Hello,

I feel like my content has been sporadic and worse for wear recently, but in myself I’ve been a bit worse for wear too.

While I was on my BBC Three placement I got a call from my mum to tell me my nanny was very poorly. I ended up going home the next day and resuming my commute from there, so I could spend time with my family and finish my placement with BBC Three from there.

It was an emotional week but it was really nice to spend time with my family and make my nan’s last days happy.

She passed away on Saturday March 11th. I was on my way back to Southampton at the time. I knew it was coming so I was okay, at least I thought I was okay.

I powered head first into carrying on as normal – I had work on Sunday, uni all day Monday (as well as an All Time Low concert in the evening, they’re my favourite band and it was my second time seeing them on this tour) and work, uni and dance on the Tuesday. It was on that Tuesday that I realised maybe I wasn’t okay.

When walking from uni to dance my chest felt tight and I was getting really breathless really easily. But I continued; that was the problem. I went to dance training and I found myself getting really worn out surprisingly fast and I just felt weak and on edge.

That was when I had my first full on panic attack in a while, sat on my own in a university sports centre.

I calmed myself down and went back to dance – literally walked back into the room and stepped immediately into the routine as if I hadn’t been gone – but from then on I knew I had to step it down a notch. From there I was okay, I made sure I kept my friends close and my family event closer.

The next time I really broke was when I was editing together the montage video with the Ed Sheeran cover I made.

The song, about Ed Sheeran’s own nan passing away, came out three days before my mum told me my nan was ill and it was all so painfully ironic – so I had to cover it. Watching the video in it’s entirety when I’d finished making it, that was when the crying started again.

But I uploaded it and I’m so proud of it.

Today is just over a month since she passed away, the funeral was a couple of weeks ago – I thought I’d be okay because I thought I’d really come to terms with it all but I broke before we even went into the crematorium – my cousins read my nan’s favourite poem and my uncle wrote an amazing tribute to her, very bravely read by all.

It was sad, of course it was sad, but it was actually a really lovely day. The wake was a really nice commemoration of who my nanny was and it was the first time I’d seen my step-cousins in nearly four years and it was genuinely lovely to see them and catch up with them.

I don’t know if I’m handling my grief in the best possible way – it happens that March has been the busiest, most hectic and one of the saddest months of my life. I feel like I’ve not been myself for a while – I’m the saddest I’ve been in a very long time and sometimes I feel like my body isn’t mine? Everything feels distant and irrelevant and

This might sound mad, maybe it’s a sort of subconscious coping mechanism, but I don’t feel like she’s really gone – I felt like she was watching over us at the funeral and the in the consequent time I’ve spent with my family, it didn’t feel like there was anyone missing because it doesn’t feel like she’s gone.

I’m not a religious person and maybe it’s just that I’m not used to it and I’m still grieving but I feel like she’s watching over me and keeping her in my thoughts and living for her is my way of looking out for her even now.

“Hallelujah. You were an angel in the shape of my mum. You got to see the person I have become. Spread your wings and I know that when God took you back he said Hallelujah – you’re home.”  Ed Sheeran, Supermarket Flowers

Sophie xx

 

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