By Anna Ambrose-Lynch, whose mother died two weeks after her father
1. My loss was not as I’d imagined it would be
I had warned my friends and husband - the day my dad died was the day I would lose my mind. I wouldn’t be able to live, cope or breathe without him. He was my best friend, my confidant and my safe house for my entire life. But when he died I had a two year old and a two week old. I had no choice but to be ‘OK’. I forced myself and I didn’t ‘lose it’, not straight away anyway and not in the way I thought I would. I got up every day, got dressed and put make up on, cared for my children, I went to the gym and forced my body to feel the pain. I lost myself, swallowed by grief, motherhood and crippling anxiety, barely anything of me remained.
2. My vision was coloured by a sense of loss
In the years after my parents passing it was like a tape played constantly in my mind. In coffee shops I would look at mothers and daughters - how lucky they were and they didn’t even realise. Did that girl appreciate her mum and how delicate life is? Grandparents with their grandchildren, a huge chunk of my children’s lives, now lost forever. Mother’s and father’s day, a grim reminder of what I no longer had. The sense of loss was constant, like I walked through life with ghosts.
3. When that coloured vision started to clear and I finally felt joy and happiness, I felt guilty
I had a set day once a week when I cleaned and listened to their Irish music and the memories of them flooded back and I would just cry. Each time I had been alone for nearly two years I had cried - in the car as I drove away from dropping the children at nursery, after doing the food shop, on my way to and from work. Any time I was alone, I released what built up in my facade of being ‘ok’. Then one day as I drove, a thought came to me and it totally shifted my grief to a different place, to acceptance. After that I started to see the positives in life more, the reminders of what I lacked lessened. The fog of that thick grief had started to lift and while that was great, it also brought with it guilt that I wasn’t thinking of them as much, that I no longer held vigil to their memory, that my life had started to move on, without them.
4. I started to hunger for life
My parents never materially had much. I felt so strongly that there hadn’t been enough experiences for them, they hadn’t been to enough places, they hadn’t gone on holidays abroad or experienced enough of the world or life. The things they had planned to do one hadn’t come to fruition, the sands of time had slipped away and now they had too. The sense of panic that I wasn’t ‘living’ enough grew, life felt both mundane yet insecure and precarious. Their death changed me. I wanted more for me and my children, to not just exist but to thrive, grow and experience as much of life as possible.
5. One thought moved my grief on and I finally accept reality
One day as I drove to work, listening to ‘Runnin’ by Beyonce, I remembered a day I visited my dad at the hospice, the day it finally sunk in he was leaving. I relived that moment as I had a thousand times over and suddenly the thought came to me that if I had to choose my parents and my life over, I would chose them, every time. I only had them for 30 years but it was enough. I clung to that thought like it was a raft in a stormy sea and it shifted something in me. I started to see the positives in life more, the reminders of what I lacked lessened. I no longer felt the unbearable loss. I felt gratitude for ever having them, they had been such a huge part of the tapestry of my life and I finally felt some peace.
About Anna Ambrose-Lynch
Anna was 25 when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. She had begun to accept the impending loss of her mother when three years later her father was diagnosed with Stage 4 Bowel cancer. Anna cared for and supported her parents through their illnesses and two weeks after the birth of her second child, her father died followed two weeks later by her mother.
Anna is retraining as a life coach to support women who are going through transitional periods in their lives.
You can find Anna on Instagram, @then_she_rises.
