grief gets older with you
i am not buying it a "fu*$king cake though... guest post by amber jeffrey
"I’m not sure why I’ve been hyper-fixating on my 20’s and grief. Perhaps as my 27th birthday approaches in early May and I now really feel like I’m knee deep in the later part of my 20’s. But it’s had me reflecting on how long I’ve been living and growing up with grief.
I suppose it’s important to caveat that no matter what age you are really, you do grow with grief. As you get older, the grief gets older with you too (I’m not buying it a fucking cake though, that’s really taking the biscuit). However, there is a further layer of isolation I have found in my own experience being younger and bereaved and that of my community and what they have shared with me. For some context…
My mum, Sue, died in 2016 when I was just 1 month into being 19. For years after her death, I dismissed the age I was when she died. I told myself that if I was 25, 30, 45 and so forth that it would suck. That is true. But I wasn’t allowing myself to sit with the true depth of what it meant to lose a parent whilst still in your teens. That sentence alone still breaks my heart, having ‘teen’ and ‘lose a parent’ in the same breath is just mind boggling.
I disregarded that I was in fact still a child, though I definitely didn’t think I was. I thought I had it all figured out, as most bold teenagers do. I knew the career path I wanted to go down, where I wanted to travel and who I wanted to spend my free time with. For a 19 year old, my life was going pretty well and I was swell about it. When my mum died, I remember thinking ‘Well something had to give, life can’t be that good for any one individual without the other shoe dropping’. And if I’m honest, I think I still live with that fear sometimes, that when life gets good I feel the cold hand of doom looming over my shoulder, coming to bring me back to reality.
My mum dying when I was 19 was like watching the biggest pillar of my life be smashed to bits and there was sweet fuck all I could do about it but try to piece together the debris from it and form a new patchwork life. All the things I had figured out and were set in stone all went to goop and I was now gifted with seeing the world for what it can truly offer: pain, hardship, loss and grief.
So what is a 19 year old to do when her sole care giver dies and it’s replacement is this beast called grief. Well, I can tell you what I did…I buried it deep for 3 years because no one gave me a blueprint on how to navigate grief in your late teens and early twenties. I was desperate to be normal, to not be the girl who’s mum died and could still be fun and have it too. I once had the guidance from a mother who instilled ‘you can be anything you want to be if you put your mind to it’ to having to be my own cheerleader. Yes, I had support from friends and family, but no one can put you back on course like your mum can, right?
My 20’s have consisted of mothering myself. That’s hard to write. Of being my own biggest cheerleader, confidante, compass. With that being said though, I’m proud of that. That’s partly down to my own work and of course what my mother embedded in me. Though she’s not here, she is deeply ingrained in me and my morals.
It is tiring though, and for anyone reading this, you’ll perhaps understand. That though these people might have given us the toolkit, it is so exhausting sometimes executing it. The days when life is just hard, whatever it may be, the longing to just go to mums and have a cuppa and put it all down for a second is harsh. The realisation that my metaphorical ‘safety’ net no longer exists and I have to catch myself, always.
A recent group circle attendee shared this with me and it’s stuck with me ever since. She too lives a similar experience to me. It went along the lines of:
“I knew my mum would die one day, of course, I just didn’t expect it would be now with me being this age. I guess I’m just meeting that version of me sooner than others”
Meeting that version of me sooner. wow. I thought that was really powerful. We will all lose loved ones, just some of us are there sooner than others. That’s not to diminish and say ‘You’re a winner, you got here first!’. But that for some of us in our stories, the plot thickens extremely faster than others.
Now, upon reflection from all of the above, I’ve maybe got some things to say that dare I say, am relatively grateful for. Maybe grateful is too strong of a word for it, because I’m not grateful my mum died. But as years progress, I can appreciate some of the gifts grief has taught me at such a young age. Hold the toxic positivity, this isn’t what this is. Though growing up with grief has been challenging, it has formed me into a version of myself I didn’t even know I could access. I like, no, I love the Amber today. She’s been through some shit, but she tries everyday to not let it harden her. Opting into life after loss is a choice, and I try to choose it everyday where I can. Some days are harder than others, but she tries.
Living with grief from a young age has taken from me but also given a perspective that is paramount to how I live my life. I’ve met people who haven’t experienced grief and death until they reach well into their 50’s (That’s a good gene pool) and before I used to really envy them and for real, curse them. Now, I wouldn’t say I pity them, but there is a genuine worry. I think, to (gratefully) go through life for such a long time without being touched by the hand of death is such a gift, but I also then think…’damn, it’s going to come like a tonne of bricks when it does, how will they cope?!’. I suppose they’ll have to tune into The Grief Gang pod like the rest of us ey?!
I often, as of late, think about a parallel universe where 19 year old Amber’s mum didn’t die. What would she be doing? What would she be like? What would her outlook on life be? Who knows. I try not to speculate too much, because to me, what’s the point?
This is my life, my story, my grief…and I’m just trying to make the most of it whilst I’ve still got time.
PS. You can connect with Amber and The Grief Gang here. Warmest thanks for sharing your story. If you might like to guest post, reach on out. 🤍