Dean’s story

I just wanted to share my story since my mum passed away in 2019, I tend to never open up about this and this will only be the third time I have ever spoken about it publicly.

Until 2019, I was very much a "happy go lucky guy", my partner and I had brought a wonderful little boy in to the world in 2016 and then I married my wife in 2017, rounding off a brilliant couple of years in our journey of life.

In January of 2019, After a short battle with illness, I lost my mum, my main guide in life. She was only 43 years old. She had been unwell for a matter of 2 weeks over the Christmas of 2018 and in the end Pneumonia took her from us. This absolutely rocked me mentally, I really went within myself and really peeled away from everyone and everything I knew and loved.

I spent the month after her passing and prior to her funeral, sitting in a bubble of regret, self-doubt, worry and sadness amongst other things.

The day of her funeral is a day I try to both forget and remember, but one thing i do remember so vividly from the day is something the Humanist said whilst talking about her, "Let us not remember her for what she is but instead what she was", and that is what I have tried to do every single day since then, Remembering her as a wonderful mother to myself and my brother and 2 sisters and a wonderful human with not a bad bone in her body, who would give her last to make sure you did not go without.

In the middle of 2019, we added a little cat to our family - Little Thor, and what a ray of sunshine he was for all of us, a somewhat welcomed distraction to the bad things going on.

In December of 2019 after 13 months of navigating the ins and outs of buying a house, we finally moved in to our first "proper" house, something my mum was over the moon with when she found out and was proud as punch

January 2020 rolled around and my wife and I had found out that we were expecting another baby, but a short number of weeks later, our world came crashing down again when the words "we had lost the baby", were spoken by the fantastic doctors at the Royal.

The rest of 2020 was a blur, as it would have been for most with Covid, but this gave me a lot of time for reflection, both good and bad.

I had a loving family and with that came a support chain like nothing else I have ever had in my life, I had a chance to spend every waking minute with my wife and (at the time) 3 year old son, time I never thought I would get in the hectic hustle and bustle of Adult Working life, but on the flip side of that, there was a lot more time spent thinking of the harder things of life, Money worries, life worries, and reflecting on a life without My Mum.

In 2021, my wife and I again found out we were going to be having another baby, and once again a few weeks later, we were devastated to find out that this little bundle of joy would not be joining us in the world. Down in the dumps and wondering "why us" we decided to add a new Cat to our family - Little Loki, Again a very welcomed distraction to the bad things happening around us.

The following 2 years, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, like the grey had lifted and I felt a massive amount of clearness mentally, And we added our first dog to the family, a Shih Tzu named Lola.

In August of 2023, our worlds were rocked once again with the very sudden passing of our cat Loki, He developed a massively blocked bladder and was something that not even medication was able to shift.

Then in April 2024, We lost our other cat Thor to the exact same thing, again absolutely out of nowhere.

I have gotten the support and I am now feeling back to "normal", I am now more open an honest about how I am feeling and no longer letting my pride in the way of getting the help I need, The amount of ups and downs in my life over the last 7 or so years, are probably more than most people deal with in a lifetime, but I am proud to say, I may not be perfect mentally 100% of the time, but I am working on it day by day.

If you have gotten this far, thank you for reading and providing a platform for me to share this in the hopes of helping someone else.