based on the Grief Cycle model first published in On Death & Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1969, the five stages of grief are as follows; Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance Over the next few blogs we will cover each stage of the cycle as above as often just knowing that there is a ‘cycle’ and that you are not alone in your grief is a key part of moving forward with your life.   "Please note that this blog post was provided by Healthy Minds and although based on real people, different names have been used, where requested, by those sharing their stories."