Clichs. Life is full of clichs. Why bother using them? They're useless space fillers and mean nothing to anyone. They comfort nobody. You don't understand. You DON'T know how I feel. So pleaseno more! Just be quiet. Let me feel empty. Let me hear the emptiness. Just sit there. Be with me. Feel my grief.and LET ME GRIEVE!

These are my thoughts as eventually I come face to face with my friends and colleagues after my return back to the UK following my Daddy's death in Australia.

Death, dying, grief and grieving. Four things that terrify people and four things we all know the least about, until experienced first hand. Four things that we all would rather have no knowledge of, and would happily deny their existence until the end of time, until the day that we are forced to face the reality of them as they slap us in the face and send us spiralling down into a dark and lonely place you feel you will never leave.

When confronted by another who is experiencing this, you have the urge to run from them, but out of duty feel you must say something. You feel that you personally must be the one to make them see that life goes on', there's light at the end of the tunnel', time is the healer', he's in a better place now'. Clichs. You use all the clichs you know because you actually don't really know what to say, and in reality nothing you say can make anything any better. So believe me, this is the one time when silence is golden'. Give someone a little nugget' and sit with them, be silent, feel their pain, cry with them and just be quiet. Then you will truly have helped. By recognising something has ended, and nothing can make it better. That is the reality.

The phone call came at 6am on a Saturday. It is never good news when the phone rings at an hour like that. I'm in the UK, and he was in Australia. It may as well have been Mars. My family are telling me that my Daddy, the man who is in the centre of my universe, that all life revolves around and whose soul is responsible for keeping my heart beating, is in dire straights. Don't go to the airport, stay by the phone as he may not make it through the next hour.

After a minute I realise that the unearthly howl that has filled my head, and is resounding around the room, scaring my children is actually coming from me! It's the sound of my world crashing, my heart breaking, my soul tearing and the world as I know it changing to something I don't want, didn't ask for and need someone

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