Friday was the 38th anniversary of the death of my Dad. I was 24 at the time. It was totally unexpected and I was completely unpreprepared mentally for the shock. I'd naively assumed that he was indestructable. A massive anuerism proved me wrong. For many, if not all of us, the most difficult thing in our lives to deal with is a death of someone we love. A child, a partner, a parent. I've spoken before about how badly we are prepared for the practicalities of bereavement, but it has recently occurred to me that we are even less prepared for the mental effects of the loss of someone we love. Unless we die young, the chances are we will all suffer the experience. What troubles me is that we do not have the tools to get our heads in the right place when this strikes.
I have long been of the opinion that our schools are not fit for purpose. We have-12-14 years of enforced education about things that most of us will never use, algebra, the shifting nature of tectonic plates and the life of Henry II. All fasacinating stuff if you like that sort of thing, but for me it was like a mental cold shower. When it comes to educating us to actually deal with a sudden tragic death, we are on our own. How did I deal with my Fathers death. In two ways, alcoholic excess and denial. I believed that discussing it and sharing my pain was weakness. I didn't want to think of it. I gave my Mum alost no support, in truth I was a bit angry with her. She was even more bereft than me and she couldn't really share her feelings either. She took to her bed with her bad back and other ailments and was thoroughly miserable for the best part of a year. This is not a criticism. Much later, we became a lot closer. She confided that she always thought they'd die together in a plane or car crash. She had felt it was written in the stars. She was angry with my father for having the audacity to die and break this sacred pact. My mother was an intelligent woman, who had far more experience of life than me at the time and her admission was something I found bizarre at the time. I came to realise that my father had always tried to cultivate an aura of invincibility and he'd totally fooled my mum and the rest of us.
So what should we be taught in a lesson. The first thing is that none of us are immortal and many of us will die unexpectedly. That is all part of the journey planet Earth makes as it circles the Sun. The circle of life, the circle of death. Some of us will get the chance to prepare ourselves. Some of us won't. For some of us, we just get a phonecall or a knock on the door, or like my poor Mum, you get up to make breakfast and find your partner dead on the floor. Realising that all of these things can happen is little help, so we then need to know what to do next. We also need to prepare ourselves for the stages of grief and the implications of these. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When my Dad died, the denial lasted a year. It only ended when a mate's Dad died and I saw what was happening with perspective. The bargaining phase, where you try and make a deal with God to bring the person back or to reconcile your own unresolved issues is the hardest to understand, depression sets in when yoy realise that there is no bargain to be done. The hand has been played. Acceptence comes when you finally are ready to move on, celebrate the life of the person who has passed and celebrate the life of the person you love. It is worth mentioning that some people never get past the first, second or third stage. I think acceptance is easier with a parent than a partner or a child. These processes happen at their own rate. You can't hurry on the denial or depression stage, but you can make them easier to bear.
We should never be afraid to share our experiences with other people in the same situation. I only started to move on, when other friends started to lose parents. In recent years, friends have lost children and partners. I don't have any experience of this, but I have experience of listening and I hope I have enough compassion to help. But again, it does strike me that anything I've learned is by trial and error. Surely it would be compassionate to eliminate the errors. If schools taught about the phases of grief, how we deal with them and how we be a good friend to someone going through that cycle, it would save a lot of hurt.
I expounded this theory to a particularly obnoxious person I know a few years ago, when we were still on amicable terms. He laughed and said "School exists to support the economy, provide us with the skills to contribute to the wealth of the country, not to cheer people up when they are miserable". I was shocked, this may have been the first clue that we would not have an enduring friendship. As I was in a period of grief at the time, I was unprepared for the comment and just sat their with my mouth open as the said person sniggered. I have realised that his comment was actually enlightening. This is the reason why our schools are so dysfunctional. He made the same mistake that so many people who design school curriculms make. You see, when someone is gpoing through grief, they are not only sad and miserable, they are less productive. So even if you are heartless and only see things through the prism of the economy, it still make sense.
I still miss Dad. Many of my songs reference him. He did love a party, so this is how I best love to think of him, organising mad parties in the 1970's. Just a quick reminder the False Dots are playing our 46th Birthday Party at The Dublin Castle, Camden from 2pm on Sunday 16th February. Please come along!
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