{"id":1391,"date":"2016-10-04T08:40:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T07:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/?p=1391"},"modified":"2016-10-05T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T11:40:11","slug":"read-and-listen-remembering-in-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/?p=1391","title":{"rendered":"Read and Listen : Remembering In September"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sept-images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We were really pleased to have Siobhan\u00a0O’Reilly-Calthrop visit us and share a little of \u00a0her \u00a0story with us.Siobhan is a freelance writer \u00a0and author of \u00a0the blog \u00a0‘ Everyone Else Is Normal ‘<\/h3>\n

After reading Siobhan’s blog here please click the podcast below to hear her chatting with Alex in our studio.<\/h3>\n

<\/h1>\n

Remembering 21 September:<\/h1>\n

bereavement 31 years on<\/em><\/h1>\n
POSTED ON <\/span>EVERYONEELSEISNORMAL<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

9\/11 is a difficult date for thousands of people around the world. \u00a0For our family, it is\u00a021 September, today\u2019s date. \u00a0It was 31 years ago today when\u00a0tragedy struck: whilst driving the family home from a cousin\u2019s wedding my dad suffered a minor stroke. He was on the motorway. \u00a0My 17 year old sister died, my father suffered a serious head injury, my mother injuries to her spine, my brother\u2019s minor injuries. I first wrote about it 3 years ago in\u00a0\u2018September: seasons of mist and mellow sadness\u2019<\/a>. Check this out if you\u2019re not familiar with my story.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s hardly surprising this date is seared into my family\u2019s collective memory as one to endure, mark, recoil from\u00a0or simply struggle through, depending on one\u2019s mood. \u00a0For the first 10-15 years, we did all of the above, but usually quietly: my father, having a compromised memory would often not even be aware of the date, and so we would be left wondering how much to remind him, caught between the importance of marking it as a family or diplomatically sweeping it under the carpet.<\/p>\n

To everyone else but us it was an ordinary, banal date. Best-before-dates on the food in the fridge, diary dates innocently suggested for drinks,\u00a0long boring work meetings were all laced with significance that no one else understood.<\/p>\n

But in recent years\u00a0the date has started to lose its potency. \u00a0I turn the calendar and there it is, sitting there as it always has, yet this time it sits there innocently, without threat and little foreboding.\u00a0I sometimes even forget its imminent approach and am caught short\u00a0when browsing the vegetable aisle in Sainsbury\u2019s, as I was today. \u00a0\u201cOh, its tomorrow,\u201d I think quietly, berating myself for not being aware.\u00a0The overloaded busyness of life sometimes renders me myopic.<\/p>\n

I used to feel bad about not remembering till the day before, as if\u00a0I was undervaluing my sister. \u00a0I now see it\u00a0as a sign that the tragedy, the death no longer has such a hold on my present. \u00a0For sure its presence is very real: I usually spend much of the day with a small lump in my throat and a strange far away look in my eye. \u00a0 But the date\u00a0no longer weighs so heavily; when I stumble upon it I don\u2019t shy away, instead I pick\u00a0it up and accept it for what it is. \u00a0I grieve for a sister I now hardly know, but more so\u00a0for the toll that tragic day took on my poor parents and brothers, and myself.<\/p>\n

What is interesting is that the grief has taken a different form and a different guise, albeit somewhat softer and easier to bear. \u00a0A propos of nothing, I might find myself suddenly stricken with sadness at what my father had to deal with. \u00a0I might be driving the car or listening to a piece of music I know he loved, and I\u2019ll suddenly be\u00a0gripped with a deep sense of how it affected him. Or I may be at some event that involves children and fathers, and be caught short with an understanding of the loss he and my mother had to bear.<\/p>\n

I grieve less for the loss of a person, more for what was lost \u2013 the relationships, health, cousins -and \u00a0what changed irrevocably that day. \u00a0As I grow older, my understanding of that loss deepens. \u00a0I am, after all, almost at the age my parents were at the time of the accident. \u00a0My sister is, conversely, now closer in age to my 12 year old daughter\u2026.<\/p>\n

Not long ago, when my children were small, I went through a fresh kind of mourning for my sister, but it was more for the absence of a relationship that never was. \u00a0It was a time in my life when I particularly would\u2019ve loved the advice, support, friendship, and cousins for my kids. \u00a0I still deeply miss having no sister or extra cousins for my kids to visit but I guess I have come to terms with it.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0parents are the ones whose lives I can now relate to and whose pain I can only just begin to feel\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\u00a0just. \u00a0I will never know what it is like to lose a child, as my mother has.\u00a0For\u00a0that reason, the grief will never be as sharp as it is for her on this date, and it has the chance to lose its edge.<\/p>\n

Instead, it is the implications of \u2018the Accident\u2019 in all its\u00a0complexity that bring a sadness\u00a0that I have to swallow and bravely face.<\/p>\n

But I will always remember the 21st of September.<\/p>\n

Listen: \u00a0 Alex and Siobhan in the studio<\/p>\n

Remembering in September<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Sib.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were really pleased to have Siobhan\u00a0O’Reilly-Calthrop visit us and share a little of \u00a0her \u00a0story with us.Siobhan is a freelance writer \u00a0and author of \u00a0the blog \u00a0‘ Everyone Else Is Normal ‘ After reading Siobhan’s blog here please click the podcast below to hear her chatting with Alex in our studio. Remembering 21 September: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":[],"categories":[1,14,15,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1391"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1403,"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions\/1403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bereavement.co.uk\/Media-Centre\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}