Rhi Axtell – Writer

I’m having a strange time at the moment.

My visit to the Death Cafe and my work on the 26 Memento Mori art project* have had me thinking about bereavement and grief a lot over the last few weeks. Then, on turning up to counselling class yesterday, I discovered that this week’s topic was Grief and Loss.

*my personal essay on grief and music will be published later this year.

In the lesson, we looked at different theories around grieving, talked about our own experiences of loss, and studied the different types of grief – acute, complicated, and integrated. Perhaps because of what I have been doing in the last few weeks, the topic spoke to me more than anything else we had studied in class. I found myself raising my hand often to speak (very unlike me). I found myself relaying my own experiences of comforting bereaved people and the skills I have relied on in those settings (who is this guy?).

It was … exciting? It feels weird to say that, but it was.

I found myself talking to the tutor in the break and I voiced something that had been on my mind for a while:

“I want to be a bereavement counsellor.”

As I said it, something clicked. Something changed. The tutor started giving me extra reading for outside of class. She pointed me in the direction of some extra training I could do. Everything started falling into place.

Is this what it is like to have a direction in life? To have a purpose? Gosh, it feels strange – like an excited bubbling in my stomach. An anticipation.

Anyway, I’m going to spend my savings on books and training around bereavement counselling now.

See you next time.