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Surviving the Loss of a Loved One to Cancer on Your Own Terms
The end of a lengthy terminal illness affects each member of the family in its own ways
I lost my father to cancer in 2008.
His loss was the end of a year-long struggle with the disease. That year, according to WHO reports, 7.6 million people lost their lives to cancer. The number mounts still. 2018 registered 18.1 million cancer-related deaths.
It’s true when they say that unlike other diseases, cancer doesn’t just affect the patient’s body. Studies show, and the sufferer’s peers agree, that it deeply affects their family and friends too.
My experience is a testimony to this statement. To how my father’s untimely death to a deadly disease in my teens shaped me as an adult.
I am now 27 years old. I was 15 when I lost him. Between then and now, I can’t exactly pinpoint the day it happened. But over the years, I made peace with losing my father to this deadly disease and moved on. My journey through the years was far from being linearly progressive. I tried to be strong. But despite that, I spiraled down the bouts of anxiety and depression quite a few times. However, each time I relapsed, I made sure I did something to take a step in the direction of mental peace and acceptance of the inevitable.
Here is a detailed account of my cornerstone experiences and their influence on me over the years.
The Phases
We read about it all our lives. The five stages of grief: shock and denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptation, in that order. But the truth is, when grief so profound such as the death of a loved one strikes, you don’t necessarily go through these stages in a linear fashion. Some of us skip a few of these stages. I know I did. It’s normal to do so. A single study compounded the data from various studies and concluded that:
“In practice, these affective states often overlap, and may subside and return spontaneously in a different order, thus refuting the notion of a stage theory.”
In simple words, the five stages of grief can be experienced in any order, number, and manner. This is especially important to consider since…
