By Sara, whose dad died from a brain tumour in 2014
Life after loss will never be the same again. It might look the same to outsiders and you might become very good at pretending all is okay but it most certainly is not and it never will be again.
Grief doesn’t care where you are or what you’re doing when it decides to make an appearance. Whether you’re doing the weekly food shop, driving to meet some friends or working out at the gym, it can hit you. And the overwhelming and exhausting way it can make you feel can be just as devastating as the day you first felt it.
There isn’t anything that happens where I don’t wonder what you would think or how you would respond. I try to remember how you reacted to even the smallest of things in life and I just wish I could show you certain things and see what you think.
I see you everywhere yet nowhere. Sometimes I am so sure in my head that you’re there or will be somewhere when I arrive. But of course when you’re not it breaks my heart all over again.
Since losing my papa, who was my best friend and hero, it’s made me realise that I will one day lose other hugely important people to me in my life and that thought and knowledge in itself becomes irrational, consuming and completely and utterly draining. You simply never know what is around the corner.
About Sara Kettleborough
”I lost my papa, John, to a glioblastoma in February 2014. He had surgery on my 24th birthday in the October before in an attempt to remove it but it simply wasn’t enough and he passed away just four months later. To say I miss him just isn’t enough. I would give absolutely anything for him to have been at my wedding and for him to meet my son, his grandson Henry John William. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have had the most incredible papa but at the same time I feel incredibly heartbroken at having lost him so young.”
You can follow Sara on Instagram, @sarakettlefish
