Eat more cake.

January 24th, 2011 |Published in Uncategorized | Link to this Post| 2 replies

I’ve almost finished a training course with Cruse, an amazing organisation which seeks to help people through grief. It’s a completely free service, nobody gets paid, and everyone is highly trained and supervised.

The training course has been 60 hours of analysing grief, and trying to answer that most difficult question – what do you say to someone who is grieving?

The answer, you may be disappointed to know, is that there is nothing you can say. Very often when people contact Cruse, they are looking to be told something that will guarantee comfort, anything to lessen the pain, and very often it is not about what you say, it’s about what you don’t say. It’s about how you listen.

Grief is strange, it’s shocking, and it makes people feel like they are losing their minds. It is often referred to as ‘The Wave’, in the way it ebs and flows, receding for a calm period and then crashing over you like a tsunami.

This isn’t something that necessarily stops, it can last for years, it can last forever.

For some people, a grief that initially consumed their every waking moment does not get smaller, it simply exists alongside everything else in their life. This does not mean the end of all happiness. They may never ‘get over’ it, but they will learn how to live with it.

Any kind of grief is normal, sadness, depression, anger, denial, mania, acceptance, resignation, exhaustion, because there is not one prescribed way to grieve, just as there is not one prescribed way to ‘be’.

The most important thing you can tell anyone is that what they are feeling is exactly what they should be feeling, there is no wrong way to grieve. Grief is appropriate to your relationship with that person. It is, in its own way, a tribute.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

My friend died last week, and honestly, everything you just read feels like empty words. Ezzat Taher El-Barbery was a remarkable person. He deserved to beat the cancer that took him, he fought like a survivor.

My favourite memory of him (apart from a laugh that could have deafened you if you sat too close), was when I was 18.  I was going through a bit of dark time, and sat in the pub lamenting how bloody hard everything felt.  I felt suffocated and was desperate for a break, a day away from it.  The next morning, at 4am, my phone rang.  It was Ez, sat outside my house in his car waiting to take me out for the day, no excuses, you wanted to go somewhere, so we’re going.  I was less than impressed at the alarm call and refused to go unless I could bring my pillow.  Hours later I called my parents from Brighton, where we spent the day on the beach in the rain, breathing in the fresh air, clearing the cobwebs.  There was no room for self pity when Ez was around.  He made life sunnier, even on the darkest day.

 This was written by one of his best friends , and so was this, and they describe him so beautifully. 

I don’t know how many people are reading this, I know most of you never knew Ez, but if you could spend just one moment sending some love to his courageous wife Nini, that would be a very special thing to do.

 I can only hope of living life the way he did.  He was inspirational in the truest sense of the word. 

 He had a gigantic smile, and a heart to match.  He was the best of us.