Marie Curie Hospice: Planning for Christmas after losing a loved one

Margaret lost her husband last December and has been tackling grief by attending a bereavement café

About 15,000 people die in Northern Ireland each year, according to official statistics.

For those left behind, Christmas can be a particularly difficult time.

Margaret Colhoun's husband John died last December. As she learns to live with her grief, she has been attending the monthly bereavement cafés at the Marie Curie Hospice.

She said she initially felt like she was alone in her grief but the cafés have shown her that she's not.

"There's people who have also been through it and the social workers, they understood your grief," Mrs Colhoun told BBC News NI.

"I thought I was alone in that, but you're not alone."

This month's café focused on navigating Christmas.

John Colhoun had battled illness for a number of years before passing away last year.

"By month five or six, I hit tears," said his widow.

"It was horrendous - I can't explain it. I was in bits.

"But coming to the bereavement café, I wasn't alone."

The couple had lived in the same crescent growing up but didn't speak until Mrs Colhoun was 19.

"Until my next door neighbour came home on leave," she said.

"He was best friends with John and he came to see me because we were just good friends and John just fell madly in love with me.

"We were only going together six weeks when we got engaged. We married two years later, just before my 22nd birthday, and we were married for just over 50 years."

Margaret and John Colhoun on their wedding day

Packed into that happy half century were children and grandchildren and lots of happy memories, especially at Christmas.

While Mrs Colhoun knows Christmas will be different, and difficult, she is hopeful for the future.

"I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year because it's a new era," she said.

"You have to look forward. You can look back and have your regrets and think of the good times and the bad, but you have to stay positive. It is the only way you are going to get on in life.

"We are having Christmas together in my daughter's house and I'm really looking forward to it."

Margaret and John with their family

Emma Smyth is a social worker at the Marie Curie Hospice and helps run the bereavement café.

"People are able to share their raw experiences of what they are worried about, what they are fearful about and how they are going to tackle those big events that are coming up," she said.

Emma Smyth said the café allows people to remember those they have lost to help cope with that loss

"Sometimes it's about sharing ideas, about creating an extra seat at the table or a bauble in memory of that person or, if they always cooked the turkey, who will be the person who takes forward that tradition?

"It's a painful thing to think about but in planning for it hopefully it will make it that little bit easier to deal with."

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