01 Nov Sometimes we still cry…
October 2025
The other day my husband and I were relaxing quietly in the same room – I looked up and saw we were both crying.
I’m sharing this as a reminder that men (dads, brothers, husbands, friends…) cry too.
It’s been seven years since our son Ben suddenly died and although we generally manage to keep our sadness under wraps there are still random moments when our broken hearts sync and we unashamedly cry together…
…not the uncontrollable hysterical ugly crying from the early days but a quiet agonising overflow of deep heartfelt sorrow.
All it takes is a thought, an image, a memory, a voice that sounds like his, a song, a longing for what could have been… and our minds drop into a rabbit hole of pain. It’s like we’re suspended in time!
Until we lost Ben when he was twenty five I knew little of the complexities of grief: how it hurts physically as well as emotionally… how confused messy tangled emotions permeate every corner of life… how it ebbs and flows with a mind of its own.
Even after seven years, moving forward without him still feels wrong.
Enjoying life without him still feels disloyal.
Happiness still has an edge of sadness.
The loss of a child (of any age) is untimely, out of order and utterly wrong! Parents never expect to have to bury their child – it’s meant to be the other way round. We might appear okay, but we’re probably not. Recurring waves of agony feel like a kick in the stomach as our minds hit that painful replay button over and over again.
The experts tell us it’s important to talk – not to bottle it up – to allow ourselves to feel, cry, express emotions. I consider it a privilege that as a family we still have moments where we spontaneously cry together. For many that’s not an easy thing to do.
However, the caveat is that emotions are fragile and unpredictable. Sometimes we get it right – sometimes we don’t. We were thrust into unknown territory the day Ben left and will probably spend forever learning how to live around the enormous hole where he should be!
I know now that grief is so much more than just feeling sad – it’s a gut wrenching emptiness and internal ache that never goes away. A weight that we drag around forever.
“Now I know grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within. Something has been torn out from inside me that will never be filled up, not ever, no matter how long I live. They say “time heals,” but even now…I know that’s a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you’ll get used to the pain. You’ll forget who you were without it; you’ll forget what you looked like without your scars.”
― Claudia Gray,
It affects us all at different times in different ways but I can say with absolute certainty – it changed us! We can never go back to who we were.
The cliché ‘time is a great healer’ just isn’t true (at least not for us anyway). I read somewhere that it just ‘teaches you how to look functional while you bleed!’
If anything the sadness seems to worsen with time as every year takes us further from the one Ben lived in.
We sense people are tired of hearing about our loss so we try not to mention it. Consequently our social circle keeps shrinking as we retreat to the safety of the trusted few – those who freely talk about him, never make us feel judged and simply accept us for who we have become.
But wow… those few are like gold dust. Priceless silver linings in our dark cloud.
Ben’s untimely death is simply enormous – incomprehensible, unbelievable, unbearable and unimaginable. It left a hurting hole in our world – a silence in the air – a brokenness right in our core that is impossible to explain.
And it’s always there!!
Until I knew better I naively assumed when you lost a loved one you were heartbroken for a while then somehow the pain lessened. Now I know loss is actually the inception of a lifetime of hurting – you just get better at rebuilding life around it.
No matter where we go, what we do or how happy we feel – never for one moment do we forget that Ben isn’t here to share it with us.
It’s hard watching his friends settling into careers, having babies, getting married… we long to know what he would be doing.
We miss his thoughts, opinions, stories, laughter, enthusiasm, drive, singing (I could go on) more – not less.
I have to force myself again and again not to feel angry at the unfairness of it all, or broken because I miss him so much but rather thankful for the most awesome twenty five years we were blessed to have with him.
Of course life goes on whether we like it or not. We create new memories, enjoy new experiences, nurture new relationships. Ben isn’t here but we make sure he is!
We keep talking about him, doing the things he loved, listening to his songs and sharing his memories.
And yes it will sometimes makes us cry but we’re ok with that and wouldn’t have it any other way.
That’s the beauty of love!
For Ben 💛
CREDIT: Ruth McDonald 2025
