Grief and Love and Love and Love is All You Need

I've been thinking a lot about grief lately. I think about things a lot. I guess it's part of me trying to assimilate and fragment all that has happened. I often try and make some sense of everything, why things happened, why they ended up the way they did, and why we reacted in the way we did to all those things. It's not an easy exercise but I need to do it. That's just me. I have a need for rational understanding or at least to understand why things work or happen in a certain way. I'm not sure everyone is the same, but, that's just me. I don't expect this to ever change. I think I will always go through this process, maybe with time it will make more sense.

We are coming up to the one year anniversary of Hannah's death. Even just writing that quite honestly blows my mind. A whole year. Almost 365 days since I held her hand and kissed her for the last time. I honestly can't quite believe it. I'm not sure how we have got to this point without losing our minds, but we have. I'm lucky I have an incredible Wife who is nothing short of amazing and our little bundle of madness in Nora keeps us on our toes and I guess i'm equally solid for Kate. There is so much Hannah in Nora and that is joyful. Even the small little things like how she sits and crosses her legs. Hannah had these incredibly long legs - Aptly named Hannah long legs from day two or three - and Nora without the same length legs still seems to wrap herself up in her legs.

On the whole this past year I think we have done well. Whatever that hell that actually means. We are still moving, still functioning, still laughing and still making memories. I wrote after Hannah died you don't lose a battle to cancer, you defy it, and the only way to do that is by living each day. Honestly, it's not fair nor correct to talk of it as a bloody battle. Hannah lived each day and for the most part it's one lesson of many she taught us we have tried to carry forward. That doesn't mean we haven't had tough days. Of course we have. It doesn't mean any of this is easy. Its not, its hard, and some days its hard to even drag yourself out of bed. But, on the whole we are doing alright, one little step at a time.

Sounds crazy to even write that. I mean, how do you even quantify grief. As though there is even a metric or as if it's even a thing to be measured. For the most part its complete bollocks. No one can quantify it. It's personal, it's individual, and no two situations or people are the same. There are no rules, no script, no recipe and quite honestly you make it up as you go along. Some are more fortunate to have better support that others and some can process it more freely than others. Some can get out of bed on a morning and some cant. How you deal with grief does't matter. At least from a time perspective. Time is the only thing we cant control. Yet it's the one thing we fight and punish our selves over more than anything else.

You fight time as you try and beg yourself to recall memories you fear you have lost. You fight time as you try to take in every single second when you know time is futile and time is literally running out. Then you fight time as you punish yourself to recover faster than you quite frankly need to. Time is something I think about a lot.

But, time is not really what really want to talk about. I want to share one thing I have come to understand this this past year. When Hannah died I went outside the hospital and sat on my own in the sunshine. No rhyme or reason why I did this and I think about it often. It's strange that's what I wanted to do, I left everyone upstairs and had this deep feeling I wanted to leave. I had the bracelets she wore when she died and I held them tight. I took a picture of them in my hand and that has been shared often.

I think about if I could go back to that point and sit next to myself on that wall and talk to myself what I would say. In all honesty, now, I would tell myself that everything that was going to happen to me, all the emotion, the pain, the sadness, all of those really dark days, all of that, each and every step of it, is just love. I'd tell myself that when you can't watch videos of her because you are crying so much, that its just love. I'd tell myself that when I struggle to get out of bed on those really tough day, it's just love. I'd put my hand on my shoulder and look myself in the eye and say, "Its just love".

When I came to realize that, and I don't mean hearing someone else say it, but genuinely figure it out for myself I felt a small little sense of relief. I understand it's okay to not be okay now. I accepted that pretty early and I no longer fight it. But now I understand, or at the very least accept, I feel the way I do because of love.

I was lucky enough to love something so incredible and precious and amazing and now that its gone, at least in physical terms, well why shouldn't I feel this way. I wish it wasn't the case. Some days I literally long to just hear her voice, but I don't punish myself for missing her as much as I do. How can you punish yourself for loving something so much. It was a gift. I was Hannah Barry's Daddy and that my friends, to me, is better than anything else you could ever say.

The longing and the pain is because I loved her more than anything else in the world. I can't punish myself for that. In a way the pain is good thing because it reinforces to me how much I loved her. It's the price some of us unfortunately have to pay for it. I hope those of you who don't know the pain, do not waste what you have.

This does not mean any of it is easier by understanding this. I still have rough days and its still hard. I still have that thought each day when I wake up and realize it's all still very real. I doubt that will ever leave me. I still have days when it hurts so hard but at least now I have a reason to understand or at least explain to myself why. I still have everything to piece together and what happened will still break my heart a thousand times a day. But I will not punish or fight myself for the way I feel. I realize now that is unfair. In a weird way its a comfort to feel that way.

I would relive those eight years, including the pregnancy, a million times over if I could, even if it at the end, every time, I had to say good bye. You see, it's just love, and grief, well grief is just a symptom of love and grief gets trumped by love every single time.

As I move forward I'll imagine myself a year on from where I am at, looking at myself with reassuring eyes and putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. I'll lean forward and tell myself it's going to be okay and in the words of Lennon and McCartney tell myself, 'All you need is love'.