[Please note before reading, this post talks about the pain of grief and loss]
I know you weren’t expecting a post today but as I’ve started writing my June midlife lately I feel I can only do it in two parts because it’s been a very difficult month for people around me. Some of you have picked up that I haven’t been my usual self – as I write this blog so openly it’s been difficult to know how to do it recently. There are months that roll along as expected where your days are a series of appointments in the diary and things to be done… and then there are months like June was for us.
Loosely quoting John Lennon, June 2025 was the very example of life being the thing that happens while you’re busy making other plans. We’d allotted it as a fallow month, the one before summer exploded in our calendar with all of the events that I planned over the winter. I’d assumed that the spring sunshine would continue as the days lengthened, that we’d spend our spare time working on the garden while hearing about the boys’ exploits… in particular the youngest and his girlfriend who finished their final university exams at the end of May and were looking forward to one last month of youthful hedonism before the sobering entry into real life. Other than our usual stay in Newcastle, that would be it.
But then in the first weekend I received a call from the youngest who was so distraught that he was barely able to articulate the fact that he was on his way home. He’d just been told that the son of a family that we’re closely connected to had been critically injured in a road accident. I’m only going to write about it briefly here because I don’t want to cause any more pain to people I care about who might happen upon this post. I’ll simply say that this young man, who was absolutely wonderful, passed away that night.
You’ll understand that it’s blown the foundations from beneath his close and loving family. It brought an immediate end to the youngest and his girlfriend’s university days and it’s so hard to stand by and watch people you care about going through the deepest pain that life can dish out. I know you’ll be filled with empathy – as our young adults head out into the world this is the biggest fear for any family and it’s the dread that keeps midlife mothers awake at night.
Grief spreads through a community in ripples, it brings people together as compassion comes from the reawoken pain of everybody who has ever suffered loss and it often reopens old sadnesses. All of us are the compounded versions of our younger selves and we still hold inside us our past sorrow and trauma. Of the many outcomes from this tragedy, the one that I am able to talk about openly is the unexpected impact that it’s had on Mal. The shock of it took him straight back to the loss of his own brother who died suddenly in an accident at exactly the same age. It’s unearthed vivid memories for him of coming home from a night out to find his dad waiting in the car outside his girlfriend’s university house (of course there were no mobile phones in those days). Of getting to the hospital too late… of running out of the building consumed with rage and sorrow… of then being determined to ‘man up’ and complete his university finals without telling anyone because he didn’t want special consideration.
Thirty years later he’s suddenly realised that he never truly grieved, in his words he ‘just shut everything in a box called Stephen.’ So as you can imagine it’s something we’ve been talking about a lot over the last few weeks and it was his suggestion that I write about it today. He hadn’t realised what a weight he’d been carrying and although it’s been difficult confronting it after so many years, he’s slowly finding a new kind of peace. Sadly he went on to lose another brother and his sister in tragic circumstances so there’s more. However he feels as if he’s opened his box of Stephen and tidied it up to the point that he can put it away again for now… we’ll see if the lid stays on.
He suggested that I write about it here for the men in our midlife world really. The male culture in our generation has always been to pull yourself together and carry on, men were so rarely encouraged to open up their emotions and lean into sorrow. And we all know that sorrow doesn’t go away, it bubbles under just waiting for something to release the valve, you just never know when that’s going to happen.
As a couple we’ve been putting a lot of focus on future plans recently, thinking about all the things we love doing that we want to carry forward and also the things we don’t like doing that we’ll be glad to leave behind. We’ve been slowly starting to declutter our possessions, letting go sometimes sadly of our family life. We thought we’d considered everything we needed to deal with to take us into a happy older age but we hadn’t thought about unprocessed sadness and disappointment. I realise I’ve never resolved my pain from my first marriage, Mal now knows that he hasn’t confronted the horror of his tragic bereavements.
So I just thought I’d bring it up today in case it’s something you hadn’t considered as part of your midlife transitional phase. Mal’s final point is that if I’d suggested it he would never have willingly delved into his past but he’s relieved that he has, even though it means he has to handle it now. So I’ll leave you with that thought in case it’s useful for anybody you know in a similar position. In the meantime I’m a great believer of the power of collective energy so I’m hoping that on reading this, the Midlifechic community around the world will send a warm wave of comfort to a family going through the most painful of times.
