I’ve been struggling with what to talk about this week. I’ve found myself feeling exhausted with the prospect of having to write yet again about my plight, and indeed the plight of all grieving parents out there. Sitting here in front of a blank page can sometimes be a horrible place and tonight it most certainly is.

But those feelings of fatigue and disinterest are part of the journey too I suppose. I mean yes there are so many times when it is all that I want to do to just speak about and indulge myself in the woes and tragedy that has categorised my life. And even then I largely don’t ever get to talk about it – but at least there is a want, an impulse, to do so. This, of course, largely stems from the fact that nothing else occupies your thoughts but the grief and pain that never goes away. But there are other times, like now, where I grow weary of it all.

For me, there are moments when all this pain and searching just plain tires me out. The pull of it, the drain of it, on my mind and emotions becomes too much. And I never see it coming either. I just find myself in the middle of any old task or routine when all of a sudden the feeling comes over me. It is a dark awakening; a realisation of irrecoverable loss. It is a heavy feeling of nothingness; emptiness. It is an awareness of the bleak state of my life and knowing that nothing I ever do can undo what has already been done.

I look at most other people around me living their ordinary lives with ordinary problems and I feel angry, outcast. Why can’t my mind be cluttered with just problems of a practical nature? Why can’t it be blissfully distracted and entranced by the mundanities of survival, and not left exposed to torrential unrelenting thoughts of WHAT IF?, WHY CRAIG?, WHY ME?, WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT? These profound unyielding and unanswerable questions grind around in my waking brain, looping continuously and slowly siphoning away all the life force from me until eventually the weariness stifles me and there is nothing left.

I write here every week and I often don’t know why. I’m not sure if I’m doing it for myself or for others. Neither? Both, who knows? I never know exactly how I’m going to feel from one week to the next and I certainly don’t have any great agenda to follow or fulfil. So what I’ve written here tonight is quite probably indulgent at best and just plain unhelpful at worst. But it is how I feel at the moment. It is honest and true for me. And if it is both of these for me then I can only assume that some other grieving parent out there knows what I’m talking about.

These things come in cycles and no doubt my energies will return to an operational level soon. Just have to ride it out until then I suppose.