On My Cloud: bereavement

Showing posts with label bereavement. Show all posts

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

Your Hallelujah

One of my favourite things about this time of year is listening to Christmas music. Over the last few years I’ve really enjoyed Leona Lewis’s album Christmas, With Love, which delivers the perfect balance of fun and lower-tempo songs, originals and classics, and really showcases lots of different sides of her personality and musical talent. Anyway, one of the slower tracks on the album is Your Hallelujah, a beautiful, emotionally charged song. I was driving home from work the other day and found myself almost in tears when the song came on, which compelled me to write a few words about the song and what it means to me.

The song, for me, brings absent loved ones to mind. Not just my own, but others’ too. In fact, the first time I heard it was around the time I’d found out a colleague had lost his dad. I didn’t even know the guy that well and he’d probably think it a bit strange if he knew this, but I felt quite affected by the incident and wished there was something I could’ve done to help. I remember thinking of this guy and his family when the song came on, and now it reminds me of other people whose absence is always felt more at this time of year.

Remembering lost loved ones at Christmas

The first verse and chorus of Your Hallelujah go like this:

Winter's cold, in the light
Somebody's waiting
Feel the warmth, safe and sound now
All the joy, all the fears
You can let go now
Watch the snow gently fall down

Someone needs you
Someone loves you
Hallelujah
Now you're coming home
Hallelujah
Angels calling out to you
You can hear them sing your hallelujah

These lyrics, along with the beautiful melody, strike a chord with me and make me feel a little more connected to those I know who are no longer with us. I envisage those people at peace, and wish a little that they were coming home as the song suggests. In my post Save You I talk of a chap I knew who had recently taken his own life, and how I wished, as most of us do in these situations, that he could have known how many people would have begged him to stay. The lyric someone needs you; someone loves you reminds me that we should always make sure the people around us know how much we value them.

So, at this time of year, I feel it’s really important to tell and show our friends, family, admired acquaintances, inspiring colleagues, and any other important people in our lives, that they are important to us. That we need them and love them. And this has also got me thinking of those people who are unfortunate enough not to have any loved ones to celebrate Christmas with. When I see homeless people in the street, particularly around Christmas, I occasionally sit and have a chat with them as I think sometimes this might be more needed than a few coins or a coffee - well, actually, a chat AND a coffee is my preferred offering! – just to give them a feeling that they are valued; they are needed as much as anyone else in this world. I hope I’ll find some time this year to spread some festive cheer to the less fortunate members of my local community, perhaps even by doing some volunteering with the Salvation Army or some such organisation.

To sum up, I’m making a big effort this Christmas to make as many people around me as possible feel needed and loved. Spending as much quality time with friends and family as I can, making sure they know how grateful I am to have that time with them, and extending some of that kinship to those who may be lonely. I love that by doing this I will be lifting my own spirits as well as that of those around me (hopefully!) and hope that you will all do the same and have a very Merry Christmas :)

Monday, 12 January 2015

Save You

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I write this post with a somewhat heavy heart but at the same time feeling inspired. I received some bad news over the weekend: Gary Dighton, a chap who I used to work with and a prolific part of the local cycling community that I’m a part of, took his own life on Friday. As is usually the case in these situations, everyone who knew him is shocked and saddened by the news.

I’m not so good at receiving news like this. When I was told, the first thing I said was “which Gary?”, knowing full well who was being spoken of but unable to accept what had happened. Once I realised it was true, my first thought was that I wished I could’ve spoken to him, found out what was troubling him so deeply that he saw no other way through, and tried to help him find that alternative path. “I wish I could save you”, to use a lyric from the emotive song that I’ve used to name this post.

This has led me to a bit of a period of self-reflection. I realised that for me, possibly the most upsetting element of the whole situation is knowing that his family and close friends – people I know and am very fond of – are going through such a horrendous time. I know that because, as you may have read in my post The Stairway to Heaven… one of my brothers took his own life when we were teens, which also probably makes me more sensitive to hearing this kind of news. But the other thing I realised is that even though this area is so close to my heart, I’ve never taken a great deal of interest in it.

What I mean by that is I haven’t spent time reading research papers on suicide, I tend to skip past posts about suicide prevention when they pop up on social media, and I’ve never had the urge to raise money specifically for suicide prevention charities. I’ve gotten thinking about this over the last few days and have realised this is probably a subconscious self-preservation thing. It’s just too close to home so I avoid it and channel my passion elsewhere.

I hope to inspire people to discover optimum wellbeing

Instead, I have become enormously enthusiastic and passionate about wellbeing; about helping people make the most of life and getting through distress and trauma. I guess that may have come from a fascination over how people react to trauma, based on my family experiences growing up. But what I’ve realised over the last few days is that by doing this I’m actually indirectly working on suicide prevention too.

My passion, my goal and my life’s work is to teach people about how to optimise their wellbeing; how to be self-aware, know when something needs to change and how to change it to maintain and improve wellbeing. Receiving that terrible news over the weekend has reinforced that what I’m doing is right: if I can reach out to people and make them realise that there are lots of things they can do to get out of those horrible, dark places, as well as inspiring people to truly make the best of a life that’s already quite good, perhaps I can make some sort of contribution to preventing people from reaching that point where they simply can’t make it through another day.

I generally believe that there’s always something good that comes from even the most devastating situations: in this case, the loss of a local legend has strengthened my passion for helping people through distress and made me realise that my aspirations hit even closer to home than even I realised before this point. With a lot of hard work and a bit of luck, I hope that my life’s work will help many, and in some cases even ‘save you’ from the depth of despair. The fight for a healthier, happier society continues.

Wednesday, 2 July 2014

Forever: Heart-Wrenching and Heart-Warming Songs to help you through bereavements

In my previous post I looked at songs to help you through a break up. This time I’m looking at another type of difficult life event: losing loved ones. I don’t want to be morbid, just the opposite really! - There are some really beautiful songs that I’d like to share, and hope some of them strike a chord with you in some way.

To Where You Are by Josh Groban

Those of you who know me well will know I was a huge G4 fan when they were around. It was them who introduced me to this beautiful song, so it’ their version I’m sharing with you here.