In the time approaching my fiftieth year I was puzzled to find myself experiencing something I can only describe as grief. It was a grief that was almost as powerful as the grief I experienced when my mother died and it had all the same characteristics – rawness, fear, despair and a sense of loss, loss, loss.
But when my mother died, something very significant in my life had happened – my mother had died. This period of grief was different. Outwardly, nothing had changed. I had not been bereaved. Give or take the odd academic year and running injury, my life was pretty much the same as it had been the year before.
So what was it that was making me cry? Why did I find myself trying to work but feeling paralysed by sadness instead? Why was I leafing through photo albums of my boy as a baby, sobbing because those days would never come again? Why did I find it so poignant seeing young people set out in the world with hearts brimming with dreams? What was it about the awareness of the passing of time that seemed almost unbearable?
Next step: Love your tears