Grief is just love with no place to go

This is the current rebuild of my site, click to see the Old version (before you tell me I know that the url is new.letorey.co.uk that is because the ssl certificate works for this but not old).

Anyone who knows me well, will know that I have quite a lot of friends. Friends I meet through work, friends I meet at conferences and friends I meet at music festivals. This last group of friends we refer to as our Festival Family. We don't only meet up at music festivals, we also meet at gigs, go on holiday together, go on mystery tours, go to each others birthdays and parties and we've also attended some of the greatest weddings known to man, in fact it has been my great pleasure to be the shouty man (master of ceremonies) at a great deal of these weddings. This group of people mean the world to me.

On Saturday 20 July 2024, one of these amazing people left us. After 6 months of fighting ovarian cancer Sara passed away. I am so happy and fortunate to have had her in my life, I have so many stories to tell about her. All I will say here is that she brought the chaos into my life. She referred to me as her brother and I called her sis. It is horrendous that she has gone but it is truly amazing that I knew her and she was part of my life.

Last Saturday, 10 August 2024, the festival family descended on Swansea Rugby club to celebrate the life of our incredible sister. This really was not a funeral at all it really really was a celebration of life. During the celebration the celebrant said, by Jamie Anderson:

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

I have lost many (too many) friends over the years and just because I can no longer tell them in-person that I love them it doesn't mean that that love is now gone.

I love you Sara and I always will, your brother in chaos.