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Like much of Europe, we’ve been experiencing heatwave after heatwave here in the UK, felt most harshly in my home town of London — a place that was never designed to sustain such climes. When my daughter passed away, it was in the depths of winter — outside was mostly as dark as the inside, and I found myself bundled under more than one blanket at all times to keep out the cold, and to keep the cold within me from stopping my already very broken heart and calcifying my weary veins.
Now though, the season has changed, somewhat dramatically from then. In recent weeks the temperature reached a existentially concerning thirty eight degrees celsius. This season is entirely unrecognisable from the one in which I lost my first born, but the grief? That has remained the same. I don’t think I expected grief to adapt to the outside environment, or the season of the year, but the contrast at the moment feels particularly stark, especially because I am engaging in normal summer activities (when it isn’t too dangerously hot to go outside), as I would have in previous years, and yet something is permanently changed. I will never see summer the same way. I’ve been reflecting on it, as I always do, in my mourning pages. Excerpt below:
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