Taking the Next Step
By Amie McBye (Creating Conversations Volunteer, Drummer, Musician and Singer-Songwriter) I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how hard it is to face fears after losing someone you love. It can suddenly become frightening to do things, as you realise that you are not here forever so you’d better get going with things, but at the same time you can feel paralysed with fear at the thought of doing them. How do you work through this? Knowing you’ll die whether you do them or not is not entirely helpful, but life after a loss, can feel really hard to step into and experience again. When I was younger, I remember feeling hope whenever I heard that someone who had achieved something along the lines of success had experienced a loss along the way. Wow, I’d think; they have gone through that and somehow managed not to completely crumble forever. I remember hearing actress and cook Lisa Faulkner talking about being a teenager when her mum died from cancer. At the time of reading this, she was already a successful actress. She had done modelling, acting, would go on to do more TV work and have her cookbooks published. Her first cookbook ‘Recipes from my Mother for my Daughter’ celebrated recipes she fondly remembered her mum cooking alongside family favourites. Likewise, one of my favourite musicians and songwriters Kim Deal talked about losing both her parents, aunt and uncle within a year while making her first solo album. How did they manage to get up every day and not come to a permanent stand still after loss? Paul McCartney and John Lennon both lost their mums as young boys, and look what they managed to achieve. How did they keep going, I’d wonder? How on earth did they take forward steps after such a huge shift through grief? I had very much been pondering this myself earlier in the year, when faced with the daunting task of going back into the recording studio to finish songs I had previously been recording. It had been a long while. The last time I had been in the studio was a few months after losing my second sister and everything had already felt different then. I was freshly grieving and trying to work out where and who I was after such a life-changing experience. My brother died two months after my last recording session, and I hadn’t really thought about trying to connect to that part of myself again. Well, I had, but the thought of reconnecting to that part of myself felt so daunting. I felt vulnerable and unconfident, still figuring things out. Could I still do it? Was I still a person who connected with music in this way, and who was I now? My brother had passed away more than two years ago by then, and I wondered whether the music I had created before my losses still fit who I was. I had changed – could I still relate it? What were my hopes now, and did I still believe I could make my dreams come true? Did I still even have dreams and what were they now? What do I want to achieve while I’m still here? At the end of last year, I faced the challenge of practicing and preparing for a studio booking this year. It was difficult. I had done music related things, but I had not faced working on my songs since the year I lost my sister and brother. I had totally disconnected from it. Slowly though, I started to practice a handful of my songs one by one. I can’t tell you how hard it had been to sit on the drum kit again to practice my drum parts, and there were quite a few days when I thought about starting and couldn’t face it. I tried not to give myself a hard time and instead told myself that tomorrow is a new day. I recently read an interview with the actor Tim Curry, arguably most famous for playing Dr Frank-N-Furter in both the stage production and the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is one of my favourite films of all time. I can still remember the first time I saw it – late one night while I was still living in my family home – this crazy rock musical I had never heard of suddenly kicking in on TV and completely pulling me into it. I’ve seen it many times since, and have been to see it live in the theatre as well as at a sing-a-long at the Prince Charles Cinema. I think it’s fair to say that I am a massive fan. The interview was a revelation. I knew that Curry had suffered a stroke a few years ago and now used a wheelchair, but it was remarkable to read about his childhood and his experience making the film I loved so much. His dad had died after a stroke when Curry was 11 years old. What a loss, I thought, and how amazing that he had achieved what he had after going through that. I also thought of how it must have felt to go through having a stroke knowing it was also how he lost his father. He had survived though. Another example that it could be done. His courage created something wonderful that people all over the world enjoy years later, which is really special. Nothing is set in stone. The film originally didn’t do well and was considered a disaster. Curry said in the documentary Strange Journey (2025), “I was miserable that the film was a flop. I took it quite personally.” Yey here we are, some 50 years later, and it has a strong and loving fan base. “I wasn’t sure that I had the courage to do it, and I did and that was good. I resolved to apply it to my life”. Tim Curry, Guardian What struck me
Sibling Loss
By Amie McBye (Social Media Volunteer & Grief Cafe Attendee) Ever since reading Jason Hazeley’s article earlier this year on the loss of his sister, I’ve wanted to write about siblings and how special and unique the bond is. I also wanted to touch on how tough it is to go through sibling loss. When I read the words in the article, it stopped me in my tracks. He had it right and pretty much perfect with what he said. It was so beautifully written and I agreed with every word. I did wonder what I could add. But I have been thinking about it – endless thinking time is a byproduct of losing someone you love – and while a loss seems clear, I think the connection you have with a sibling doesn’t have to be lost or end. In fact, while one of you is still here, that bond can’t truly end. When my second sister died in 2023, I felt as if someone had cut off one of my limbs. Six months later my brother died, and it was as though I had been stabbed in the heart. I was completely shell-shocked. How could this be my reality? How was I supposed to just keep going, walking, talking and continuing like life somehow had to go on? I’ve been thinking about my brother and how he must have felt when our first sister died when they were both in their 20s; I was only 9. All the questions that would have gone through his mind, some the same, some different to mine: Why did she die? Why did this have to happen? Why so young and why now? She was amazing and is now just suddenly gone. How are we supposed to go on without her? Almost an endless mind full of ever expanding questions. It was beyond devastating and my family continued with great difficulty, forever pained at her sudden, unexpected and the inexplicable removal from our happy family. I was bereft at losing my super fun big sister. I had spent so much time with her, following her around, full of admiration at her coolness, kindness and beauty. I often wonder what it would have been like to have her as a sister when we were both adults – to travel with, meet for a cuppa or go to a concert with. To phone her up for wise advise, her thoughts on potential boyfriends or who is popular in music. Though my second, much older sister and I didn’t grow up together, the particular bond you have, of growing up with the same parents, the same siblings, the same food cooked by the same people always binds you and she always made sense to me. All three of them were quite similar – genuinely kind, caring, fun well liked and music-loving people. My brother, in some ways crossed a lot of experiences that I didn’t have with my sisters. I was born 13 years after him but we grew up together in the same house with him being around for my childhood and me becoming an adult. We went to concerts, football matches and tennis matches. We watched some of the same films and listened to many of the same albums together. Football is particularly strange without him as he bought me my first Liverpool FC shirt when I was 7 years old (my older sisters were not into football so it’s interesting that he must of thought it was worth trying to get his little sister into liking it). Perhaps it’s something that he thought we could have in common. And we did, for over 30 years. All those matches, won and lost; goals, for and against; finals, some won, some despairingly lost. The nights away, the shared hotel rooms, meals together, songs sung collectively with others. We had that experience together. Of course I can watch matches with other people or solo, but the experience with my brother is missed because it comes with a shared history that no one else can have. We loved and watched the Only Fools and Horses Christmas special The Jolly Boys’ Outing (1989) and the Eddie Murphy film Trading Places (1983) so many times that whenever we watched it we would take it in turns to quote lines before they were spoken. This gave us so many laughs and knowing looks that only we could share. He loved Only Fools and Horses and I, without a doubt, inherited that from him. In many ways, we were our own version of Del and Rodney, one much older and different in many ways but still making complete sense to each other. There will always be unanswered questions, conversations that I can no longer have (I didn’t get to ask him if he wanted to go to the cup game against West Ham that December) and memories I’m trying to keep hold of. Those perfect, shared moments that only we knew and understood, never needing to explain, just getting it with a wry smile or a nod. Last New Year’s when I watched Trading Places with my partner, I wondered how it would feel. I expected to feel emptiness and the loss underneath my skin, with each line we used to quote. Instead, it surprised me to feel a warmth filling up inside, like my brother was there with me. Maybe after all, you simply cannot break the sibling bond. Related articles: Actress Riley Keough talks about the loss of her brother, mum and grandfather on this podcast. Elli Wood talks about how singing helped with her sister’s death in this BBC article.