My beautiful 36 year old daughter died 6 weeks ago

I am so very sorry to hear this, I can not begin to imagine how you must feel. Please share your feelings with someone close to you and get some support to help you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I’m so sorry, it is utterly cruel and my heart goes out to you. Please keep talking to us and those around you whenever you need. I hope it’s not inappropriate but I read this poem the other day and thought it was a beautiful description of love after death:

 "Walk Within You"

If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.

Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.

For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy stored,

The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,

The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,

For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.

What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.

So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,

Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,

And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,

Be still.
Clear your eyes.
Breathe.

Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.

Thank you for that x

I am sorry to hear of your loss , malignant Melanoma is actually the same cancer I have. You mentioned you were finding it hard to get through this. I wondered if you had seen the ask an expert section? as well, I’ve put a link below.

https://community.macmillan.org.uk/cancer_experiences/ask_the_expert/ask_bereavement_support/discussions

When my cousin passed away I found it comforting to have a read through some of Wendy’s replies, I haven’t posted there myself. 

No I haven't seen that section, I will have a look.  Thank you.

Dear Erica

My heart goes out to you, my Daughter passed away January this year a month before her 23rd birthday.

She had a very aggressive form of breast cancer.

We take each day as it comes, we talk about her all the time.

I have good days and bad days and somehow we manage.

if I can be of any help please feel free to contact me.

everyone grieves differently and in there own way xxx

Thank you so much for your reply.  I am the same in that I have better days and bad days.  It seems so unreal, how can it be??  My 90 year old parents are still alive!!  How can that be when my daughter has gone??  I ffeel like my heart is breaking.

Dear Erica, my heart breaks for you. My mum died 2 months ago. I don't know - people say to me that there is no right way to do this thing called grief, no wrong way either. I try to think of what mum would expect me to do and that is to keep my head up and get on. She always made me think that nothing was impossible for me and so the future shouldn't be either. It is so tough to keep that in my mind and sometimes i want to just put my head down and not come back up again, but I do and somehow one day becomes the next. Keep breathing. When it hurts so badly, just keep breathing. 

I understand you totally Erica, I am slowly getting used to the constant ache.

My eldest daughter and I were talking the other night and she said "nothing will ever be the same again without my little sister everything has changed, so I guess we have to try and make a new normal for us don't we mum"

it's hard but that is what we are trying to do, I can't hug my little one or kiss her anymore but I can still talk to her and remember the good times ... the times before the cancer.

life does go on, we go on because we have to, somehow we managed and we all have our different ways of coping/getting through the day.

I say ,"good morning," every day to her.  I can't bear the thought that one day she might not be the first thing that springs onto my mind the second I wake up.

Like you, I am so sad that my other daughter has lost her big sister and that her children have lost the best Aunty ever.   A new 'normal' without her is unbearable.

I wonder how one day becomes one night and then...another day.