Posts Tagged ‘Cancer’
Jessica M – My Story
Jessica M – My Story
Jessica talks about losing her grandfather at 14 when her mother was terminal, her mother and aunt died when she was 15. She felt alone until she found a peer support group
Lyss – Losing My Mother
Lyss – Losing My Mother
Lyss discusses losing her mother and how her first thought was that her mother would never meet her kids Now being a mother herself brings back many memories of her.
Lyss – My Story
Lyss – My Story
Lyss talks about being 16 and her Mom dying from cancer. The second part of her story is about miscarriages
Antoinetta – Story
Antoinetta – Story
Antoinetta tells her story of grief and her father getting lung cancer
Betsy – Anticipation
Betsy – Anticipation
Betsy discusses the anticipation of her adopted son dying of cancer and now or her aging parents
Learning from Grief
By Noelle Bailey
Grief is weird. Odd start, I know, but that was the sentence I used a lot whenever someone asked me how I was. It was never a constant feeling; it changed day to day. And still does. It’s the full gambit of emotions from sadness to anger to guilt and, though dark, even humour found its way in.
In December of 2019, I lost my father. His health had been declining for several months, and we had started the process to diagnose and begin treatment for what we knew was probably cancer. At his first appointment with his oncologist, he was immediately admitted to the ER. By the next day he was on a ventilator, and within twelve days they came to tell me that the cancer had spread everywhere. We had lost a fight we hadn’t even really begun. In March of 2022, my mother passed away after a 14 year fight with MS. It was a much different process to lose her by degrees over those 14 years, witnessing her own body turn against her while powerless to do anything to stop it.
Those are my two experiences with the strangeness of grief. They were vastly different experiences, but also similar in that they cut me in two and changed my life.
The two biggest things I’ve taken from my grieving process are these:
1. I will, for the rest of my life, miss the conversations we will never have. There are books I’ve read since they left that I would love to talk to my mom about. My dad never got to hear about my new job, and he would have loved it. Pictures people have brought me that I can never ask them about, stories I missed out on hearing. The moments of my life, big and small, that they won’t be here for is the part that takes me under every time.
2. I can grieve however I need to. It doesn’t need to look a certain way or be anything other than what I need. I struggled a lot after losing my mom with the idea that I wasn’t sad enough or broken enough because after watching her long hard battle there was a certain peace lacing itself through the pain. When we laid my parents to rest in the cemetery next to my grandparents, we played “The Rainbow Connection” sung by Kermit the Frog because that’s what my mom had always said she wanted to play to say goodbye. Then my husband, Cale, and I did a shot of Jack, like my dad and Cale did when they went out for my dad’s 60th.
I’ve never been very good at setting boundaries in my life, but I tried very hard to make sure I set them surrounding my grief. To let myself do whatever I needed to process the loss of my parents and not to let anyone tell me I should be acting or feeling a certain way. I laughed at things they would have laughed at, and when I needed to, I cried. I am slowly learning how to live in a world without my parents, and know that I will be for the rest of my life.
Katie – My Story
Katie – My Story
Katie shares about her story and losing her Dad to cancer during COVID
Sunny- Processing Different Losses During the Pandemic
Sunny- Processing Different Losses During the Pandemic
Sunny talks about how the process of losing two of his grandparents, one quickly, and one in a way that felt long and drawn out, felt. He addresses how the pandemic informed the experience of grieving a grandparent who died alone in a hospital setting compared to a grandparent who died at home, surrounded by family.
Sunny- Grieving Different Losses
Sunny- Grieving Different Losses
Sunny talks about how losing two of his grandparents felt different, even though the losses happened close together.
Rebecca – Humour and grief
Rebecca – Humour and grief
Rebecca talks about how she and her father used humour as a strategy during his illness and after he died
Ellen – “Grieving her grandmother”
Ellen – “Grieving her grandmother”
Ellen talks about her grief and the loss of her grandmother.
Cheryl and Mike – “Their Story”
Cheryl and Mike – “Their Story”
Cheryl and Mike discuss losing more than one family member. They continue to grieve Cheryl’s father and the death their daughter in a car accident.