Roz's story: Finding community in grief at Christmas

Losing my husband has been life-changing and self-changing. He died on November 22 last year but it feels like yesterday. We had been together since 1989 but we got married when he got the diagnosis and returned to Yorkshire, where Pete was from and where we had first set up home together, our happy place. Pete had always wanted a cat called Nigel, so we got a cat called Nigel.

Pete was looked after by the community team at Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice. He had a nurse come out to see him at home several times and they offered me support too from the Wellbeing Coordinator.

After he died the hospice sent a leaflet which detailed the Sue Ryder bereavement services and I started looking at the online community. Grief isn’t linear and I find it’s easier to talk to strangers sometimes.

You can be feeling quite isolated in grief but then go on the community and realise that you aren’t alone. It’s important to know that you are not being judged for how you are feeling. Within the forum you know you don’t have to pick up a phone so it takes that pressure off. When you are responding to someone online you don’t have to put on your public face.

Nobody knows what you are going through unless they have experienced it themselves and I think Christmas just magnifies everything. There is an expectation of jollity and happiness and togetherness and that can be really hard. I remember walking into town the morning after Pete died and the Christmas decorations were already up. It was like being on the outside of a snow globe looking in.

I chose to be on my own at Christmas and I shall do the same this year. I think I was probably still in shock last Christmas. I could not have done without the radio and I went to church as well, just to get some fellowship and community really.

The online community is a lifeline at a time which is – aside from those personal anniversaries – probably the hardest of the year. It’s a bridge of support, of validation and recognition. I think it’s about having some human contact and just finding out how people are coping in their day- to-day.

I remember sitting on the floor with the laptop on my lap and accessing the forum several times a day and it just felt like a voice in the ether, there wasn’t that pressure to be in anybody’s company.

You can be in the same room as someone who is very empathetic but they don’t have to be sitting beside you, they are holding your hand through the screen. I also liked that there was thread called ‘Just for a Chat’ rather than something specific.

And I found some sort of comfort in trying to support other people. If you feel like you are helping someone else, it does help and if I could have replied to everybody I would have done. It’s certainly a reciprocal thing. You are receiving support, but I think also able to offer it. It’s about feeling like you can make a contribution.