Faith

As the late great George Michael said, "you gotta have faith"..... never more so than when you are coping with the illness or death of a loved one.

Can I start by saying, yes, religion will be mentioned in this post, but please, please stay, as faith is part of my bereavement journey and it is taking courage to be so open and to share it.

I cannot believe it is a year since I last wrote a blog post. The year has been crazy with work but also with the last 2 semesters of a university course. I deferred part of it as I did not have the head space for a while but I am waiting for my final results - hopefully I have passed and can put away the textbooks for a bit, until I have another hairbrained scheme about something else I just need a qualification in.

Those who have been following this blog will know that I have just gone into the third year of living without my dad. Today I want to step back in time, to think about the early times in my bereavement journey.

My bereavement for my dad began on the 11th July 2022, 3 days before my dad died. This was the day that me and mom were taken into an office on a hospital ward and given tea (doctors offering you tea in a room off the ward is never a good sign and if the china tea set comes out and a nurse comes in with the doctor then it's usually really bad). That day we were told my dad's stroke was more than a stroke, it was caused by septic emboli from endocarditis and the outlook was bleak. We were told that we should hope for the best but prepare for the worse. A DNACPR form was made out and we were told to just sit tight and see what happened. I'll be honest we were in a bubble and just continued to sit by dad's bedside thinking we would be the 1 in a million where a miracle happened and dad would survive.

In this difficult time, I did what I had always done in other difficult times visiting relatives in hospital and went to the hospital chapel. I picked up a prayer card and prayed for healing for my dad. I asked other Christian friends and people in my church to pray. This and sitting by his bed side was literally all I could do. 24 hours later dad's condition seemed to improve, this spurred us on, we felt (cautiously) hopeful again. 24 hours later, further emboli had travelled to his brain and he had slipped into a coma. Another 24 hours and we got the call no family ever wants to get and he'd gone.

I have had people say to me, "when your dad died, how did you cope so well"? This is interesting. It does make you question things a bit. I mean, what does coping well look like? What does coping badly look like? Who decides where your grief is on this spectrum? Personally I was worried that I hadn't cried enough and that I had been quite matter of fact at times and that as a result people may perceive that as me not caring. In reality, my heart was broken but I knew that the situtation was out of my control. I did my crying alone, sometimes in my car when driving and a song that reminded me of dad came on, more often lying in bed at night, quietly, when Mark had gone to sleep, as I didn't want to upset him or mom. If they were having an ok day, the last thing I wanted to do was bring their mood down.

People think that my pragmatic and matter of fact approach to death is because of my job. To a degree I suppose that is true - the scientific bit of my brain says "we are born, we live, we die" - it's a scientific process and ultimately death becomes us. Death is one of the only certainties in life. My attitude to death is about more than science, it is mostly about Jesus.

When dad died, I remember mom and Mark asking why God had taken him before "his time". I think this is why some people lose their faith in God at the time of a bereavement as they often feel anger at God about a life cut short. I think the answer to this question is complex as we don't know why some people live for just a second and some to be a hundred. I don't think we will ever know the answer to this this side of heaven, I don't believe we are meant to know. It really isn't our business. I believe the answer is not about "the length or his time or her time one Earth", it is about "His time" - the time of God - our eternal life.

So why did people perceive I was coping well? Why did people thing I was "so together?" Well, there is one thing that keeps me getting up every day and doing all I can to get on with life, even though my heart breaks at not being able to talk to my dad about how West Brom played at the weekend, or how it's so unfair I didn't get tickets for Oasis or whatever the important topic of the day is (never politics - guaranteed falling out!). I know that this season of my life is just a short (in comparison to eternity) period of time apart before we meet again. You see I prayed in those early days in the hospital for healing, even though the chances we were given were slim. The thing about those chances is that they are the odds of us healing during our Earthly life. As a Christian I know that healing on Earth is not always possible, but healing in Heaven is guaranteed for us. One day we will leave our Earthly body, and have a new perfect body and all that happened in the past will no longer be important.

My dad's death has not shaken my faith, it has actually strengthened it. Over the years in funerals I have been to, I have probably listened to John 14:2 so many times but never really heard it. For those who are not familiar:

In my Father's house there are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2 KJV

This passage was the basis of the sermon delivered by Rev Adam Whitley at dad's funeral, and it is a passage I have come back to time and time again in the difficult days of the last 25 months. I have imagined my dad's mansion - a dart board, a comfy sofa he could slouch on just right and a TV showing great games of West Brom through the decades (I know it would be a short programme - saying it before the Villa and Wolves fans do!) and quiz shows.

I know that our Earthly life is short, but death is a temporary separation, which is short when compared to eternity, and I am sure that me and my dad will meet again, in those mansions where dad is with his mom and dad, just keeping the sofa warm until one day we join them, and I guarantee the first thing he do is shake his head and say, "you're late, I've been waiting for you, the football's started".