Coping with bereavement - losing a loved one

Nothing can prepare you for the death of a loved one. Here, Gaynor Turley tells us how her experience of grieving led her to train to be a bereavement counsellor

Everything that happened around the time of my brother's death is deeply imprinted in my mind. I had coped quite well with my parents' deaths, but this was different. This was not supposed to happen. Graham was my younger and only brother. He would not see his fortieth birthday.

The call telling me he was very ill had come out of the blue. My sister and I left on the next train to London and headed straight to the hospital. When we arrived, the nurses would not let us in to see him until we had spoken with his partner. We found out later that the reason for this was his appearance. He was very swollen with jaundice - even the whites of his eyes were yellow. The nurses had obviously wanted to prepare us for the shock. However, nothing could.

We spent our days sitting at Graham's bedside. I don't know if he knew we were there, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. The impressions that stick in my mind about that time were silly little things, like seeing The London Eye through the window opposite his bed, the fact that he was on a large ward, and the hustle and bustle going on around (which seemed so strange) when he was dying. Also, the nurses kept calling him George, his middle name. I never found out the reason for that.

Three days later, Graham died. We'd been staying in his flat with his partner and, the night before he died, I seemed to sense that he was going to die very soon. I slept badly and kept waking to see a green light on the bedroom wall. Very early the next morning the hospital phoned to say he had gone. The three of us just held each other and cried. When I asked my sister if she had slept OK, she told me she, too, had seen a green light. Another mystery we never solved.

After the initial shock I went into autopilot and took control of the situation as best I could. We had Graham's funeral to arrange - the last gesture we would make for our beloved brother. The funeral was huge, so many of his friends came. It was all so unreal at the time. I got through it, but I felt as though it was happening to someone else, not me.

My sister and I returned home to Wales shortly after. I went back to work, but I just couldn't cope. Fortunately, I had an understanding boss and he arranged for me to have bereavement counselling. My counsellor was a very warm, caring lady, who listened and empathised as I went over and over what had happened. The counselling helped me to accept that my brother had died. On her advice, I also took up art therapy. Most days I would get my paints and brushes out and do watercolours. Then one day I packed up all my art things. That was the turning point for me. I had gone through the whole grieving process, and now it was time to move on with my life. I haven't felt the need of art therapy since.

Desire to help others

I firmly believe that during this period of great sadness and grief a tiny seed was sown. Though I would not act on it for a couple of years, the seed eventually grew into a desire to help others come through what I had gone through. My bereavement counsellor gave me the inspiration to become a counsellor myself and, when an opportunity appeared to train as a Cruse Counsellor, I grasped it. (Cruse is the leading bereavement counselling charity in the UK.)

The course was a wonderful experience, and it helped me make better sense of what I had experienced when Graham died. I learnt that there is a grieving process which each of us needs to go through when we lose someone we love, and this process has four parts to it - the four tasks of mourning.