Lynn Price has no memory of her father, who died when she was 2, but much of
her life has been affected by hidden grief for his loss. “Until mum
remarried when I was 5, I didn’t realise my dad wasn’t there. I thought he
went to work early and came home late,” she says. Instead, she has only
vague memories of the aftermath, “like going with Mum to the Co-op to
collect the death grant. I hated the man at the Co-op. I thought he made my
mum cry”.
Price’s father was 27 when he died during an operation, leaving her mother,
20, with children of 3 and 2, and a six-month-old baby. “It was very hard
for her. Mum never talked about him. It was her way of coping, but I think
it would have been healthier if there had been more openness,” says Price,
who is from Leicestershire. All this happened 48 years ago. In recent years,
support for bereaved, school-aged children has improved, yet there’s still
insufficient help for the under-5s, says Rose Griffiths, a researcher at the
University of Leicester School of Education who’s running a two- year
research programme called Grief and Young Children.
A central part of the project, supported by a grant of nearly £140,000 from
the Parenting Fund, is a DVD entitled Not Too Young to Grieve
produced by the Leeds Animation Workshop. It shows the emotions a bereaved
young child might feel and suggests ways in which carers can support
children. The DVD has been distributed to public libraries across England to
make it available to parents, carers, teachers, social workers, health
visitors, nursery nurses.
“The under-5s often get overlooked but research shows that babies and toddlers
mourn, too,” Griffiths says. “They can be deeply affected by the loss of a
parent, sibling, or grandparent, while lacking words to express their
emotions, which may range from guilt, bewilderment and anger to sheer
grief.”
Price, 50, agrees that the impact can be lifelong. “At 7, I felt grief for the
first time when I realised what death meant. That it’s permanent. I felt
tearful a lot of the time. I’d play in cemeteries with my friend and we did
a lot of role-play about death. As a teenager, I grieved again for my
father. Now I realise at that age I was searching for my identity and
couldn’t entirely see myself in my mother. I felt there was this mystery
person who made up my other half.”
At 18, after the death of her paternal grand-father, Price suffered depression
and spent a brief time in hospital. “As I’ve got older I’ve come to terms
with my father’s death. But it’s something my brothers and I never discuss.”
Allison Johnston, 40, a teacher from Bristol, was 3 when her mother, Ann, died
of aplastic anaemia. “She was a teacher. I remember her taking me to school
one day and being given a biscuit in the staffroom. But it’s more vague
feelings than distinct memories.”
Johnston counts herself lucky that her mother’s best friend, Ella, stayed in
contact. “She’d tell me what a kind person my mum was, how as children they
played on bikes together. That was important because Dad found it too
painful to talk about Mum. I’ve never asked whether there was a big funeral
for her. I don’t know if there is a marked place where her ashes were put in
Glasgow, where we grew up.”
Lynne Cudmore, a child psychotherapist working in the Under Fives Service at
the Tavistock Clinic, northwest London, says that a child or adult who has
experienced early loss may have no conscious memory of it. Instead, they may
have what Melanie Klein, a psychoanalyst, called “memory in feelings”, such
as sadness, anxiety, despair and distress at their core, which they’ve never
been able to shift. It can contribute to lack of hope in the personality.
“It can be extremely difficult for the remaining parent who is, inevitably,
grieving themselves to remain attuned to their child’s feelings. Also,
because many people can’t bear the idea of a baby or young child suffering,
they may develop their own insensitivities towards observing the child’s
pain. They’ll say things like ‘They never even noticed’ or ‘Children are
resilient’. These sorts of attitudes can be damaging.”
Losing a parent as a child is not uncommon. According to Winston’s Wish, an
organisation for grieving children and their families, one child or young
person under 18 loses a parent every 30 minutes in the UK.
About 20,000 children and young people are bereaved this way every year. Yet
grief that has never been processed, consciously by talking to another
person, or unconsciously through dreams and play, can become arrested,
Cudmore says. “This could manifest throughout life in relationship
difficulties, lack of trust and an inability to see others as a source of
protection and help.”
It isn’t only the under-5s who have difficulties grieving. Steve Manyweathers,
44, from Hertfordshire, was 11 when his father died. “He’d take me swimming
every Wednesday after school. I’d muck around in the shallow end, while he
steamed up and down. At the end of the session the lifeguard blew his
whistle and everybody got out.”
One day, unable to find his father, Manyweathers ran back to the poolside. “I
saw this blue lifeless figure at the bottom of the deep end. It was my
father. I yelled to the lifeguard who dived in, pulled my father out and
gave him the kiss of life. My father coughed and started breathing,” he
recalls.
“An ambulance took him to the Luton and Dunstable hospital where a brain
aneurysm was diagnosed. He was transferred to a specialist hospital in
London. For ten days, while he waited for an operation, we visited him. He
was lucid and chatted. It was a tremendous shock when my mother told me that
he’d died on the operating table.”
Manyweathers, who has a wife, Lesley, 36, a student who is studying
chiropractic, and daughter Fleur, 8, says he never grieved. “My reaction was
to adopt the role of the man in the family. I felt I had to be an anchor
point for my mum and sister. It was instinctive.”
Two years ago, that unfelt grief broke through. “I was in Minorca with Lesley
and Fleur. We drove past a road sign, then a hotel and a beach that I
recognised from a holiday I’d spent with my family when I was 8. I found
myself bawling my eyes out for half an hour. I was having flashbacks to that
happy time with my father.” Losing his father at that age was hard, but
Manyweathers believes it had some positive aspects. “I’m able to manage
adversity better than many people.”
Dora Black, an honorary consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the
Traumatic Stress Clinic, in Central London, agrees that for some, losing a
parent early in life can have positive effects. “It can provide inspiration
and tremendous drive and ambition,” she says. “The way in which the
surviving parent copes makes a great difference. If the parent is withdrawn
in grief, the child will suffer. It depends how well those around the child
support him and how well he is looked after.”
Manyweathers’s belief in his ability to overcome adversity has stood him in
good stead. At 35, he had a motorcycle accident that broke his spinal cord
and spine, paralysing him from the waist down. His wife Lesley was three
months pregnant. “I was amazed how resilient I was. My attitude was: ‘It’s
not a disaster.’ I’m in a wheelchair but that hasn’t held me back.”
He is a director of his own marketing-support company. His passion is
competing with his horse and carriage at horse-driving trials. In May 2004,
as a member of the Great Britain team, he won team silver while competing at
the FEI Para Equestrian Driving World Championships. The following September
he went on to win the title of National Novice Horse Champion at the Windsor
National Championships, competing against able-bodied drivers. “It was a
great moment. I felt my father, an amateur boxer, would have been proud. I
think of him every day as my role model and my hero.”
His memories of his father aren’t unrealistically rosy, however. “Mostly I
remember him as firm but fair, but he had a vile temper. I’ve inherited his
assertiveness and his temper but, having been the recipient of his, I know
how to control mine. I’ve learnt how to deal with the traits my father left
me.” Manyweathers is also proud to have outlived his father, who was 41 when
he died. “My dad lived his life to the full and I’m going to live mine to
the full, too.”
Celebrity loss
- Actress Kathy Burke was 18 months when her mother died of
stomach cancer.
- Pop icon Madonna was 5 when her mum died of cancer.
- Actress Kate Beckinsale was 5 when her father died of a heart
attack.
- The poet Frieda Hughes was 2 when her mother Sylvia Plath
committed suicide.
- Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, was 12 when his father
died of cancer.
- Paul McCartney was 14 when his mother died of breast cancer.
COMING TO TERMS WITH A DEATH
Keep talking about the person who has died. Sharing memories
and information really helps. Children worry that they’ll forget the
person who has died.
Answer their questions. Often a long explanation isn’t
needed. Start by asking, “What do you think?” then build on their
answer.
Don’t hide your grief. Seeing someone else crying gives
a child permission to release their own grief.
For younger children, keep language simple and direct. It’s
better to say that someone has “died” or is “dead” than that they’ve
gone to sleep or were poorly, which can make a child frightened of sleep
or of becoming unwell.
Seeing the body and attending the funeral are a way of saying goodbye and accepting
the reality and finality of the death. But let the children
choose whether to or not. Explain carefully what is involved so they can
decide. Give them a chance to change their minds along the way.
Consider making a memory box with special items that remind
them of the person who has died. You can include photographs, letters,
perfume or aftershave, tickets from an outing, an item of clothing,
jewellery, or flowers from the funeral.
Don’t feel that you have to be a super-parent. Do what you can,
when you can.
Accept that some things can’t be made better in the short
term. Look after yourself, too.
Information supplied by Winston’s Wish, an organisation for grieving
children and their families: 0845 2030405; www.winstonswish.org.uk
The Childhood Bereavement Network: 020-7843 6309; www.childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk
