I loved my mother very much. She brought me up on her own, to the best of her ability, and with the knowledge she had. Some things weren’t perfect looking back, but no one ever is, and I’m certainly not either.
4 years ago, my mother left this Earth, having cancer consume her within 2 months.
Growing up, she’d always been somewhat of a hypochondriac, and she feared death more than anyone that I’ve met. She’d had cancer 10 years ago, but it wasn’t so serious, and there was a feeling in my gut that everything is going to be ok… this time around, that gut feeling was different.
I assured my mother, day in day out, that she would be fine and okay to the point where I almost believed it myself. I knew in my gut that it wasn’t. She went from a normal weight and looking reasonably healthy to being in a hospital bed, with her family around her, telling her that we loved her, and saying our final goodbye.
When reality hits, that this person is no longer with us in the present moment, although they live through us in consciousness, you begin to feel the stress response more commonly known as Grief.
When you can no longer have a shared experience in the physical, you come to understand that the pain you feel is truly your own. You are not feeling the pain of the loved one who has passed because no one understands what that person is experiencing. I’m sure my mother felt more peace the day that she left us than the state she was in leading up to her departure.
There are a few main elements to grieving, and I’ll explain them individually.
The element of surprise.
When one does not face the reality of death being an inevitable part of life, one sets their expectations of loved ones being around forever. This means that when the inevitable time comes, you are shocked when you are alerted to the news, which triggers your fight or flight.
The magnitude of response.
When someone passes away, you feel a variable magnitude of response, dependant on the levels of unresolved issues, between you and your loved one. Imagine you and your loved one have a fight, and you finish the arguement with ‘I hate you.’ If that unresolved issue can never be dealt with if the time comes, you will have a heightened magnitude of response than if you had fixed the altercation.
Your adaptation energy.
This is simply the energy your body and mind has to adapt to a change in situation. For example, you’re on your way to the supermarket to pick something up and you notice you have a flat tyre. When you’ve had a good night’s sleep and you’re full of energy for the day this change in circumstance is relatively manageable; however if you’re half asleep and the same thing occurs the ability for your body and mind to adapt to the situation is significantly reduced causing it to feel like the world is falling apart.
These 3 core elements work hand in hand with each other. You will always grieve for a loved one, but by understanding these 3 main elements to grief you can prepare yourself for the inevitable. The main things you can do, is to bring peace in to the relationship, check up on them and look after yourself mentally and physically. Doing this lowers the element of surprise because you see it coming, reduces the magnitude of response because you have peace knowing that the relationship is peaceful, and that you have a high level of adaptation energy because you’re mentally resilient, and prepared. Its a hard topic to read about, I know, I’m only writing about this to help you
In short, the pain associated with grief comes from the inability for the relationship to be repaired or continued in the physical world.
I looked into grief a lot after the death of my mother. I wondered ‘why am I not crying so much, why am I not feeling lost, why am I not feeling this overwhelming response called grief, am I a psychopath?’ No! Its because I visited my mother every day when she was going through her cancer, I rang her, I watched her deteriorate, I expected it, I asked her questions I had always wanted to ask her and I had a beautiful relationship with her and all the beautiful experiences we had together will forever be stored within my heart.
I’d not seen my mother jump into the ocean for over 10+ years so we went and sat in front of her favourite beach, it was a cracking day and I tried to convinced her to go in.
she did.
It was the last swim she experiences in the ocean and I was the reason she went in.
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Forged Into Men 
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