Emily’s story

Hello, my name is Emily and I am 23 years old. My dad, Jason, died suddenly abroad whilst on holiday with my mum on the 11th December 2023. I was 21 and in my last year at university when I felt the ground slip out from underneath my feet and my world crumbled to pieces around me. Unbeknownst to us all, he had ischemic heart disease and suffered a massive heart attack on the beach in Cape Verde, Boa Vista. I had just arrived back to my university house after Christmas shopping when I saw a message from my mum asking me to call her. It was the worst phone call of my life. Family friends came to get me and bring me home and I spent the first 5 days of my new, dad-less life with my mum still abroad trying to handle everything.

The initial outpouring of love from friends and family was totally overwhelming and unexpected but just as quickly as it came, it seemed to disappear too. For the last two years, I have been desperate to talk about my dad and what I was feeling and finding that no one in my life was able to facilitate those conversations. As a daughter grieving her dad, all I wanted to do was talk to my mum about it. But she is grieving her husband and that is not the same thing meaning we often find each others grief challenging.

I was very close to my dad, we had a genuinely brilliant relationship and I am 100% my father's daughter. I am stubborn and headstrong. We share a passion for reading, cartoons, music, good food and wanting to succeed but the hardest thing has been sharing a face. There was absolutely no doubt we are related and for a time I really struggled to look in the mirror because all I could see was my dad staring back at me, a glaring reminder of what I have lost.

Now it has been two years since I lost him, a few pretty significant things have happened. I managed to graduate from University, I moved home, I spent a year working in a job I loved, I spent two months travelling around Europe, I got accepted onto the course of my dreams and I am currently a term into my Teacher Training year, set to qualify as a Primary School Teacher in July (fingers crossed).

People say to me "But Emily how do you do it? If I was you I wouldn't get out of bed!". They seem to think they are paying me a compliment for my strength and determination at this time. But I, like my dad, have always been determined and strong. I don't have an answer to this question, I really don't know how I did it, how I am doing it. I guess I didn't really see any other option. I worked so hard for my degree there was no way I was dropping out. I always wanted to travel and had started planning that trip whilst my dad was alive and he was such a huge supporter of this that I knew I had to go anyway. Becoming a teacher is something I think my dad and I both knew was inevitable, despite the degree in Drama and Theatre Studies, we knew this was where I was heading. And again, he had my back 100%.

Doing life without my dad feels impossible despite it being my reality. Sometimes the realisation that I only got to have my dad for 21 years rears it’s ugly head and I feel like I am right back in my university bedroom suddenly having to reimagine the rest of my life. But, as cheesy and as cruel as it sometimes feels, life moves on. The world keeps turning, even when you don’t want it to. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to months, season to season and suddenly you find yourself two years down the line wondering how so much time has passed.

If I could offer one piece of advice, it would be to remember your people loudly. Not everyone wants to talk about their grief, especially when no one around them has experienced anything like it. But if you’re sat there, like me, desperate to talk. Please do. Post on the online communities, read the stories, write your story and attend a Walk N Talk. I attended my first Walk N Talk event this past month and for the first time, I got to wear my grief loudly without it crushing me. There was no shame, no sense I was ‘ruining the mood’ or ‘putting a downer on conversation’. Just me, my grief and a beautiful group of people to listen and share with. My grief is loud, but that doesn’t mean we should be quiet.