Earlier this month, on the 17 March 2023, my wonderful father-in-law, Dr Laurence Bellamy, died. His death wasn’t completely unexpected – he’d been seriously ill for the past six weeks or so – but, still, it was a shock. A steady and supportive constant in my life had suddenly gone. Unsurprisingly, I’ve been thinking a […]
On loss and the language of loss Read More »
Sometime last year I took my daughter to a friend’s birthday party. As I stood in the café area of our local swimming pool, chatting to one of the birthday girl’s grandparents, hands deep in the pockets of my bulky khaki-coloured parka, I suddenly had a moment of what can only be best described as déjà
Seeing Myself in My Parents; Seeing My Parents in Myself Read More »
I’ve been thinking about grief a lot recently. When I begin to type ‘Marija Smits’ into my Google search bar one of the suggestions Google comes up with is ‘Marija Smits grief’. Strange. Only it isn’t, I guess, because I’ve written about grief in the past and sometimes I try to search online for my
Grief, and why it’s useful to grieve Read More »
I own this very old dictionary named Cassell’s Concise English Dictionary which is still very much loved and used by me. It’s nowhere near as large as my Oxford Concise English Dictionary but I still like to look words up in it because it has so many beautiful archaic words in it. Anyway… so its
It is ironic that a poem of mine (a triolet) about grief is about to be published whilst I am experiencing grief. Our beloved cat, our pet of many years, died last week and I am ‘still’ experiencing waves of grief. It would belittle my grief – and our loving cat – to make light
GRIEF it has withered me, hollowed me out; Read More »