I recently had to explain to a family member how this grief thing feels.

I’m a visual person, I tend to explain myself with images. So I said, this grief thing feels as if someone has found a giant melon baller in the back of the kitchen drawer and have set about making balls out my abdomen and, once they were satisfied they had taken enough flesh, I was left with a gaping hole where once there was a belly.

So now I walk around with my abdominal muscles permanently clenched hoping the gaping hole begins to heal. But some days if one looks carefully the hole is still there, containing a vortex within a black hole which sucks away all the light and energy from my being, leaving me breathless.

When these days come, which right now are nearly a daily occurrence, I pull up the draw bridge and retreat to the safety of my bedroom; messages are not replied to, telephone calls are rejected, no matter how good a friend or close family member they happen to come from. These are dark days.

Other days if I’m brave enough to peer through the hole I can see all my vulnerabilities exposed for the world to see, which makes me feel as if I’m walking around stark naked. A very uncomfortable feeling I hope you’ll agree unless of course you’re a naturist in which case I take my hat off to you for being confident and comfortable in your own skin.

However that’s not the worst part of grieving. No, no, no; the worst part is when, as I begin to get used to the hole, some insensitive person tells me how their wife’s second cousin’s neighbour’s uncle had cancer but luckily recovered and is leading a normal life. Whilst it is a positive thing to hear that for some people cancer hasn’t been a death sentence, I fail to see how that’s meant to comfort me. So I will describe how this feels, it is as if having noticed my gaping hole they decide to take the ice pick in the photograph and use it to dig a little deeper because the hole wasn’t big enough.

So the moral of the story is: next time someone you know or happen to meet tells you how they’ve lost a loved one to cancer don’t tell them my story, just listen to theirs, that’s it just listen.