How do you deal with it?

You lose your mum to a heart attack and you manage to hold it together at the words of a family relative "She wouldn't want you crying" "She would want you being strong" So for years you hold it together, you don't cry, you don't grieve, you don't mourn her.

Then your grandma dies and thats when the flood gates open. Yes at first it doesn't sink in, doesn't register but then it hits you like a tonne of bricks. You cry like you have never cried in your life ... All alone with no family close by to hold on to, to share the grief.

Years go by and your own father says he wants nothing to do with you because you chose family (grandma, sister, 2 brothers, friends) over him ... doesn't matter he has dragged you half way round the country to live with an abusive woman, doesn't matter that he was never there.

20 years later you hear on the grapevine that he has died and the stupid witch never told you. Oh she had your phone number, even had your address but I guess this was her final act of stabbing me where it hurts ...

How do you deal with that? You don't know what he looked like or sounded like or even where he is buried or cremated...

You do what you been doing all your life ... you get up, brush yourself down and carry on because nobody else will do it for you .....