Why I Keep Looking Up....

How a man called Joe inspired it all.......

I've cried enough tears to
See my own reflection in them
And then it was clear, I can't deny
I really miss you
To think that I was wrong
I guess you don't know
What you got until it's gone
Pain is just a consequence of love

These are the lyrics of a song called ‘Everything’ by Sonny Tennet that was playing in the background of my laptop as I began to type today and have become my inspiration for today’s letter….And even though I’m about to delve into a darkened part of my heart to start with, I promise you by the end of this piece we will all be back in the light again!

The sun setting over our farm.

‘Keep Looking up’….Three little words that if you spend time with me in any form, you will hear me repeating them often and with heart….These three words - I lean on, I learn from and I love a lot ….These three words seem like just words if you didn't know where they were coming from. But in today’s letter I’m going to explain where and why I came up with the motto ‘Keep Looking Up’…… We’ll have to step back in time a little but here we go….

On the May Bank Holiday weekend in 2014, my father, the quietest man you could ever meet and also the most unassuming character I’ve ever known was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. From that point until Sunday August the 17th (approximately over a period of 15 weeks) my father literally and physically disappeared in front of my own eyes.

Up to that moment in my life, I really hadn’t seen pain or suffering. I had been shielded not particularly by anyone but more by the luck of the draw in life, but I genuinely knew nothing of real sadness nor pain. But my god did this change in that moment as I stood with my father receiving his diagnosis. I saw the colour fall from his face and I saw my mother’s heart dip deep into her chest as we all tried to swallow hard what the doctor was saying to us. It seemed like only seconds before this discussion, my father was out in his milking parlour whistling away, listening to his wireless and living a very simple and quiet life as he cared for all his animals and loving his home life.

A rainbow over the fields my dad spent all his life working.

It was only as I watched him suffer and suffer and suffer that my eyes were really opened to what this life can do to you. Before that moment, I had been living in absolute oblivion, through no fault of my own but I genuinely had been enjoying such a wonderful fun life full of joy and happiness. We really don’t know that we are in a lucky state until we aren’t if that makes sense? I had got a streak of happiness from childhood to my thirtieth year without any major setbacks and really i’m still so grateful for that much luck falling my way…..

My father was very unfortunate in the type of cancer he got and how his body reacted to it. If I was to say he suffered, it would be an understatement. It was a very traumatising time for us all watching such a good person suffer in the way he did day after day, with no relief ever being given back to my father never mind joy. He lost his voice. I left him letters. He lost the power in his legs and I tried to encourage him that everything would be ok. He had to learn how to walk again. He lost his mind with so many drugs in his body and as cancer took over his sixty four year old brain, we lost all of him & all we could do was watch and wait by his side. He couldn’t cope with leaving his family so instead of leaving peacefully my father screamed to stay on this earth. He loved his wife so much he refused to go to the next world with all his mite and in turn his body went into further pain and breakdown. He begged for us to bring him home every hour in everyday but we couldn’t fulfil his wish as the cancer had become some angry in his system that his organs were fighting with each other. The hospital staff were so good to us as they too said they had never seen a patient have such a bad journey through and to the end of a cancer story.

I’m not sharing this element of my life (in your Friday letter) to make you sad. I don’t want to make you sad. But I guess it wasn’t until I met with sad, that I learned a gratitude for happy. It’s ironic and a real pain in the ass, that in this world, we often must be tested and trialled, pushed and shoved, angered and infuriated, hurt and battered, lost and scared and even driven down the worse car crash of someone’s life - This is how I saw my dad’s illness play out…It was like I was sitting in the passenger seat of a high speed car chase through a tornado with my dad in the back seat and yet he was in the driver’s seat as well. I couldn’t control the driver as he crashed off everything and in the end, I begged for my father to be taken in his broken body from the car. “Please God…Please…Please just take him and bring up to Heaven, and away from all this pain.” The tough part of life and in this instance, is that I, along with my family, were left behind & left traumatised by what we had just experienced. Grief and loss is very much a stark shot of the ‘feeling left behind’ carnage of this story… I know so many of you reading this know what i’m talking about here. It’s just a terrible way to see our loved ones leave isn’t it? Cancer sure is a hell on this earth especially if it’s angry and it was just very unfortunate, that Dad got one that was exactly that. Learning the value of loss and love is no easy journey on this earth that’s for sure as we all know well here.

The corridor of Tullamore Hospital which leads into the Oncology Unit.

It wasn't until I witnessed my own fathers suffering and as he passed and how he passed that I hadn’t met with life on any real sense up to that moment. And wasn’t I lucky for that. Yes I was. But really it’s only now eight years later ( to the date of his anniversary being today as I write this), that I can say, it was one of the biggest learning moments of my life.

Did it make me a better person? Yes it most certainly did. Did it teach me about death? Yes it did. Did it teach me about uncontrollable pain? Yes it did. Did it teach me that even the best of people in this world still suffer? Yes it did. And even though that sounds very pessimistic and negative, in the big picture, it’s not. Because it was only when I met with death at my own kitchen table, that I understood what life was really all about…It was up to me from that moment on to either drown myself in darkness or to fight it with every inch of my being in the hope that I could find my light again….

For week’s on end, I had a physical ache in the left side of my chest where I could feel the break of his departure but particularly the pain he suffered… My tears falling in the shower everyday - the only place I could cry without my mam seeing me. She was distraught & in many ways she no longer wanted to be here and I can’t blame her to be honest….What we witnessed was like something out of a nightmare that you couldn’t have even made up so I knew in that moment, it was either I fall down too or I pick myself up & give my strength to my dearly beloved mother. I knew what the right thing was to do & eight years on, I am so happy I did it. My strength in turn led to her strength-the absolute magic of love & why I believe it all so strongly.

The half moon takes on the night shift as I look up in awe.

No matter what though, as the days passed, there was an emptiness like I never could never have imagined in my inner being…my first meeting with finality in this world was teaching me something huge…Death in an instant had crushed everything I had believed in up to that moment and it ripped off all happiness I once carried. Before that moment, I had taken it all for granted and even though I wish my father and our family hadn’t suffered in the way that we did, what I learned in that lesson was that more often that not in this life, we have no choice. Things happen and we can’t control everything as we wish or want. Instead sometimes we just have to accept the situation and then it’s up to us, how we move from that moment on. It’s over to us in how we choose to carry our darkness. We can either let it eat us up, take away all our joy or we can choose to work on ourselves. We can become bitter with the world. We can become bitter with each other. We can become bitter with life. And see in saying that, it’s through experience that I now know that decision to keep looking up is a choice.

A simple man named Joe inspired me to ‘Keep Looking Up’.

In life there are two types of people….There are the people who go through bad times & choose to bring that darkness with them every step of their lives forward, more often than not, they inflict their unhappiness and bitterness on others. We all know people like this. They are very infectious and can hurt many very fast if they choose to allow their darkness spread over others.

The second group of people are those who go through hard times and bad times and choose to work their way out of the darkness. They recognise that things are hard and that their present situation could change them for the worse or for the better. They choose to travel through their hurt & try in as many ways to break down the darkness and find their light again. They choose to learn from their hurt and they want to look back up with light inside them. I hope and feel I am one of the second. I do not believe in carrying the past into my future. Yes the pain and suffering of my father’s death took years for me to process. But somewhere within that heavy process and that heartbreaking pain in my own heart, I worked on myself and I worked on how I was going to respond to this terrible thing happening.

I look up and see the butterflies. If I didn’t look up, I wouldn’t see them visit me.

Was I going to become bitter? Or was I going to become better? I decided in the days that followed my dad’s funeral, I was going to learn everything I was possibly meant to be learn in this moment. No matter how much darkness fell around my heart, my mind, my spirit, I was going to choose the light. In life you will meet people who carry their darkness, who choose to hold onto it and yes it is everyones choice to make but for me, I no longer stay close to people who choose to be bitter about life, bitter about people, bitter about family, bitter about friends, bitter about the weather, bitter about the climate, bitter about anything they can be bitter about. If you want to choose the darkness over the light, that is absolutely your god given right but you will not find me close by.

No instead, you will probably find me sitting drinking tea with my dearest pals, talking to random strangers in a shop aisle, zooming across international timezones just to write with my favourite people or you might find me lying on the grass flat out looking up to the sky. And there it is. My choice. To keep looking up. I absolutely am obsessed with the sky all my life but it became a powerful symbol for me, when I missed my dad. As the sun would break through, I would see him. When the sky was dark and miserable, I would feel his absence. When there wasn't a cloud in the sky, I would feel him close. But no matter how I was feeling, I would always look up. Because I knew he was there somewhere looking down. And now I do the exact same thing with Granny. There is never a second in my life where the sky isn’t in my reach.

Heaven is not too far away.

That’s why I love it. It’s a constant friend and we all can see it. And once we look up, we can feel it. No matter your story, to believe there is something bigger is very hard to deny when you look at the vast blue sky. The sun starts the day off by rising its head to meet us and then keeps us in the light all day through. The moon comes out as the day closes to take on the night shift to continue shining a light down on us. Then of course we have all those pretty little stars twinkling down on us too. Who are they? What are they trying to tell us? I think they are telling us that no matter how small the light, it can still take away the darkness. There are so many reasons to look up. Look up to the sky to see hope, healing and heaven. Look up to each other to find strength, peace and even courage to keep us all going. There is nobody who doesn’t struggle. There is nobody that doesn’t need a light shone in their direction.

Life is one hell of a journey and you will be knocked, battered and bruised and every time, you will have to make a choice. Is this going to make me bitter or will I choose to cope, survive and eventually work my way out of the darkness…And maybe with time, I might even help someone else find the light…. Am I going to look down or am I going to look up when this moment comes? I ask and hope for you, that together we can keep each other looking up. When my head drops, you might help me look up. And when your head drops, I promise I’ll help you. The light is above us and it’s within us and it is only us that can choose to see it and to shine it. I wish for you that you path is smooth ahead but if anything knocks you, be sure to know I’m right here with you.

Keep looking up. Three little words that can really change your view on the world. Ever since I started leaning on them more and more, I’ve found they now only bring me great peace but they also bring a lot of other people peace too. I know my facebook family, you have adopted to these three words like our mini mantra out in the world as a force. And I think together we have helped each other in so many ways to cope with life. And isn’t that what friendhship is all about. Aren’t we here to help each other? Aren’t we on this earth to make an impact on just even one person? Aren’t we here to offer hope to struggling souls and battered energy. See that’s the thing, we have no control on how our lives go but we do have control on how we meet our lives. We can choose to hurt or we can choose to heal. We can choose to darkened the path or we can choose to lighten the way not only for ourselves but others too. That’s the special magic we have as humans inside us.

We will never have this life figured out but what we can control is our approach to it, our approach to each other. Pain is just a consequence of love right? And would I give up the pain to be left without the love. No I wouldn’t. Wouldn't my father? No he wouldn’t. He loved his family so much, I know he would have done it all over again to get another day with us. If there was no pain, we would leave in blissful sunshine and we would never learn the lesson we are here to learn. The darkness shows us the light, the rain shows us the rainbows and the loss shows us the love. Keep looking up. You’re doing great. And I’m so proud of you in a million ways.

Love and light and thanks so much for reading all the way down here.

Your friend always,

Lou x

PS. I’d be so grateful if you might leave a comment or share this letter with a friend. I hope somewhere within my words, you feel my heart and all my good energy being sent your way. Thanks so much for your support and friendship always,

x