Still Standing; A Love Letter to Everyone I’ve Lost - “Grief is the price we pay for love” - Queen Elizabeth II
They say that grief is the price we pay for love. If that’s true, then I have loved deeply, fully and lost devastatingly. This is not just a story of sorrow, but of survival. Of one woman still standing after wave upon wave of loss. My whole family is gone now, and even my beloved cat, my last emotional tether was taken from me. I’m writing this not just as a tribute to them, but for anyone who feels the loneliness that comes with outliving the people you loved most.
I’m 54 now, and I’m the only surviving member of my immediate family. I’ve lost four family members, three of them suddenly. My dad died from an aneurysm at 56. My sister followed, also from an aneurysm, at 50. My brother passed away at 56 after a fall at home that led to multiple organ failure. Then there was my mum. Hers wasn’t a sudden death, but it might as well have been. Just two weeks after we buried my brother, she was placed on life support.
It was 2020, the height of the pandemic. The borders were closed, flights were rare, and even though travel agents said they could get me “home,” they warned it might take six months to return. I was so conflicted, I desperately wanted to go home, but I couldn’t risk being stuck in Ireland for half a year with no income, no stability, and no job to come back to.
My Mum was already fragile, emotionally and physically. She lived with a laundry list of chronic conditions: fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, sleep apnea, high blood pressure and more. She relied on weekly blister packs to manage her medications for morning, noon, and night. After my brother died, something inside her seemed to break as she was dealing with yet another one of her children passing away. We realised too late that she had taken more medication than she should have. Whether it was confusion or emotional pain or a heartbreaking mix of both, we’ll never really know.
We only discovered it when my adult nephew visited her and noticed that the medication pack was almost empty, even though it was only the start of the week. He called an ambulance, which took three hours to arrive. By the time she got to hospital, she was crashing and had to be placed on life support. It was the start of a long and difficult chapter for her.
Though she eventually pulled through, she was never quite the same. At some point in the hospital, we still don’t know how she sustained a broken collarbone. She lost movement in her left arm and never regained it. We suspect she might have fallen from a trolley in emergency, but the hospital denied it. It’s one of those unresolved truths that still sits uncomfortably with me.
She lived for just over two more years after that, but her spark was dimmed, and she was further diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Every phone call became more precious. And all the while, I was on the other side of the world in Australia and alone. Important to note here in the middle of all this, I was made redundant. As if the emotional toll wasn’t enough, the rug was pulled from under me professionally too. It felt like every part of my identity — daughter, sister, colleague, caregiver was being stripped away, one role at a time.
I have no one left to share my triumphs with. Yes, I have friends, and I’m deeply grateful for them, but family is something else entirely. They’re the people who knew you before the world demanded a version of you. They were there for birthdays, holidays, fights, and firsts. They were the constant, the anchor, and the chorus line in the background of your life.
I remember the good times too. I grew up in Ireland, and birthday parties were always at a hotel or a golf club. Christmas dinners were feasts; we had both turkey and pheasant. My sister was eleven years older than me, and I remember her taking me on Sunday drives along the Antrim coast to the Giant’s Causeway, Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Diamond playing through the car speakers. My brother was seven years older than me, and I remember waiting at the front of our house for him to come home from school. When he saw me, he’d run and scoop me up, spinning me around in a bear hug, both of us laughing.
After my mum died, I got two cats, Leonardo and Monty. They’re two now. I picked them out after losing my beautiful, Insta-famous darling boy, Maximus. His death floored me. Three weeks after my mum passed, we went to bed as normal, and in the middle of the night, I woke up to a horrible gasping sound. I called out his name — “Maximus! Maximus!” — but deep down, I knew he was gone. I lifted him; his body was limp, his head falling to the side. I ran to my friend Hoda’s room, crying and screaming, and she screamed too. We called a funeral place in the middle of the night, not even knowing if they would answer or if they handled pets. They did answer and they did handle pets, and they were with me within half an hour.
They took him away so gently that the reality didn’t sink in immediately. I always regret not giving him more cuddles to say goodbye. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t deal with it. To lose everyone and then him, I honestly didn’t want to live. It felt like everything I loved had been taken from me.
I still struggle. Anniversaries are especially hard. They creep up with a heaviness I can’t shake. And I isolate, both during the events and even now, all these years later. I don’t like dinners out because I find social interaction hard and draining. I’m much happier at home, curled up on the couch with a streaming service and Leonardo and Monty by my side. They’re my quiet companions, my little pieces of comfort in a world that sometimes feels too loud.
This grief sits under my skin. It’s shaped who I am and how I move through life. But I’m still here. I’m still standing. And that in itself is a kind of miracle.
