Marina Walker
Loss of Husband, Darron to lung cancer
Hi Marina, what’s your story?
My name is Marina. I am 52 years old, born and bred in the south part of Sweden. I´ve lived my whole life in a seaside town (it´s, by Swedish standards, a city, but would probably be looked upon as a town by people living in big cities overseas). I love living close to the sea. I can just hop on my bike and be down at the beach in twenty minutes. The walks along the beach have been many in my life, most of them finished with a cup of coffee (I love coffee, I am a big consumer of coffee every day) or a glass of wine with friends in one of the cafés or restaurants nearby. It´s fair to say that the sea has very often been a source of both comfort and a lot of joy in my life.
I love running, that is the best exercise and stress relief of which I can think. I try to run a couple of times every week and occasionally I participate in races. Summer is my all-time favourite season. That´s when I run the most. During a good summer, I can go for a run on most days. Reading is another source of joy. Reading is a way to meet new worlds and characters you might not meet in your own life. It´s about getting new perspectives and learning new ways of dealing with life. I have always been a reader. My peak was in my teens, but since I joined a book club seven years ago, reading has gotten a deeper and multifaceted meaning. I also love dancing and singing. The singing part mostly takes place in the shower and the dancing, well, that is something I do mostly in my living room these days. 😊
I´ve always been a bit of a restless soul with as close to laughter as to tears. Getting older has eased that restlessness a bit though and I can really enjoy laying on a sunbed in my garden reading for hours on a day off. I love travelling and discover new places. I work as an editor for a book company that produces learning materials for teachers and children aged 10-12. I worked as a teacher for years before I started working in the publishing industry and I care deeply for educational matters. Social justice has also always been a matter of the heart, so I volunteer a few times every month at a shelter for homeless and financially vulnerable people, serving breakfast and lunch. I have a 19-year-old son, Zack, who is everything to me. His well-being and future are what keeps me going. He graduated from school in the beginning of June. He has been accepted to an art school, partly based in England so in August he will be moving to join that school.
What was life like before the loss of your husband, Darron?
Darron and I met 22 years ago, in summer 2001, on my 30th birthday. I was on holiday in Santorini, the most beautiful Greek island you can imagine, visiting a friend who was working there for the summer.
It was like a scene from a movie. My friend and I had celebrated my birthday all day and when the sun went down, we ended up in a tiny beach bar down by the sea with loud music and people crowding on the dance floor. I saw Darron straight away; he stood by the bar with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I fell head over heels straight away. He was so good-looking. I thought he looked like a British actor I fancied in the eighties. When we hit on, on the dance floor, I told him that. You look like a British actor I said. With all the loud music around he thought I said, you look like a British arsehole, which he quickly replied to as; you can´t say that … it is so rude, what would you say if I call you a Swedish tart …?
Our story could have quickly ended there, but it didn´t. When Darron went home to England (yes, Darron was English, born and bred in Leeds in the northern part of England) four days later, we had spent every waking moment together, exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and promised each other to meet up very soon again.
Back in those days, it was difficult to stay in touch without having to pay a fortune. Ringing him on the mobile was too expensive for more than a few minutes. Using the house phone wasn´t much cheaper. So, we chatted mostly through MSM (which I think it was called) – but even that was not so easy, since the internet connection was poor. After going back and forth between Sweden and England for a while we decided there was no point dragging it out. We wanted to be together, we wanted to live together. We were both over thirty, had broken relationships behind us – a broken engagement for me and a divorce for Darron – and we were just madly in love. It felt like we could have conquered the world together. So around Christmas that year we decided for him to move to Sweden. It was never really a matter of choice, Sweden or England. Darron had made his mind up. He would leave England and come and live with me in Sweden.
On Valentine´s Day 2002, he proposed to me. At the end of March, I went to England to help him sort out and pack up the few belongings he was going to bring – and on April 1st we flew to Sweden to start our life together. We had then known each other for eight months, but physically only met for 21 days. It was like moving in with someone that you had dated for less than a month.
I would lie if I said that it was a bed of roses. It wasn´t. Living with someone speaking the same language can be hard as it is, but living with someone who doesn´t know a word of the language that you speak, to cope in the country you live in, is even harder. Swedish is the fifth most difficult language in the world to learn (apparently, I´ve heard so) and Darron really struggled. He did eventually learn enough to cope with work, but socially, he always spoke English. And that was also the language we spoke together, and the language Darron spoke with our son (who is bilingual from birth). Communication is the core of a relationship and when you don´t have all the nuances of a language, it´s quite easy to misinterpret and misunderstand. I learned over the years that words that I found harsh in Swedish were not as bad in English and the other way around.
Darron and I had a really good life together, but it was a roller coaster ride. As much as we loved each other deeply and had so much fun, we could argue like mad. Sometimes we were like the hands in the gloves, sometimes we just collided.
We got married in August 2003 (on a beautiful, sunny, and warm day) and the year after, in 2004, our son Zack was born.
Overall, we lived pretty much like most people. We liked to see friends and go places when we were off. We both liked hanging out in the garden and Darron was very much a handyman, so he fixed the garden after his own ideas and drawings – and our garden became that extra room that made it so worth having a house. Our goal was always to go on holiday twice a year. In the winter we went skiing and, in the summer, we liked to go to sunny and warm places.
Occasionally we had a proper night out. Darron loved going to nightclubs and he loved having a few pints (beers). I, on the other hand, have never been so keen on nightclubs, but I love dancing so a night out for us was often a win-win situation …for both of us …
You shared with me that Darron died from cancer. Can you share about the diagnosis and his experience with cancer?
When I look back, I realize that Darron showed signs that something wasn´t quite right during autumn 2021. He was so tired all the time (and it really came out of nowhere). And he was on edge, grumpy, and snappy. He was also coughing in a way that he hadn´t done before.
At first, I thought his fatigue was because of all the early shifts he did as a bus driver. I also thought he was a bit down because of the pandemic that still affected his job schedule - there were so many people who still worked from home and did not use public transport.
The tiredness got a bit better around Christmas and as we entered 2022, little did we know then that our life was about to change forever within just a few months.
On April 23rd last year Darron woke up with sudden back pain. I remember it was a Saturday. Since Darron was hardly ever sick (and by that time, we had both stopped thinking about the fatigue Daron experienced during autumn), I didn´t worry about it at first. I thought it was because of all the driving he did. I even joked about it and said it was because he was a lazy bugger, doing no exercise and just watching the TV. The truth is that Darron didn´t share my enthusiasm for running or walking so to speak … He was quite happy chilling on the sofa in front of the TV, after a day´s work. Darron went to a chiropractor who told him his body was wonky, that one of his legs was a tiny bit shorter than the other and therefore was causing the pain.
He did call to get an appointment with a doctor, but no one took him seriously, and instead of giving him a doctor´s appointment, he was prescribed physical therapy … Nothing helped. His coughing got worse, and he was complaining about heavy chest pain. He also lost a lot of weight.
The pain eventually got so bad that Darron had to be on sick leave. For weeks he spent his time laying on the sofa - standing up or even sitting was too painful. He kept going for physical therapy, but nothing helped.
Somehow in all of this, we kept planning for the upcoming summer, which is so strange looking back, I mean, what were we thinking? Darron could hardly stand up and we thought we could go on holiday. Something was horrendously wrong, and we just did not get it.
On June 30th, coming home from work, I found Darron on the sofa, pale as a ghost, with sweat pouring down his cheeks. The panic in his eyes was obvious when he looked at me and told me he couldn´t stand up on his legs. He was rushed to the hospital, and the next day, a scan showed that something was wrong with his lungs. A further MR x-ray showed that he had fully developed incurable lung cancer with metastases in his spine. The metastases were the reason why his legs would no longer carry him. I will never forget the moment they told us. Two doctors on one side of the table, Darron (in a wheelchair), our son, and I on the other side. A big screen with his x-ray pictures telling us our life was over.
Later, we were also told the cancer had spread to the vessels. The doctors didn´t show any facial expressions when they told us. I remember wondering how they could be so cold-hearted. I couldn´t bring myself to grasp the full extent of what the doctors told us, and I was struggling to grasp that words could hold so much sorrow and pain. The doctors just sat there breaking our lives apart with the news and it looked like they didn´t give a shit.
I know firsthand how difficult, beautiful, and heart-wrenching it can be to be a caregiver to a spouse. What was that like for you?
I was a complete emotional wreck. Watching Darron become sicker and sicker, weaker and weaker over the weeks that went by was devastating. To see Darron struggle so much in the way he did was absolutely brutal. Unable to move without my help, unable to go the bathroom without my help, all the pain, the wounds, the bedsores - and some days he was so weak that he didn´t want to do anything but sleep.
After eight horrible weeks in the hospital, it was time for Darron to come home. We got a hospital bed placed in the living room for him to sleep in. The bathroom was equipped with a special chair for him to use while going to the toilet and having a shower. An alarm system was installed so he could press the button for help. Caretakers were signed four times a day to help him out with hygiene and mobility since I had to go to work during the day. The thing is, what sounds reasonable on paper, rarely works in real life. How are you supposed to go to the toilet dictated by specific times? If Darron needed to go to the toilet when I came home from work, he needed to go straight away. It felt like the doctors didn´t tell us the truth about Darron´s condition. It felt like they were hauling the truth because the proper truth is that they had no clue what to do or how to help him.
I went to bed angry; I woke up angry, I went to work angry. I screamed and howled at doctors and medical staff. I felt like I was at war and Darron was the capital I had to protect and the suppressed person´s rights I had to fight for.
Darron was home for a week and during that week, it hit me like a rock. I was going to lose my husband; my son was going to lose his dad. It was just a matter of time. Darron was going to die. I couldn´t get him to eat anything, he slept most of the time and all his fighting spirit was gone. We cried together every day. That week was the scariest time of his illness. I took him to the toilet, I showered him, I cleaned up all the mess after failed visits to the toilet. Going to bed was so brutal every night. I had been sleeping on my own for weeks while Darron was in the hospital, but going to bed on my own, even though Darron was in the house was awful. I was so scared that he would just stop breathing while I was asleep. I sneaked downstairs every night to see if he was breathing. I crawled into his narrow bed just to feel his presence and to hear him breathing. He hated every minute of it. I hated every minute of it. My role as his wife just went out the window, it was torn away, shattered. I was handed a role as a caregiver that violated our entire relationship. The indignity of having to wipe your husband´s butt was brutal and humiliating to both of us, and it broke my heart every day just to think that our life together might end with these roles embedded and stuck in my mind. We were like lifeboats floating around in the sea, waiting for either a rescue or death.
One day I nearly dropped Darron while helping him get ready after a shower. Darron couldn´t hold on to the wheelchair, so when he started to slide off the chair, I had to hold him up while screaming for our son to help us. I have no clue where I got the strength. There is no way really that I could have lifted Darron up, but I did. After I had been screaming down the phone with the counselor within the palliative care team, Darron was committed to hospice where he spent ten days before he died.
After a week in hospice, we were told the one thing we had dreaded since he got his diagnosis: there was nothing left to do. Darron was too fragile, there was no more treatment that could do anything for him. He didn´t have long left. I will never forget the look on Darron's face when he was told that he would die within a week or two. While I burst into an uncontrollable tsunami of tears, he just sat there in his wheelchair staring out into nothingness. No words, no sound, no movement, just silence. It was like time was frozen, but at the same time, our whole life was flushing by before my eyes and the truth was too brutal to face. He was going to die.
Any words of wisdom you would give to others in a similar situation?
There is no manual for how to deal with your husband dying. I have always been a problem solver with a growth mindset, but when Darron got sick, I realized that my emotions and myself were the only things I couldn´t handle. I have never felt such anger in my entire life.
Any words of wisdom …? I would say, be true to your feelings. Don´t hesitate to seek help. If you have any concerns about your person´s health, make him or her go to the doctor.
Be kind to one another. You never truly know what the future holds. Be more present, practice what´s really important. Demand the best care. Don´t accept any vague answers. Make sure you know who to turn to, from who to get the right answers. Make sure the medical people are being truthful. If it´s bloody too late, don´t let your person become a guinea pig they want to try things on. Let go of any resentment or misunderstanding between you.
Make sure that you find time and give yourself time to do things for yourself. Your self-care can be the strength, the lifeline you so well need to cope with everything around your partner dying. Set up routines for your days. Make sure you go for that run or that walk that you were always doing before. Make sure you get enough sleep and eat properly. Show up for yourself. If you can´t show up for yourself, it will become harder to show up for your person. You will need all the physical strength possible to cope with witnessing your person losing his or hers.
Talk about things, share memories, remember the good times together. Dare to mention the scary insight that you one day will have to plan your person´s funeral. Make sure you know what he or she wants. Make sure you know important passwords. When you´ve been through the hell of watching your person die, the last thing you want is to have to spend hours trying to find out how to get into his or her Netflix account, not to mention bank accounts. Don´t think you have to tackle everything on your own. Leave things undone. Allow yourself to ask for help, to show your vulnerability, and accept there is no right or wrong in how to deal with your grief and dark emotions.
Can you talk a little about the day Darron died?
Darron died three days after we were told he had limited time left. September 19th, 2022 was the day when my world stopped, and my life forever changed. Darron had suffered so much, and he was just too sick, too tired and his body was too weak to go on. I got a phone call from hospice early in the morning on September 19th. Darron was unconscious, and I could hear from the tone of the nurse’s voice that it was bad. I completely panicked, so did our son, who was about to leave for school. He refused to come with me and kept saying repeatedly that he didn´t want to see his dad die. So, he left for school promising me to answer his phone as soon as I rang. While rushing to hospice I got hold of his school letting them know what was going on.
I didn´t know what to expect, I had no clue what I was facing. My husband was dying and all I could do was wait for him to die. No matter how much I talked to him or hugged or touched him or tried to moisturize his lips, no matter how much I cried or begged him to wake up, there was no response. He was already gone, even though his heart was still beating, and he was still breathing. It was too hard to take in. My emotions were all over the place. The pain was so powerful and overwhelming that I did the weirdest things. I remember I was repeatedly asking for coffee, one cup after another. I poured myself coffee like it was going to ease the pain.
I kept pushing the alarm button trying for the nurses to give me hope, to make them tell me that everything would be all right, that Darron would wake up, and that the horrendous living nightmare I was in was going to be over.
I just sat there, listening to his heavy breathing, when Darron suddenly sat up, grabbed hold of the rails, and stared out into the room shouting, pull, pull, pull …
Naively I thought he was coming back so I pushed the alarm button for the nurse to come and help me. Look, I shouted look, he´s awake. I will never forget the pity in her eyes when she pulled him back onto the pillow and told me it was just a reflex to catch his breath.
She called for the doctor who told me it would be over very soon. At that time, I had lost every sense of self-control. I sobbed uncontrollably and I could hardly breathe. I called my son to come, I also called my best friend who said she was going to come as soon as she could. The nurse called Darron´s mum (who lives in Portugal and was supposed to arrive days later). The nurse also called Andreas, a friend of Darron, who arrived minutes before my son did. I kept telling Darron that our son was on his way. Darron took his last breath just seconds after our son arrived.
If our life together started as a movie scene, our life together also ended like one. Everything happened in slow motion - our son entered the room, leaned over Darron, spoke the words “hi dad” and then it was over. Darron just stopped breathing and from that second everything is a blur. I can only recall fractions. I remember myself screaming, I remember my friend Michelle arriving, I remember the horror in Andreas's eyes, I remember our son falling apart on the floor. I remember the doctor declaring Darron dead, I remember the staff telling us to leave the room so that they could fix him up for the last goodbye. I remember Michelle had to drag Zack up from the floor, how she got me to put my coat on, how Andreas led Zack out of the room, how Michelle rang my parents. I was floored, mentally drowning in a sea of tears. Every cell of my body screamed, ached, and yet I felt utterly numbed.
I remember how I later sat there for hours staring at him dead, I’d stroke his face, his hands, his ears, and his eyes. I kissed him, I begged him to come back even if I knew he was gone. I sat with Darron until he was taken to the morgue. When Darron died, a huge part of me died too. There was no closure, no sweet goodbyes, no Hollywood ending. It was just ugly.
What was life like in the immediate months after the loss? How did you cope?
In the weeks and months to come after Darron died, I was on autopilot. I didn´t stop for anything, I just kept going. Emotionally I was a complete wreck, but I also became extremely efficient. In the first four days after he died, I was on sick leave and during that time I planned his funeral. I cleaned out his clothes and I spent hours on the phone, cancelling things. I made long lists of things that I had to take care of. Making the lists made me feel that I had a purpose, the lists became my lifeboat. With the lists in my life, I could get through the days. Even if the lists were all about wiping Darron out from the real world. After five days I went back to work. Looking back, it wasn´t the best decision, but at the time, it was the only real thing I could hold on to.
The days went by like a dream, a horrible nightmare that I couldn´t wake up from. I didn´t sleep properly, I didn´t eat properly. Grief washed over me like a tsunami over and over, no matter what time of the day. My grief was like an uninvited guest in my life that I would do anything to get rid of, anything … And yet, no matter what I did, I was drowning in my own tears.
My emotions shifted from one minute to another. I could sit and stare out the window for hours, the next second, I was crawling up on the floor crying my eyes out. I remember how the same thought went through my head, relentlessly over and over again; How could the world just keep going, how could everything around me keep spinning when my husband is dead?
No one can prepare you for how devastating it is to watch your husband become a shell of the man he once was and then die. I was furious. I smashed things, I threw things away, I cleaned obsessively (my bathrooms were spotless). For months, after Darron first died, I couldn´t sit on the sofa in the living room (where Darron had his favourite spot). My house felt like an enemy. I kept looking at apartments, obsessed with the thought of moving. I felt like a visitor in my own house, actually, I felt more like an intruder, someone who wasn´t supposed to be there. It took months before I could enter the front door and actually feel at home again.
I had problems facing my son´s grief. The first months I could hardly get a word out of him – and when I asked, he just kept telling me, he was fine. We were like two zombies sharing a house no one really wanted to be in.
On most days I begged for someone to come and wake me up from the horrible nightmare. I was held down by a heaviness that was unrecognizable. The loss of Darron was an invisible weight anchoring me to complete darkness.
What was a specific low point or struggle you experienced?
All the anger! The intensity of the anger I felt during the time Darron was sick was really high. It was so raw and real, and it made me say or do things I never believed myself being capable of saying or doing. When Darron died, the anger completely caught me off guard. I have never been an angry person, let alone bitter and nasty towards others…but losing Darron brought out the worst of me. I found myself having the ugliest thoughts at random people in shops, on the street, at work (sometimes even towards people I know and care for). When I was at my angriest, I used to go driving. I just took my car and drove without any goal of where to go to. And I screamed, the most horrible, unimaginable and horrendous words while driving. I was also so angry at Darron for leaving me, for dying, I screamed and yelled and swore at pictures of him, like he would hear me, like he would answer me. And I have smashed a lot of things. One day the hoover got in the way and the next day I had to go and buy a new one.
What do you want others to know about grief?
I really think this a tricky question because every grieving person is different - and I truly believe that we all grieve in so many different ways. What´s right for me, might not be the same for somebody else. However, I think there are certain common denominators in losing a partner. When you lose a partner, you don´t just lose the person in their physical form. You lose your whole life in so many aspects, your present, your future, and your past – and if you have children – you also lose your co-parent. Your present, your now, is suddenly based upon you and your own company, your own decisions and your own way of doing things. The future you thought you were going to have, your plans, your dreams and hope are gone and you are left to figure out who you are and what you want and where you want to be. The past is in terms that you no longer have anyone to remember the past with. All your memories now only exist within your memory – and maybe - if you have children - in their mind.
There is no neat version of grief. The truth is, grief is hard and it is shit. Grief is always present, even when I have better days, it´s having my heart broken anew, every day and night, and between all the moments when Darron should have been here. When Darron got lung cancer and died within ten weeks after his diagnosis, there was no way I could grasp the reality of it. Honestly, most days - and it´s more than nine months now since he passed - I can´t comprehend that his life was cut so short. Most days I also miss Darron so much that I am amazed that my heart doesn´t split in half. Grieving Darron is like an emotional roller-coaster ride. It has taken me to a world of loneliness, numbness, disbelief, uncertainty, and fear, but it has also taught me what I don´t want and that my mind is stronger than ever.
From my experience, grief scares the shit out of a lot of people, it makes them extremely uncomfortable. Therefore you might find that some people will fade out, and some people will stop asking you how you are. Some people will stop mentioning your person´s name, some people will find your loss a way for them to talk about their own shit. You might be told that you can find someone new, that time heals everything, and that it will become better after the first year. You might be told to look at the bright side, all the good things in your life, that it´s good that your person is not suffering anymore (if your person died like Darron from a horrible disease), that everything happens for a reason. You might be told that you have to be strong for your child/children or that you have so much in your life that you should be grateful for. People might tell you that they are there for you, but in reality, they are not. Instead, you most likely will find out that a lot of them expect you to show up in the same way as prior to your person´s death. Whatever the platitudes are that people will tell you – and people might hand you a lot of them – you know your own grief and you will learn how to take on your own grief journey.
Grief can also be terribly lonely, and it has brought out so many unknowns. One of the worst things in my grief journey is the missing part. I miss Darron every day, every minute, every second – and it´s exhausting. I miss our present, our future, and the mutual memories of the past.
Grief is also about the little things in everyday life. It´s opening the fridge and finding the bottle of HP sauce (that only Darron had on his dinner) that will never be used again. It´s seeing his half empty after shave bottle in the bathroom cupboard or trying to find space for all of his boxes of records. It´s looking out the window staring at the garden he created and the patios he was building only two years before he got sick. It´s waking up every bloody morning realising he´s not there and never will be again. It´s realizing he is everywhere in the house, even though he is dead.
I sometimes hear people say that you have to honour your grief. I can´t relate to that whatsoever. How can I be honouring something that took my past, my now, and my future away from me?
A big part of my grief is also trying to work out how I can hold space for my son´s grief in the best and most beneficial way for him. His well-being is constantly on my mind. He grieves in such a different way from the way I grieve. We grieve the same person but most of the time we don´t share our grief at all. For months, as mentioned before, we were walking around in the house like two zombies. He spent most of his time in his room, I sat at the kitchen table or laid in my bed. We had dinner together (or whatever you can call the poor attempt at cooking I made in those early raw months) – but apart from that we didn´t speak much. He did his grieving and I did mine, but obviously he was grieving as hard as I was, just in a different way.
Does it get any easier? Yes, it does, but the pain and the missing never go away. I guess, as a grieving person, you will eventually grow to become one with - and learn how to - live alongside your grief.
How can a person best be there to support a loved one who is grieving?
I think the answer lies in the ability to sit with someone in the shit – to truly acknowledge how much it sucks that someone´s person is gone. All you have to do is to listen. Do not rush in with platitudes, comparisons, and useless advice. There is nothing anyone can say that makes the griever feel better. What makes a difference is to be seen and heard and listened to. Talk about the dead person. Say the person´s name. Share memories. Tell funny stories about the person. Let the griever feel and know that their person is missed and remembered. Show up. Suggest things. Keep calling and texting and let the griever know that her or his company is wanted. Offer your help and your company. Little things like accompanying a griever going shopping or doing the laundry can be as valuable as coming around for a coffee.
Try to remember and validate dates like birthdays and anniversaries at the same time as showing your concern on any average Friday night or Sunday morning.
If you could go back and spend one more day with Darron, what would you do?
I would get him on an early plane to Santorini (landing just in time for brunch) and take him to the bar where we met. I would buy him a big portion of English breakfast and a large pint of beer. We would sit there for hours, just talking and laughing and enjoying the beauty of being there together. Later we would go down to the beach for a swim and some chilling out before heading out for dinner and a few drinks. And I would simply just repeatedly tell him how much I love him and how bloody missed he is.
What brings you joy now?
My son! He will always be my long-life source of joy, no matter what happens. He is my everything, the reason why I get up in the morning, the reason why I still care.
But he is nearly a grown-up man and I can´t build my life and my happiness just around him. I need to find joy in other ways as well. And it´s hard.
I used to love the word joy. And it was something I could easily feel before Darron got sick and died. Maybe I haven´t travelled so far on my grief journey, maybe I am too heartbroken, maybe I am too sad, but besides the joy I feel for my son, I don´t think I know what that word truly means anymore.
I must admit, I force joy every day. I fake it until I make it so much that people think I am doing better. I can put up an act, and I do so because I don´t want to show people that I am sad all the time. It´s too exhausting!
However, I can feel a sense of peace on certain days, when I do certain things and see certain people. And I can feel a certain warmth spreading through my body and mind when I do so. Running is one thing, seeing certain friends is another, going to a concert, dancing in my kitchen, having a glass of wine (not by myself, but with friends), walking along the beach, having my coffee out on the patio in the sun, reading a good book. What brought me joy before life altered, is what now brings me a sense of peace. Even going to work can bring me peace.
I hope that I one day will feel joy again, without having to force it, without having to fake it. I hope that time will help me with that.
Because joy is something that you should feel from the core of your heart. It´s something that shouldn´t have to be forced or violated as it is when you lose someone.
For me, joy is laughter, new experiences, new things, new places, learning, and developing. Joy is about looking forward to living.
Want to know more about Marina and her story? Follow her on Instagram @walkermarina46.