Dying to Know

It never goes away and nor do I expect it to anytime soon if ever. It sometimes lurks in the background and at other times it completely envelops you rendering you silent and still, battling certain thoughts and images or just overcome with remembering. It can occasionally be hopeful. Reading posts on depression one might believe this is what I describe, depression itself is terrible, an awful thing that needs much more awareness, discussion and empathy.

But so does what I describe, and perhaps they are similar, I am not sure, I am not a clinician in mental health. I am a person, a father but also now a widower. For the feeling or state  I describe is grief. I lost my beautiful wife on Wednesday 09th April, tragically and suddenly. And this is where these words begin.

My beautiful wife was taken so suddenly and viscously on the 09th April 2014 from a little known cancer that originated in the liver bile ducts, cholongiocarcinoma. The speed of her departure in fact the acceleration from diagnosis to death has not only left me breathless but disbelieving that she won't just walk back in through the door saying it had all been a big test, an elaborate hoax concocted to analyse something and now she's back she has a few things to say. But I know this won't happen, this isn't to be. 

My grief seems to change from quietness and staring out of numerous windows for seconds, minutes on end in silence and stillness, just remembering to feeling a lump in my throat and an ache in an empty heart that induces tears. Sometimes it is forgetting totally and suddenly realising this is not a dream (guilt) to thinking of good times, of fun, love and laughter to dark times and illness, sickness and desperation. I get help , I get advice and words of comfort. I like words, I like kindness even more. Strangely I like loneliness too, or quiet, silence and nothing for a time. 

And the purpose of this, the justification for this expression of grief and my own words. To help my daughters Lily and Louise. To help them come to terms with things in their own way. To be strong for them. And for other reasons too.

• to share my grief with the grief of dear friends to help one another through this 
• to keep the spirit, memory and joy of life Suze had alive 
• to raise awareness and money for A.M.M.F the U.K's only specialist cholongiocarcinoma charity

I'm Dying to Know the answers to some questions that will never be answered. So much now left unsaid, much confusion and emptiness.
Helping Lily, helping Lou, helping friends, helping me to survive grief.