Coral

I lost my mum in June, and a month later, the Northern Trust, Cruse Bereavement, contacted me. It was so timely to get that call.

So, then they followed up with a few calls after that. And then we were discussing, well, because I lived in Dundee, we were thinking it was one of those situations, well, what do we do? Do we carry on there?

So, I said I had contacted Cruse Scotland and then got speaking to the lovely Mairi. I have had a few calls, and it has just been so good. It really is priceless.

I would recommend it to anyone because it is exactly what is needed at a time like that. And a lot of people do not realise that the help is out there and the support.

It is important to have somebody from the outside and have that space to share and have a cry or whatever I needed to do just to get the emotions out.

Writing a book

The emotions were there, and it was raw, so I just started to write and pour it out. Before I knew it, I had this book and all this material, and I thought, I need to write a book, I need to get it out there.

I dedicated it to my mum. She always said I was a pen pusher when I was younger, and I have always loved writing. That is why I wrote the book in her memory.

I thought, right, okay, I will put pen to paper. And that is how it started. And before I knew it, I had the wee book. It is not a lot of reading in it, but it is enough. And it tells the story. It tells my journey, but it also then there are different types. 

There's sudden death. We had a sudden death of a neighbour. And that was tragic, and that sort of set me back a bit in my journey as well.

So, there was all this. So, I put that in the book. And then there was another time we had gone for a coffee, and we were sitting at the riverside and just watching the people going about.

Then this couple came with flowers, and I just knew they had lost somebody in the water. So, I wrote about that.

The different types of grief that I put in, and I thought, well, that is going to connect with somebody, you know, and they anticipated grief coming up to it and all that. So, that was all significant.

It helped me. It was a strength. It helped to pour out the emotions. And then when I look back and read the book myself, I am like, wow, that was heavy stuff, and that was intense, but it lets me see my progress, where I was in the raw emotions.

And how I feel that bit better now, and it has helped me in my journey.

Coping with grief

Reach out. There's support there, and you never feel abandoned or isolated. It is okay to fall apart for five minutes in the day.

If you are distraught and you cannot come out of that, it is time to seek professional help.

My experience was such a peaceful one with my mum, but not everybody has that, and it can be traumatic. I am not saying I did not have trauma with it, but certainly, I was one of the fortunate ones that it was a nicer passing.

But not everybody has that benefit or is fortunate enough to go through that. So, I would just say reach out, and if things are not getting better or you feel hopeless, never be on your own with that because it is not good.

How Cruse Scotland helped me

It helped me to make sense. That is the name of my book, Making Sense of Grief. It helped me to make sense of it.

It helped to get reassured that that was natural, what I was feeling was natural.

Also, it helped to hear that and to hear somebody who had done that training and had been speaking to a lot of people, and that was normal. And it is nice to know that it is normal to have all these emotions.