In the past, when people have said someone close to them has died, I’ve tried my best to put myself in their shoes in an attempt to feel how they may feel. I always drew a bit of a blank though. I couldn’t quite connect to the experience. I think it’s one of those scenarios that you simply can’t fathom until you’ve experienced it to some degree for yourself.
Watching my Mum die last summer was probably one of the most harrowing experiences of my life so far. She was ill for several weeks before, but we all thought she’d get better. It never occurred to me when she went into hospital that she would not be coming back out. She was pretty adamant for a few weeks that this wasn’t it for her. She had her first granddaughter on the way, after all. But the pain got too much for her. It’s heartbreaking watching someone you love give up. There’s a little bit of you that takes it personally - why don’t they want to fight just a little bit longer for you, for their partner, for their friends, for their family? I understand now that when it gets too much, people just want the pain to end, whether that’s physical or mental pain. Death becomes an escape, the only way for the pain to stop. Nothing beyond that matters.
Watching her lie there, so weak, so vulnerable was incredibly confronting. It’s the first time that I’ve been hit with the stark reality of what we really are as human beings - we’re just flesh and bone, at the end of the day. When just one vital organ stops working, that’s it - our time is up. All that we are, our identities, they just stop…in an instant. One second we exist, the next we do not. Just gone. Just like that we cease to exist anymore. All I have left of her now are a few strands of hair wrapped round a hairbrush. The rest are just memories and material objects.
Humans are meaning making machines. We create and attach meaning to everything we touch, see, hear, smell, and taste. Everything has meaning, including people. To me, that body lying there was my Mum. She gave birth to me. She raised me. She was there through thick and thin. She was my constant, always there, even when I didn’t think I needed her to be. Because no one that close to me has died before, I probably took all that for granted. Like many things, you don’t realise what you have till it’s gone.
Which is where grief comes in. Grief can be defined as “intense sorrow”, and it certainly is intense. Sometimes I’m just going about my everyday business and, boom, I remember she’s not here anymore. It’s an ache in my heart, my stomach drops/does a bit of a flip, it’s like I’ve been hit inside. It’s quite hard to explain. A friend explained it once like a ball banging around inside a shoe box, hitting the sides regularly and hard to start with, and that, in time, the bashes against the sides hit a little softer and less often. But, the ball will always be moving around in there. I can certainly relate to that. I can’t see the feeling of grief ever going away. I don’t believe we ever move on from death or grief. It’s not something you ‘get over’. You just learn to live with how it feels inside. Some days the happy memories shine through a little brighter than the sadness. Some days unexpected emotions show up, like anger, shock, and denial, which are all part of the grief cycle, I’m told.
So, what does any of this have to do with career change, I hear you say?! Well, I do think the experience has changed my outlook on life. Perhaps this experience has forced me to acknowledge that one day, we will all cease to exist. In just a few hundred years, no one will remember your name (I’m assuming), or even your children’s names (if you have them). The people you mattered to, and meant something to, will not exist. We really are only here for a short time.
The idea of spending that precious time in a career you do not like is not something anyone should have to put up with. There are always alternative options, even if they are hard to see for yourself. Of course, no career or job is perfect all the time. I’ve daydreamed about a different career over the years. Most have a large list of pros and cons, which are hard to balance. I’m talking about the careers and jobs that you just know that when the time comes to vacate this planet, you know you’d wish you’d had the courage to do something else.
I do this exercise with clients where we imagine your 95th birthday party. I ask questions like - What do you want people to be saying about your life when they reflect back on it? What impact do you want it to have had over the years? How do you want to feel looking back over the life that you led, and the work that you did? It can be confronting when you realise you’re on a path that you don’t think you’d be proud of when you hit the ripe old age of 95.
I’d therefore encourage anyone who feels their career path is way off trajectory that now is the time to look at correcting that, even in just small ways to start with. Because one day, life will just stop, and that will be that. Sounds harsh, right? Yet, death is literally the ONLY certainty in life. Even taxes seem uncertain for some these days! Of course, if the thought of changing your career feels overwhelming, and you don’t know where to start, or what you’d do instead, please do get in touch.
And, if you still can, please call your Mum. She misses you.
Alice coaches those who want to change career but don’t know what they want to do instead. She offers Career Coaching designed to help graduates, early to mid-level career-changers, and parents returning to work gain a clear vision of what career is right for them, and how to achieve it. She is also an accredited Coach Supervisor, and host of The Career Change Diaries podcast.
