Today i can't help but notice the net is swarming with news that Peaches Geldof apparently passed away due to a heroin overdose. Friends are sharing the news on Facebook and people are tweeting about it on twitter. Comments a couple of weeks ago were mainly about how awful people thought it was that she had died so young and how lovely she appeared to be and what a good mother she was.This seems to be confirmed with the daily Instagram photographs of her happy children that she updated her followers with.
Yet today the comments seem to be about how selfish people think she was and how people have no sympathy with her. This last part puzzles me as what good is sympathy to her? She has gone.
There are several things said in interviews that seem to show Peaches held a deep sadness within her and I am sure her friends and family with hindsight can probably now see the signs that she wasn't in the best of places emotionally. In an interview she spoke about having to go to school the day after her mother died and how they were all supposed to just get on with it. There was no mention of grief counseling and she spoke about the sadness that she felt about her dad not being more present in her sons lives.
For whatever faults her mother had. Paula Yates when in a good place emotionally seemed like she was a doting and loving mother and to lose that deep love of a parent so suddenly and under those circumstances must have been crushing at such a young age. Even more so when the seedy press seemed to enjoy ripping apart her mother after her death. Her father no doubt found the death of Paula extremely hard too. Bringing up the girls while dealing with his own grief. He no doubt just dealt with things the best way he could at the time.
Then when Peaches went through a wild stage you then had the press comparing her to her mother, that too must have been hard to deal with. Maybe, However silly it seems to those who have never experienced being in a low place, Peaches thought she was destined for this tragic end of her life?
It appeared she thought that having children and a loving husband would heal her...I am sure for some part it did but when we lose someone we care about so deeply, that piece of our heart never really heals. So we just find ways to cope, to lessen the pain and if we are lucky we get grief counseling to help us learn to gradually let go of the sadness and continue our lives while holding our loved ones memory close. For Peaches it seemed as if the pain never really lessened, she just became good at hiding it.
So let's not judge the dead for not being able to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
Rich or Poor, Depression doesn't discriminate.
Let's just hope the press can leave her husband and boys in peace and that when they get older if they ever feel swamped by sadness that they will get the help and support that they need.
Farewell Peaches.
I measure every grief... by Emily Dickinson
I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
I wonder if when years have piled--
Some thousands--on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;
Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.
The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,--
Death is but one and comes but once
And only nails the eyes.
There's grief of want, and grief of cold,--
A sort they call 'despair,'
There's banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.
And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,
To note the fashions of the cross
Of those that stand alone
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own.
If you are experiencing grief or issues with drugs. Please check out the links below and know you are not alone.
Cruse Bereavement Care
Talk to Frank
