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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.
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.
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