Triggers.

Since losing Stephen I’ve found my grief triggered by both the predictable and the unpredictable. From the first time a baby was in our home after losing him, to watching a film where a grown adult died and breaking down in the cinema, you can’t always make sense of what will cause a wave to hit you.

These are some of the things that have caused me to break down, have flashbacks, disassociate or any of the other million symptoms of grief and PTSD. They’re not anyone’s fault (ok, maybe the last one is) and they don’t always feel as heavy on my soul, but they have all caused a reaction in the last 8 months.

• My milk still being there months later and finding the last syringe in the freezer.
• People dying in someone’s arms in films give me flashbacks to holding Stephen as we lost him.
• Pregnancy announcements
• Birth announcements
• Babies in hospital
• Other people’s losses
• Adverts of happy families
• Packing to to away and realising how much more we’d need to fit in the car if he was with us
• Doing anything at all that we wouldn’t have done if he’d been home.
• Holding something that is a similar weight to Stephen, such as my dog when she rests her head on the shoulder he liked to sleep on.
• Buying presents for other people’s children
• Seeing parents take their children for granted
• Seeing his room full of charity items instead of his things.
• Forgetting his toy when we stay away from home and the overwhelming guilt for leaving him behind.
• Baths. I used to sing to him when I was in the bath and pregnant. I spent hours talking to him in there.
• The ringtone Steve had while Stephen was in hospital because it meant they were calling us with bad news
• People asking if I have children, want more children or telling me I can always have another.

I could easily double this list, and add a nice accompanying one of weird places I’ve cried (the cinema, supermarkets, in the middle of a smear test….)

Grief is not predictable. It has no expiry date. There is no set format to follow. The world is a much scarier place now, I can’t pretend to have rose tinted glasses anymore. I’ve seen the worst the world can do and not only am I terrified of being a victim of it again, but I am constantly reminded of what I went through.

So please, be gentle with your grieving friends, regardless of who they have lost. It’s a scary road to walk down and we sometimes just need the space to feel what we need to feel, even if it seems irrational from the outside.