I swore to myself if I had to cry, I’d hide my hurt... until nine years later I could bottle it up no more
WITH my dad gone, I made a resolution to myself. I would become the man of the house. Adulthood was still more than a decade away for me. My bedroom walls were covered in posters from Gladiators, the TV show I never missed on a Saturday. But I considered it my duty nonetheless to grow up and mature overnight — and got serious about doing so.
I owed it to my mum. I owed it to Becky, too. I would do whatever was needed around the home. I would look after my sister. I would anticipate my mum’s needs as much as I could, making sure I gave her as little to fret about as possible.
I’d graft as hard as I could, both in the classroom and on the field. I’d make my mum proud of me. Most of all, if I had to cry, I swore to myself that I’d do it privately, where no one could see or hear me. If I found it necessary to grieve, I’d be quiet about doing so. I’d hide my hurt — just as my dad had done. And that is what I did, telling no one of my intentions.
My mum remembers the two of us being in a neighbour’s house very soon after my dad had died. We were standing in front of a window and staring across their garden. I looked up and said sombrely to her: ‘Don’t worry, Mum. We’re going to be all right.’ And so we were... No one saw me cry over my dad’s death for almost nine years. I hid what I felt, bottling up my emotions so tightly that almost nothing leaked out. And then, one August evening, I let go at last.
I was a month away from my 17th birthday. I was on a lads’ jolly to Newquay, where we’d gone under the pretext of learning to surf. We fought the sea, which beat us daily, but we didn’t care because what had really brought us there were the bars and the nightlife.
It was bliss: away from home; pretending to be an adult; celebrating the fact that exams were over; brimming with optimism about university — I’d enrolled at Leeds Met — and also hopeful of a long cricket career. One night we had a barbecue on the beach. We ran into another group, blokes of about our own age and a bit older who came from Wales. We were sitting on the sand, swapping stories, when someone began asking what our dad did for a living.
I decided to keep my story as simple as possible. There’d be no mention that he’d been a cricketer. There’d be no mention of how he died either. ‘He passed away a while ago,’ I said, believing the conversation would end there. There was a short, uncomfortable silence — nothing I hadn’t experienced before — until the lad who had asked the question began staring intently back at me. His mouth slowly widened into a smirk, and then I heard a low laugh come out of him, as if death was hilarious — and that the one I’d just revealed to him was somehow especially funny.
He continued laughing as I sat there, not knowing at first what to say or how to respond. Scarcely able to credit that anyone could be so insensitive, so brutally callous, I got up and marched off. I’d gone about 200 yards when I broke down.
My best and oldest friend Gareth Drabble saw me take off and followed closely behind. I headed for a narrow pathway that ran away from the beach. For almost an hour we sat alone on a low stone wall. I shook. I raged. I cried uncontrollably until, finally, there was nothing left in me.
It was like opening a valve and because everything came out, so everything came back in a flash too. My dad’s death. The aftershock. Our struggle to comprehend it. Our struggle to cope. Even the fact that I’d never behaved in such a way before.
I’d always been able to handle it. This was different. Perhaps because nothing was said, but only implied, which made things worse. Or perhaps because, after so long, it was finally time for me to let go, releasing what I’d consciously suppressed. It was an experience I had to go through.
PASS MARK: Bairstow as a youngster at the Leeds academy and loss overwhelming. I learnt only retrospectively about the five stages of grief, but I experienced each of them to a degree — especially the first, which is denial. I knew what death was, and I also knew categorically what it meant. Nonetheless there were times, particularly when I first woke up in the morning or returned to the house from somewhere, when I halfexpected to find my dad still alive, smiling and sitting in his chair, exactly as I’d known him. Or I was sure I’d hear his car on the drive and his key turn in the lock. I’d see him framed in our wide front door, ready to pick me up in his big arms again for a hug; a hug so muscular it was like being cuddled by a gentle bear.
Winston Churchill once said: ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’ It sums up our family’s approach to the aftermath of my dad’s death. Becky and I passed a nearsleepless silent night, but next morning my mum got us up and made sure we washed and scrubbed ourselves, brushed our teeth and dressed for school in our plain navy and white uniforms.
She insisted that we went there, though I don’t remember either of us protesting much at all. It was my mum’s way of bringing a touch of normality to our lives, pressing on without my dad because she knew, absolutely from the start, that we couldn’t do anything else except confront, square on, the grim situation we were all now in. Already our lives had begun to change convulsively — a process that would go on until almost everything
familiar to us had been rearranged or was different somehow. Knowing this, my mum came to the conclusion — and I wholeheartedly believe she was right — that we shouldn’t put off doing anything today in the hope that it would somehow seem easier to do tomorrow. The fact that it wouldn’t was the only certainty we had then. We couldn’t think or wish away reality. We couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.
We left my mum on her birthday — her cards unopened, her presents still wrapped — to deal with the business of death while coming to terms with her own emotions, her own trauma. She went to one of her chemotherapy sessions and discovered that the newspapers, spread across a table in the hospital waiting room, were full of headlines about my dad’s suicide. The doctors, knowing of my dad’s death, had wanted to cancel the session. ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You can’t do that to me. Not now. Not after what I’ve just gone through.’