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The best-selling psychotherapist was just a child when she lost her sibling; the profound loss changed the course of her life
Anna, 38, lives in Surrey with her husband Tarun, 38. They have three children aged 5, 8 and 9.
My childhood in rural Herefordshire was idyllic – until my sister was diagnosed with cancer when she was just four.
Before that moment, our life had a safe and secure rhythm to it. Mum, a physio, and dad, who worked in security, had us close together in age. My brother Matthew was just 18 months younger than me, and Emily was 18 months younger than him.
It was clear from early on that the brain tumour – as big as a man’s fist – was terminal. Radiotherapy would only elongate my sister’s life a little, allowing us more time with her. During radiotherapy, Emily’s little body would be encased in a kind of plastic mask and she would have to lie very still as we talked to her through a speaker microphone system.
She suffered with headaches and sickness as the aggressive tumour grew, putting pressure on her brain. Despite being in ICU, surrounded by tubes and monitors, she’d give us a cheeky smile. Seeing my gorgeous little sister’s hair get shaved off and witnessing other children laughing at her was harrowing. When someone is seriously sick, people don’t know what to say. We are all so scared of death and illness. Mum remembers friends withdrawing, even crossing the road to avoid us.
Two years after she first became ill, she died in my parents bed, at home, in 1995. I was only 10, she was just six years old.
It’s only now, 30 years after her death, that I can see clearly how this devastating loss shaped my entire life. It would have been impossible for that level of grief not to have a profound effect on all our lives.
As a family, we all reacted to her death differently. My brother, then just nine, cried a lot. Mum ended up changing careers; she went to work in a hospice to try and offer comfort to others at the end of their life, and eventually retrained as a therapist. My dad internalised his grief, as did I.
I tried to be the good girl, the helper, the carer, the person others turned to; my job was to make everyone else feel better.
I wasn’t there the night Emily died. I had gone to camp for the weekend, and I think in my heart I knew it would happen then. I remember once, when I was little, hearing about a tragedy in our local community, and I’d told myself then that if anyone in my family died, well, I’d just have to die too. Death seemed an unimaginable pain that would be just too much to ever bear.
So for me, aged 10, it was a good thing that I was away on camp the weekend she died.
Before I left, I kneeled by her bedside and told her I loved her. By then, in the final days of her life, because of all the drugs she was on, Emily hadn’t spoken for days. But she became conscious for a few seconds and said, “I love you, see you in heaven.” The nurses were astounded, but even in death there are beautiful moments.
I knew in my heart that she would probably die when I was away, but for me, it felt like the right thing to do. While I was there I woke up at five o’clock in the morning feeling horrendously sick. I told a camp leader who rang my parents and it turned out that was the time that she was dying. Her death was neither easy nor peaceful, and had I been at home I would have been witnessing it all from my parents’ room.
Losing my little sister so young forced me to face up to the fact there are many unavoidable and uncomfortable truths. I studied hard to become a psychotherapist, while over the years unpicking all the messy pain and grief I had locked up inside. I was on a mission to ‘save’ people, so it felt natural to train in this profession.
I began to understand that the things that shaped my personality when I was that tender age had kept me living in fear as I became an adult.
It’s only with hindsight and wisdom that I can see now how so many of the things I was scared of others are too. As a therapist I’ve learnt that all of us need to face up to messy, painful tragedies. It’s the only way that we can overcome them.
Arguably this is the hardest hitting truth of all, one that fuels anxiety and nightmares from a young age – and lingers throughout our lives. Losing Emily in my formative years meant that this was an uncomfortable truth that I had to face earlier than most. Yet everyone will be touched by tragedy at some point. Loving people makes us vulnerable – and that makes us anxious.
Becoming a mum brought me so much anxiety – what if I lost a child as my mother had? I try to channel the acceptance that my mum did. She described having this powerful realisation that we weren’t hers to own. She loved us and would have done anything on earth to protect us, but she also knew that she couldn’t control what happened to us. She softened the anxiety surrounding a mother’s love, reframing it as a privilege that had been given to her, bringing a warm sense of gratitude rather than fear.
For years I was so fearful of death I avoided talking about it. I avoided funerals in case they caused my own grief about Emily, buried so deep inside, to resurface. With therapy – which you have to do a lot of while you’re training to be a psychotherapist – I’ve learnt to let feelings arise and abate as I process my grief.
A close friend, who lost her mum as a teenager, once explained her view on death. She imagined she was standing in a queue along with every person in the world, and when you reach the front you die. She said she didn’t know what number she was in the queue, but she was in it and constantly moving towards death. She was so matter-of-fact, but totally accepting. It helped me realise that my life is going to end – which is why it’s so important to live it as well as I can. Grasp it with both hands, spend time with loved ones, follow your true passions and try to find meaning in it. Once you start making decisions with your own death as a backdrop, it can help bring clarity and direction in a positive way.
Bad things happen to good people. Less qualified candidates achieve promotions. On some level we are all aware of life’s unfairness. We are dealt a hand of cards before we enter the world. If life’s a race, it’s an unfair one. We know this, yet it is a tough pill to swallow.
However ‘good’ we may be, sad and bad things happen to everyone. Fairness should, of course, be strived for, but we have to accept that life is a series of events – many of which are outside our control. As a child, I remember desperately trying to win over a girl who was repeatedly unkind to me. Now, I see it would have been better to step aside from her. It’s more nuanced than this though. You need to stop fighting battles you’re unlikely to win (as I was with that girl). Being aware of life’s unpredictabilities is what also keeps us making better decisions, in order to ensure the good things stay there.
We will all plough our time and energy into something that won’t work out. Whether it’s relationships or work. When we’re left questioning whether we’re the cause it’s painful. Fearing failure keeps us stuck and life becomes smaller.
I used to set myself an impossibly high bar, striving so hard to be the best employee, partner and mother. It was exhausting and led to burnout. Accepting failure isn’t about being defeatist or not bothering to try, it’s about having compassion and grace for ourselves when things don’t work out, saying, “I tried, it’s hard and sad but what’s the next step?” and not shaming ourselves (“I’m a failure, why did I bother”).
Not facing up to these four uncomfortable truths shaped my personality and kept me living in fear. I know so many of us choose not to confront these things that are, sadly, inevitable.
Life is often likened to a rollercoaster, but I prefer to see it like a pair of train tracks, where the messy, the painful and the tragic run alongside beauty, hope and learning. And if we’re open to it, it’s all there. People can be thrown the very worst tragedies in life, but they come out the other side, and there is always, always hope.
As told to Susanna Galton
The Uncomfortable Truth by Anna Mathur is out on August 8
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