How can I possibly ‘get over’ my grand daughter’s death?

DEAR BEL,

A COUPLE of months ago, my beloved granddaughter passed away from a rare childhood cancer, after fighting for nearly a year.

I am struggling — obviously. Struggling with her loss and the impact on the rest of the family — her parents and siblings. But I am also struggling with issues within myself.

I feel very let down by all those I know, bar a few friends.

Very few friends have been in touch — some not at all. I know it is their weakness and fear. Some people are not brave enough to face childhood cancer.

My second husband (we’ve been married for 13 years) means well, but he feels that I should be OK now. His two daughters, my stepdaughters — both in their 40s with their own young children — have not been in touch apart from sending me a card; no flowers, no phone calls, no texts or emails. They didn’t attend the funeral, either.

My husband just ignores me if I raise the subject. The younger stepdaughter and her seven-yearold son are spending a few days with us next month at our holiday home, but this has all been arranged with my husband, with no contact with myself.

How can I move on? I have no choice but to see my stepdaughters again, even though I feel hurt and angry with them.

How should I be feeling? Am I overreacting? Please can you give me some advice? ELIZABETH

You and your family have had to deal with the worst of bereavements, for surely the death of a child calls the universe into question.

How can anyone face this with anything other than horror — that is, unless with an unassailable religious sense of the hereafter?

Yet every day, more than ten children and young people are diagnosed with cancer in the uK, and if the worst happens, their family, too, will suffer as you are suffering now.

Before I continue, can I suggest you and your family might perhaps actively support the charity Children With Cancer ( children with cancer.

org.uk) in the months and years to come — just because it might become a positive way to approach your terrible loss. Sometimes a mission to do something, to help others, can be a channel for grief.

one sentence stands out from this sad email: ‘Some people are not brave enough to face childhood cancer.’ That is so true, Elizabeth — and a small piece of wisdom on your part that might help you start to come to terms with the lack of understanding shown by your husband and his daughters. The fact is, a majority of people are

afraid to face up to any death, which is why they have no clue how to behave with the bereaved.

But the death of a child . . . so utterly intolerable is that reality that people flee its horror.

I have met this so many times in life (and through this column) that nothing surprises me any more. Yet I still deeply regret this human inadequacy, and wish that we were as brave as previous generations who had to face family death more often than we do.

However, since we are not, can I just utter a few words in defence of your stepdaughters?

Oh, trust me, I think they have been very, very wrong not to offer you more sympathy and support. In fact, I believe it would have been proper (never mind affectionate and respectful) for one or both of them to attend the funeral of this poor child who was ‘related’ to them within an extended family.

But they didn’t — and I’m assuming it was because they are mothers who shrank away from confronting the dread every parent feels about their own children.

Always comes the dread thought: ‘There but for fortune’ . . . and so therefore to face up to your terrible loss and grief would have forced them to acknowledge their own love and terror.

What’s more, they will have shied away from explaining their stepcousin’s death to their own children. To them, turning away was the only refuge.

Your husband is a different case. You say he ‘means well’, but if he thinks you should be ‘OK’ so soon after the death of a beloved grandchild, then he needs a lesson in human sympathy. Having shared your life for 13 years, he has no right to ‘ignore’ you if you want to talk about this subject that consumes you — and I would like you to tell him that.

You don’t have to get angry, but you do have to make him understand you will never ‘get over’ this loss — and nor will your family.

Ask how he would feel if one of his daughter’s children had been forced to bid farewell to all the sunrises, all the birdsong, all the flower buds, all the laughter of friends, all the Christmases, all the holidays, all the fun, all the love that life can offer — and gone down into the dark instead? Would his heart not crack?

HE NEEDS to wake up and put his arms around you and listen to all your weeping and all your words, before he damages his marriage.

To return to your stepdaughters, I certainly do not think you are ‘overreacting’, but believe you have no choice but to take what’s happened on board and carry on with family life.

If you are generous enough to acknowledge their hopelessness, taking it as an indication of their own mother-love, then perhaps you can forgive them.

I see no other way forward. Other than to be sure there is a beautiful picture of your granddaughter in a special corner of your home, and that you put flowers and a candle before it, as an eloquent display of the permanence of love.