Hi everyone! I hope you’re well. Today is Wednesday, and it’s time for another post in the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews. If you’d like to join in the challenge, you can find the topics for 2026 here. If you would like to read other people’s responses to this week’s topic, you can find them here.

Something I Could Give A Speech About With No Notice

I reckon I could give a speech about grief with no notice.
Unfortunately, I’ve grieved so much in my life that it feels like a constant companion to me now.

My dad passed away in October 2008, followed very quickly by my mum in May 2009. Although both had terminal lung cancer (my mum lied and told us hers was not terminal, which caused its own sort of mess), it was still a massive shock when they died.

I was only 22, and my youngest sibling, my sister, was 17. When you’re that young, you don’t even really think your parents will ever die. But of course, they do, and it was awful.

I can’t describe to you what it did to me. On a positive note, the grief temporarily cured my OCD. I didn’t clean my house for months and could barely get out of bed.

I’ve had uncles and aunts pass away who I was incredibly fond of. One of my beloved dogs passed away in 2012, and we were beside ourselves with grief. Then our other dog passed in 2014, devastating us all over again.

But I kept thinking: I still have my nanna and grandad. They’re my touchstones. My tether to my childhood and my family home (we grew up two doors down from them).

Then in 2015, my grandad passed away, followed by my nanna in 2023, and my other Nana, who was my dad’s mother, a few weeks later.

Finally, my aunty Carol passed suddenlyand unexpectedly on New Year’s Eve 2024.

So, I feel grief continually, and it’s true what they say, it really does come in waves and quite often, out of the blue. I’ll be going through life, minding my own business and suddenly catch a whiff of the same plugin air freshener my nanna used, and I’ll be bowled over. Or I’ll catch a glimpse of a photograph of my siblings and me when we were kids, kneeling on the living room floor in front of the Christmas tree with the dog and be floored.

There’s a saying about grief that I really love, said by the late Queen Elizabeth II when she was paraphrasing Dr Colin Murray Parkes while speaking about the 9/11 terror attack. She said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” I think that’s such a profoundly true statement.

Well…I feel like this has turned into a bit of funerary bingo. I didn’t intend it to, but I guess I win since that’s most of my family! I guess I proved my point, though. This was a bit of a speech.

Anyway, that’s post 18 completed.

As always, thanks for reading my post!

Until next time,

George

© 2026 GLT

Categories: life, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

Tags: challenge, death, grief, losing oyur parents, Wednesday, Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge