Friends who cross the road to avoid you – because you’ve lost a child
When Christine’s son died, everyone was sympathetic – until they decided it was time for her to ‘move on’. Then came a new pain she could hardly believe ...
On A recent holiday, a friendly couple sitting at the next breakfast table regaled me with stories of their grandchildren. ‘Do you have children?’ one asked. It’s a natural question, and one I expected — and, as always, I gave the only answer I could.
I told them I have a 28-year-old daughter and a son, who would have been 34. ‘Sadly, he died ten years ago,’ I added.
Then the conversation ground to an uncomfortable halt — and it wasn’t long before the couple left.
I should be used to it by now; since my beloved son Andrew passed away, I have learned just how deeply our society struggles to confront the reality of parental loss. Andrew was just 24 when, in 2007, his life was claimed by Variant CJD, the human form of what is colloquially known as mad cow disease.
Watching my brave, beautiful first-born battle with this degenerative condition was the hardest thing I and his sister Emma have ever had to endure.
Andrew knew he was dying and, in his last week, asked: ‘Will you remember me?’
I sobbed as I promised that the pride I had in him was eternal and would endure until I took my last breath. Yet I totally underestimated how difficult and off-putting others would find my attempts to keep that promise.
I don’t chatter on about Andrew needlessly, but when others talk about their children or parenting, I want to share my stories, too — to recall his smile, his jokes, his work successes. Yet, all too often, reactions to a mere mention of his name range from awkward silence to cringeing embarrassment.
While we have learned to openly discuss other uncomfortable realities — from cancer to mental illness — we still struggle to find the right way to handle the loss of a child, perhaps because it’s such an awful and terrifying event.
Yet many have suffered it. Official figures show that from 2010-16, between 8,600 and 9,800 people under 30 died each year. That means tens of thousands of newly bereaved mothers, fathers and siblings.
All of us will deal with our grief differently, but many find that the devastating ripples from their loss reach other areas, with marriage breakdown, depression and suicide bids all too common.
Andy Langford, a counsellor and chief operating officer for bereavement charity Cruse, says: ‘The death of a child is particularly devastating because both our future and part of our ancestry are severed at once. It feels entirely unnatural — we expect to bury our parents, and we feel we should die before our children.’
As a society, we’re not universally good at talking about grief anyway, but the death of a child compounds this as it is so difficult to accept. Sadly, bereaved parents often feel like they are expected to forget that child to avoid forcing other people to confront their own fears.’
Yet how could we possibly forget? Andrew will always be a part of my family, and a part of me.
I raised him and his younger sister Emma as a single parent for most of his life. Until he fell ill my vibrant, kind son had everything going for him: a career he loved in the media and a great group of friends.
THEN, towards the end of 2006, he started to suffer from weak muscles, anxiety and pain. Endless visits to the doctor proved inconclusive.
Desperate, I researched condition after condition and came to my own conclusions. I found seven young people in my area, Portsmouth, had died of Variant CJD, which is contracted by humans exposed to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) — mad cow disease. I was perplexed, as our family hadn’t eaten meat for many years due to health concerns. Yet the horrific catalogue of symptoms rang true for Andrew.
So, with trepidation, I raised my fears with doctors. Ten days later they were confirmed: Andrew had Variant CJD — we will likely never know how he contracted it — and was given six months to live.
It is impossible to fully describe the horror of watching my beautiful, physically fit son deteriorate before my eyes. vCJD punches hole after hole in the brain, robbing the body of its primary functions one by one. Andrew lost his sight, his hearing and his ability to move before finally, on a chilly December night, he died in my arms in his bed.
Both Emma — just 17 at the time — and I descended into the dark tunnel of extreme grief, compounded by the unbelievably cruel nature of Andrew’s death. It was senseless to me that something so simple as a meal had cut him off in his prime.
In the immediate aftermath there were times when I felt I might not physically survive. The mere act of taking another breath felt like a herculean task. And as ill- equipped as I felt to continue living while my child did not, I soon discovered that society was illequipped to deal with me, too.
Of course, in the early days, I received no end of welcome sympathy, practical help and listening ears. People did their best. Quickly, though, I realised that often — not always but often — their sympathy came with an expiry date, in some cases soon after the funeral. It seemed there was a time limit on grief.
I’ve met many people who believe that after one year, or two, a bereaved parent should be able to ‘move forward’, to ‘forget’, or to find ‘closure’ — terms which make me shudder.
At the very least, they felt we should be able to neatly package our grief and give it a clear beginning, a middle and a final, accepting end.
It’s a message reinforced by endless television dramas: a death is quickly played out and followed by a weepy, emotional funeral, but then the plotlines quickly move on.
Yet, as grief counsellor Andy Langford makes clear, grief is timeless. ‘It’s not a case of moving on and the grief ending because we will always have a relationship with the person who has died.
‘What bereaved parents want more than anything is acknowledgement
of that, for others to acknowledge their child’s identity, that he or she existed.’
Because, as I know all too horribly well, when you lose a child you deal with it for the rest of your life. My pain may not be as raw as it was, but my heart is still broken.
Contrary to common expectation, grief can expand with the years, instead of diminish — with each passing birthday and Christmas, each summer holiday crossed off on the calendar a reminder of a life missed out on.
Since my son’s death I have lived with a constant awareness of all he didn’t get to experience. To me, his memory is everpresent.
Yet with the passing of time others have become dismissive, less able to engage. Eager to forget the whole, horrible tragedy.
I have watched people I once called friends go out of their way to avoid me, crossing the road while walking their dog or, in the case of one exneighbour, turning his back on me in the local coffee shop where we once swapped pleasantries. While it makes me sad, I can understand it a little: I hold up a mirror to their worst fears, making them think about things they would rather not.
But the fact is that when I most needed unity and proximity, my grief, and people’s inability to deal with it, led to crushing isolation.
One close friend with children the same age refused even to visit once Andrew had been diagnosed. She said she ‘couldn’t face’ seeing him — as if I or anyone else wanted to see him like that. And aside from a bereavement card, she has not been in contact since. It was another aching loss to add to the one that had redefined my life.
Strangers bring their own troubling dynamic: it is only when you lose a child that you realise just how much adults bond by chatting about their offspring. Whether it is at the café counter, at a drinks party, or over that breakfast table on holiday, I brace myself as I await the inevitable question: ‘Do you have children?’
not telling the truth would feel like a betrayal of Andrew’s memory, yet the truth brings responses from cliche to downright cruel.
I have lost count of the occasions I’ve been told ‘time is a great healer’, while in the latter category I’d put the mother of three healthy children and a grandmother six times over, who told me my son was ‘in a better place’, along with the neighbour who suggested I ‘get a dog’ to keep me company.
none, I am sure, intended to cause distress. I understand how difficult it is to know what to say in the face of profound grief.
The irony is that so little is required to make us feel a little better: a simple touch on the arm and ‘I’m sorry’. Anything that acknowledges what we, the unenviable group united by losing a child, are feeling — even years after the initial loss. Another member of this miserable group of bereaved parents is John, a father of five and successful businessman. He lost his youngest daughter Felicity, aged 21, following a car accident on a gapyear holiday. grief drove this confident, articulate man to profound despair and, as he resurfaced, he encountered another challenge that endures to this day. ‘I found that if I mentioned Felicity, even in passing, the atmosphere changed and became stilted and odd,’ he recalls. ‘Customers in my engineering business and even friends at social events would get embarrassed and didn’t know how to react. I’d start to feel guilty that somehow I had upset them, ruined their day or evening.’ It’s a guilt I recognise: I have often wondered if I should sanitise my feelings and choose, if not to lie, then to tell halftruths about Andrew. That was John’s solution. He has found that the only way he can cope is to pretend his devastating loss hasn’t happened. These days, when he meets new clients, he tells them he has four children, not five. ‘It made it easier,’ he tells me, head in hands. ‘I even took down a family photo of us all from my office wall. It became just too awkward. It’s as if Felicity has been wiped out.’
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DEnYIng her existence in order to spare other people’s discomfort, he feels he is losing her all over again.
IT consultant nicholas, meanwhile, lost his 28yearold son Will several years ago to cancer. His eyes fill with tears as he recalls attending a work conference and striking up a conversation with a stranger about their sons.
‘It was great to share, laugh and compare notes with this other father — it was a lovely relaxed evening,’ he recalls.
But when the stranger said how much he would love to meet nicholas’s son, he was blindsided. ‘I drank my pint quickly and left as I couldn’t bear to say Will died three years ago. Bereaved parents are not supposed to laugh and chat about their late children.’
Yet how can we not? The fact is that talking about loss is essential for mental health — it certainly has been for mine. Andrew may be gone, but he remains a big part of my life and Emma’s and we talk about him a lot to one another.
If only others would, too. There is not even a word to sum up our plight — no ‘widow’ or ‘widower’ label to lend us dignity.
And yet, loss is an inevitable part of life, and one we will all suffer. So the next time a bereaved parent talks about their child, please don’t walk away. Instead, be brave. Listen, laugh and reminisce with them. They will be more grateful than you can know.
Who Killed My Son? by Christine Lord, is available from Amazon. Paperback £7.99, Kindle version £2.39.