A letter to my younger self - published in Letters from the Grief Club: How we live with loss
On complex grief and autism.
To my 8-year-old self,
I want to tell you, that things will get better, and quickly. But that would be a lie. And we have always preferred the truth, to supposed comfort. That’s where this all begins. Although your Granny is old. Nurses are visiting more often. Relatives are visiting more often. No one tells you, that she is dying. I am still on your side on this one – how can you be expected to figure out an event, that you have never experienced? The only knowledge you have of death is from Sunday school. Jesus dies, but he returns.
The memory is still very bright and clear – you are getting into the bath with your younger brother. A shout for your aunts, who are helping. 12 of Granny’s 13 children stand around her bed, as she dies. The doctor who confirms the time of death, is big and burly, with black curly hair, and glasses with large frames. The image of the coffin being carried down the hall, the shine of the polished mahogany, and the smell. The smell is the strongest memory. It is not the smell of death itself. Rather it is the smell of a body, preserved. The powder and the embalming. Disinfectant now, in your Granny’s veins, instead of blood.
Some things, you forget. For a time. Like the panic attacks, in the nights following her death. You don’t feel able to sleep in your bedroom, once hers. You cannot sleep the night of her death. Your thoughts are many, and they are coming fast. Where has Granny gone? Has she gone, could her ghost be here? Is she watching me? Is she in heaven? Will I go to heaven? What if I go to hell? You sleep, uneasily, on the floor beside your brothers’ beds.
It is 17 years, before you remember.
To my 15-year-old self,
I want to tell you, that you are not to blame. You will eventually figure this out, but there will be many years, spent in guilt. After Granny dies, you turn to God, to cope with your anxiety and grief. Willie is your favourite uncle. You see him at least once a week, sometimes more, growing up. Him and your aunt Violet, bought you and your younger brother, pet rabbits after Granny died. Whenever you stay at his house, he always gives you money to buy chips.
You know, he is sick. You know he has cancer. But you are studying for your GCSEs, and there are long gaps between your visits. The week that he dies, da takes you to visit him. Willie is weak, and so much thinner. Far from the jolly cheeks, and laughter filling most of your memories of him. You kissed him goodbye. Some part of you knows that the end will be soon. A single tear rolls down onto his cheek. Yet, you still believe it can be different. I guess, you are in denial. You beg God to not take him.
The night he dies, you are at a dance with school friends. They aren’t really your friends, and you don’t really want to be there. But in rural Northern Ireland, you take what you can get. You are yearning for escape. But that is years away. That night, you kiss a boy, for the first time. You don’t want to. You hate it. You do it, to fit in.
You wake to a text from your mum: you need to come home.
To my 25-year-old self,
I want to tell you, that things eventually do, get better.
Waking to the news, that your friend and mentor, Lyra McKee, has been shot dead sets off the same reaction to waking to the news, that your uncle Willie has died. Very briefly, you are highly distressed. Very quickly, you pull yourself together. And for many months, you seem unaffected. Until you are hit with a huge depression, and sense of loss. Both times, the suicidal thoughts are strong.
You do find out why, you have delayed grief. You find out why death often destabilises you more than peers – no change is so final, than death. You find out why you remember so many small details, from your Granny’s death, 17 years ago.
You are autistic. Your mind does not experience grief in a linear way. It is more difficult to process and accept death. You are diagnosed not long before your 26th birthday, whilst during delayed grief for Lyra. You quit your job, move to the other end of the country, and cry your eyes out to a mental health nurse at A & E.
I don’t want to tell you too much of the hardest times of the past year, because I want to give you hope, most of all. You will go full time self-employed and finally make your living writing, find security and safety renting alone in Yorkshire, and complete counselling. You become the happiest and most stable, you have ever been.
The diagnosis of autism doesn’t make the grief disappear. But it makes it understandable. You never can answer, all the questions you wish you could. Sometimes there can be no answers or order. In grief, we must come to accept, the unpredictability of life.
You can read this reflection and many other from young people on dealing with grief in Letters from the Grief Club: How we live with loss, published by Jessica Kingsley in conjunction with Let’s Talk About Loss.