July AND August #TBCSmiles...

In all the time I've collected the #tbcsmiles I haven't missed a month until last month. I have already apologised, and I really was very much grieving my Mum, and dealing with her funeral and all of the other things that need to be sorted when someone dies. My head was far too full, I didn't want to have to turn on my laptop and I just wanted to be left in peace. I guess it happens to all of us at times, and I'm glad I was able to tell myself to stop, and rest. 

I've spent a lot of time sitting in the garden staring at insects, and it's allowed me to think, and wonder, and remember a time when all of those around me now weren't there, and a cheekily-grinning and innocent little girl was.

For anyone who didn't know why I collect my smiles, it is because they are incredibly precious, but so often we let them slip by unnoticed, or forgotten. It's easy to count how many times you cried last month, but how many times did you laugh? We need to remember these times equally. They remind us we can be a success, we can make people's day a bit brighter, we can make other people laugh too. They are the reason we are here. When you strip everything back, all any of us ever really want is to be happy. Start counting the happy times, and revel in your own success with an extra grin. 

#TBCSmiles... 96 Months... 8 Years.

 8 years ago today, we woke up to find that one of our teenage children hadn't survived the night. In the early hours of the morning she had taken her own life. I wrote about it at the time, here. 

After 8 years we know that today isn't likely to be as hard as you might fear. It's not a reminder of Elspeth, because there is nothing forgotten, and mentally we know this date is coming, so we can brace ourselves for it. This is a day we can at least take off the mask and any illusion of pretending to be fine, even if we aren't. 

Any day might be interrupted with a surprise memory, a badly chosen comment, a celebrity story, or a worry about someone you know, or don't. Any day can end badly just as it can end well, but each and every day is a mundane sort of grief, a new normal that you learn to live alongside. 

There are never quite enough people for dinner, or enough washing to go in the machine, and nowadays I cook mainly in silence standing alone, without Elspeth sitting at the kitchen table chatting. I usually love cooking, but sometimes I just can't bring myself to do it. 

2,557 Days...84 Months... 7 Years...

"Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
Wake me up when September ends.
Like my fathers come to pass
Seven years has gone so fast
Wake me up when September ends..."

Our 11 year old left Primary school last month, and Facebook showed me a memory to remind me of the day he left nursery, which was 18th July 2014. It's one of the most painful images I have. My innocent littlest baby, full of promise and joy at the world, and delighted with his "Goodbye" bag of goodies. It hurts so much because it's "before", and less than a month later, his sister was dead, and we were a family full of broken people. His life wouldn't ever be so innocent again.

#TBCSmiles 2,192 Days... 72 Months.... 6 Years...

 COVID-19 has filled my life for the past 7 months. I'm not even sure how much time normal people spend thinking about it, what experience most people have, because I'm so involved in grabbing new information and reporting it. It's my special interest, and I'd be fascinated anyway, so writing about it was a natural reaction. 

In fact, I'm at relative peace with the whole COVID thing. So much so that a reader of my COVID posts, and also a friend, asked if she could send me a personalised bracelet  (£1 from every sale goes to MIND) because she had the perfect word for me. She chose CALM. I suppose I am. Mostly*. 

I've always been well aware we are just animals living on a bit of rock, and as powerful as we think we are, nature will always be bigger than all of us. I guess that helps, but it's the fact we are pre-disastered that probably really makes the difference.  

The Empty Chair...

This Christmas dinner, like the 5 before it, we will have an empty chair at our table. It's a chair that shouldn't be empty. A chair where there should be laughter, and smiles.

The empty chair is more important than anything else in the room. It represents the space in our lives, the hole we all navigate around every day. It can't be ignored, and as we go through our Christmas preparations, we plan and we buy, decorate and bake, the empty chair becomes more important.

At first it is quiet, sitting, watching. You catch it out of the corner of your eye, and you remember everything you try so hard to put to one side.

The chair gets bigger and more unavoidable as December progresses, until that innocuous piece of furniture is the loudest thing in the house. It becomes the only thing you can see when you look into the room.

Life goes on.... World Suicide Prevention Day 2019 #WSPD

Today I got up and had a wash, got dressed and made a brew. I checked my two boys were dressed and were at least thinking about having breakfast.
I had the radio on, Radio X with Toby Tarrant because Chris Moyles is on holiday again. It was one of those mornings you end up running up and down stairs loads of times because you've forgotten something, and when you get there you can't remember what it was, so you go back down and instantly remember.
I made the kids sandwiches (we've only got cheese, so no choices today) and packed their lunchboxes into their bags. Then a moment's peace. I sat down for 20 minutes with Facebook, coffee and a slice of toast.
Time for school. We spent a good 5 minutes trying to get everyone out of the door with the correct footwear, coat and bags, and then had to turn back for a forgotten pair of glasses when we were 200 yards up the road. Dropped the kids off, came home, fed the pets.

It was entirely mundane.

Ellen Lives On by Lynda Haddock Young Adult Fiction Review (Sent by Matador).

Ellen Lives On is a young adult novel by Lynda Haddock which opens with the loss of a parent to suicide. This is a positive and empowering book, which offers real support to young people in the same situation, but obviously it has darker moments and for some readers it may be a hard read at first.

Ellen is 15 and returns home from school to find her front door blocked and no response from her mother inside. She calls on her neighbours for help, they ring the police, and her life stops. Just like that.

Instantly reading this book, it's obvious the author Lynda Haddock understands. She explains very well the confusion and dream-like state you enter. The way you are no longer in control and life happens to you. Everything you expected is turned on it's head and the plans you had made for years just don't count any more.

The police are in charge of your home, social workers and other people you barely know direct you. Strangers know who you are and express their sympathy for you in the street. And when you are told it'll never be the same again, it really won't.

Goodbye to the original Twisted Firestarter...

I was gutted when I heard this morning that Keith Flint had died. He was 2 years older than me. Something I loved to remind our big kids when they were teenage rebels listening to The Prodigy in their bedrooms.

I really hoped that we'd hear his previous excesses had taken their toll on his body and he'd quietly suffered a heart attack or other organ failure in his sleep. I hoped he'd worn himself out prematurely but at least he'd had fun doing it.

The news that he'd taken his own life made me very sad.

Keith Flint (1969 - 2019) @allontheboard. The jilted generation thank you for the music. Rest in Peace. Love and Prayers to your family and friends.#TheProdigy pic.twitter.com/H3sat9m6j0

— All on the board (@allontheboard) March 4, 2019

I used to feel so disappointed when a celebrity died from suicide. Celebrities have all of those young people hanging onto their words. Vulnerable, confused and impressionable youngsters who will be devastated to hear that they've lost a hero. Now I know there's no point in disappointment, it changes nothing and it's not the right emotion. A person dies from suicide just as surely as they die from cancer. They don't have a choice at the end, because they don't see any possible way forward. It isn't about giving up. They lose the fight.

Not 21....

At 21 I imagined Elspeth to be in her 2nd or 3rd year of uni. She wouldn't have cut her hair short, and she wouldn't ever have been a person who wears loads of make up. She'd have learned to embrace her quirks a little more and found friends who loved her enough to get past her tantrums. She would still know more about Kanye West than his Mum and she'd still be the funniest person in the building whenever she chose to be.

At 21 she would love the freedom adulthood brings, she'd craved it for so long, but she'd also be a tiny bit terrified of the world and would need reassurance she was doing okay. By now she'd be more confident with the women she was, hopefully accepting her curves and not already spending her life on the eternal 'diet' we women come to accept and expect. She'd be an okay cook, and she'd live mainly on 3 different recipes, and cake. She loved cake. She inherited her father's love of sweeties too.

Why we should talk about suicide #WorldSuicidePreventionDay

In the UK today, if you are aged 5-34 you are more likely to die from suicide than anything else. It is the biggest killer of our younger population. Just think about that for a minute. More people die by their own hand than for any other reason. It takes away our children, our parents, our siblings, our friends.

But we don't talk about suicide. No-one talks about suicide.

It's really hard to talk about suicide. It's really hard for me to write about suicide.

When our 16 year old died all of the older members of our family had counselling. We'd have been completely lost without that opportunity to talk. To sit away from the children and let it out and sob and be angry and say "it's not fair". To express our worries and fears, to find out if what we felt was 'normal'. To find out if our children's response was 'normal'. To keep us going.

My youngest 2 children were under 7 when they lost their sister and deemed too young for counselling. Children under 7 react differently and in general it's expected they should be able to cope. While that might work in some cases, our whole household was shattered and those young boys had a lot to try and understand.

As time went on and my boys still struggled with their sister's death, we were dumbfounded at how to help them. I built myself up and then emailed a UK charity for children who are bereaved.

I was given internet addresses where I could download information sheets and signposted to another well-known children's charity. The information sheets were more for advice immediately following a loss and didn't really help. They focussed on Cancer and long-term illness. I contacted charity no.2.

Children's charity no.2 simply suggested that what I needed was someone who was actually more used to dealing with our specific type of loss. They directed me to a charity for people who have lost loved ones to suicide. Maybe they were right. Maybe it wasn't children's charities I needed.

It could be you... #MHAW2018

This post is for Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 and carries trigger warnings.

For most of my life Mental Health was something I felt affected other people. Don't get me wrong, I've had my fair share of sobbing into my pillow, not wanting to leave the house, drinking a few too many because it made my reality further away. My life has not been plain sailing, but in general I seemed to skim round all the sinkholes and emerge relatively unscathed.

As a teenager I was a volunteer for MIND, spending my evenings playing pool and smiling yet again at photos of a stranger's family and great times, carried around as precious treasure. A reminder that life can be good, and a reason to carry on. I learned quite quickly about some of the realities of poor mental health.

Was Chester Bennington A Coward?

Over the past few days suicide has barely been out of the headlines. Chester Bennington has been discussed a lot in our house and always with the same end to the conversation. Suicide isn't harmless, it has a massive, rippling negative effect, and anyone who treats it with purely sympathy is sweeping a lot under the carpet.

There's been a real backlash condemning Brian Welch for his outburst against his friend, and I don't agree with it at all. I think he's allowed to call his friend a coward. He will think that. He'll also spend time thinking his friend was selfish, nasty, foolish, wasteful, hurtful. When you end your own life, the people left behind will without a shadow of a doubt spend time thinking that all the pain they are feeling, and the hurt and sadness that they and your loved ones, your friends and everyone else is going through, is due to you.

As those who are left try to make sense of the shock, as they scramble to rearrange what is left of their life into some sort of workable order, and struggle to see why they are bothering, they will find it almost impossible not to think of the person who died as a coward.

Blaming the person who died isn't an option because we know full well it's not their fault. As Brian Welch found out, you'll be pilloried for suggesting it. Everyone will wave their fists and say that 'you don't understand'. You do. You know that actually the person who died was the one unable to understand. Right there and at that second, they forgot why they shouldn't. They couldn't see the right path ahead and you weren't there to save them. So you can't blame them, you have to try to lay blame somewhere else. Probably at least partly with yourself.