Sophie Gray

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” - C.S. Lewis (1961)

The thought of losing the people who I love most in this world is a terrifying prospect. I find it difficult to comprehend the finality of death; how quickly a life can end. Someone who mattered so much to you is just...gone. How does one even begin to process that?

My project Sorry For Your Loss has manifested from a deep-rooted fear of death and perhaps my naivety towards a subject I know very little about. As I get older, that fear of losing people becomes harder to dismiss. I begin to notice the effects age has on the body. I see my family for the people they are and not just those who cared for me when I was younger. Soon, that child-like innocence is replaced by a sobering realisation that one day, they will no longer be around.

I’ve never been very good at dealing with change and I think what scares me most is everything I can’t know about death. I won’t know how someone’s death will affect me, until it happens. I won’t know how to grieve, or cope with that loss, until it happens. I’m preparing myself for the inevitable, but I can’t ever really know what that’s like, until it happens to me. I’m slowly learning that I have to tolerate the uncertainty of life, but talking about those fears with people who have experienced it themselves has made me feel far less alone.