Published By: Sphere
Pages: 288
Released On: 07/03/2024
Grief is universal, but it’s also as unique to each of us as the person we’ve lost. It can be overwhelming, exhausting, lonely, unreasonable, there when we least expect it and seemingly never-ending. Wherever you are with your grief and whoever you’re grieving for, I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This is here to support you. To tell you, until you believe it, that things will get easier.
When bestselling writer Clare Mackintosh lost her five-week-old son, she searched for help in books. All of them wanted to tell her what she should be feeling and when she should be feeling it, but the truth – as she soon found out – is that there are no neat, labelled stages for grief, or crash grief-diets to relieve us of our pain. What we need when we’re grieving is time and understanding. With 18 short assurances that are full of compassion – drawn from Clare’s experiences of losing her son and her father – I Promise it Won’t Always Hurt Like This is the book she needed then.
*****
Thanks to Sphere Books for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I’ll start this review by saying that I didn’t want it to be a comment on the book itself, on the writing, because this is more than just a book to read and enjoy and be entertained by. This is someone’s heart on paper and to review it in terms of stars seems insensitive. Instead I shall review it in regards to how it has made me feel.
I read this in one day, six days before the 6th anniversary of my dad’s death (and 1 day before the anniversary of Clare’s son). Losing anyone at anytime is difficult, but losing your dad at just 24, 10 days before Christmas is really difficult. And it means that whilst I am a Christmas fanatic, the build up is always twinged with sadness. And whilst I’ve read lots of books about grief, none can really explain how you feel because it is so personal.
Clare is one of my favourite fiction authors so I was intrigued to see how she might bring that skill to non-fiction, especially about something so traumatic as losing a child.
When I lost my Dad (and subsequently about half a dozen other people within the next 3 years), I was the only person (other than my family) I knew that had experienced that. Friends had lost grandparents or distant relations or pets, but I didn’t know of anyone who had lost a parent that young. And so there was no-one who I could talk to. Of course people offered an ear, and they said all the right things, but they didn’t and they don’t know what it was like. And whilst I am glad of that because it means they haven’t had to experience what I did, it meant that I often felt alone in my thoughts. And this is the book that I wish I had during those dark days, and it’ll be the book I recommend to others stuck in that darkness.
As Clare explores, grief never goes away, you never forget about it or move on, but you live with it; your grief doesn’t shrink, instead your life grows around it.
You can read this in a couple of ways. You can do what I did which was to read it from start to finish as if a novel. Or you can flick through and find the chapters that resonate most with you, and you can repeat chapters or miss chapters, it is entirely up to you. For some, reading it in one go might be too much, especially if early in their grief journey, but for me, it was the best way to read it and I felt I got a lot out of it by sticking with it rather than putting it down in between chapters.
Her bit about anticipatory grief was beautiful. Unless you go through it yourself, it is impossible to know how hard waiting for someone to die is. Yes, the moment of death and immediately after death is incredibly difficult, that goes without saying. But knowing someone is ill, and knowing that someone is dying (like I did with my dad), and seeing them get worse and worse, counting the seconds until there are no more. For me, it was crippling, and I actually found that harder in a way, because death was the release, no more pain or suffering, at least for him anyway. And I haven’t read a book that touches on anticipatory grief before and so I found that very moving and I think very important. If you know it’s coming, grief doesn’t just start at the moment of death.
A daffodil bulb was included in the parcel with the book and it was such a lovely touch. Daffodils are the backbone to this story, and to share that part of herself and her grief with strangers was so touching and I can’t wait to see it flower in the New Year.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise to say that I sobbed when reading this. Not just because of Clare’s grief, or my own grief, or the timing of me reading it. But because of her words. They were words that I have so longed to say but been unable to find. It’s a hard book, there’s no hiding that. It’s raw and honest and ugly. But in it’s own way, it is beautiful. It is full of love and hope and joy and care and family, and as hard to believe as it is, she promises, and I promise, that it won’t always hurt like this.
Books By Your Bedside 