The Sunday Reflection #40 - Why don't they teach us how to grieve at school

 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! 

Bereavement Blog - The happiest time of the year? Not for me

Last picture of Dad a week before he died

We are used to the refrain that Christmas is the happiest time of the year. For many this is true, especially those of us blessed to have small, happy children. There are, however, another group who it is probably the hardest time of the year for. Those who are suffering from loss and bereavement, especially those who are just going through their first Christmas following the passing of a loved one. There is an empty chair, a void that cannot be filled. Perhaps for me the hardest of all the losses I had to deal with was my father when I was 24 and he was 69. He passed completely unexpectedly, of a heart attack. The family was devastated and all dealt with it in our own way. My mother lost her sister the same week, so she had an awful time, but sadly in hindsight I did little to support her, as I was too busy dealing with my own grief.  The first christmas was an exceptionally trying time. My Father died on Jan 29th, so enough time had passed for us all to get back into a normal routine. My mum confided to me that she really didn't want to do Christmas and wanted to be alone. After 43 years of marriage, she really didn't want to celebrate at all. I was going to my in laws. My eldest sister persuaded her to join her and her family. On her return, my mum informed that it was lovely, but next year she would go on a cruise and pretend she'd never had a husband. I was rather shocked. She explained that then there wouldn't be "constant reminders". She was a very practical woman and from her perspective, the less she thought about my father, the better she was, so she made every effort to minimise any memories. She even asked me to "stop going on about him", which I didn't understand at all.

When my father died, a very strange thing happened. Two days after he died, I awoke to find him standing at the end of my bed. I was shocked and not a little disturbed. He gave me a message to pass on to my mother. The thing was it made absolutely no sense to me. I decided that it would not be helpful to pass this on and that the whole thing was probably simply a figment of my imagination. Having said that, I was deeply troubled by the experience. At the time I considered myself an atheist and what had happened did not really sit well with my view of the universe. The only solace was that the message seemed so nonsensical to me that I had a degree of reassurance that it was all in my mind.

True to her word, she spent the following Xmas on a long cruise. When she got back, for the first time since my fathers death, she had recovered a bit of her spark. My mother was a glamorous woman, who was confident and intelligent. She'd spent the best part of two years feeling sorry for herself and being rather depressed. Her long list of ailments seemed to grow. On returning from the cruise, she seemed ten years younger. She told me she'd made friends with a Dutch woman who had informed her that "your husband is dead, you are not, you have a life to lead and you only get one go, so stop feeling sorry for yourself" For my mother, this snapped her out of her cycle of depression. She spent the cruise drinking and dancing and came back, if not happy, then most certainly in a better frame of mind. A couple of weeks after she returned, for the first time she brought up the subject of my father. Over a glass of Guinness (my mum was of Irish ancestry), she said to me, completely out of the blue "You know I simply can't believe that your father went without trying to say anything to me". Misunderstanding her statement I said "He had an unexpected heart attack downstairs". She corrected me and said "No, we made a pact that if one of us went first, we'd make sure the other knew that we were OK". Although my partner (now wife) was aware of the strange experience I'd had (as she was in bed next to me, although she deliberately didn't open her eyes), I'd not told anyone else of my father's visit. Although I didn't want to upset my mother, I felt I had now to tell her. When I told her that he'd appeared at the the end of the bed, she was stunned. She said "Why you?" I said "I don't know, but he gave me a message. It makes no sense at all. I didn't want to tell you as I thought it was simply my imagination". My mother, who was extremely superstitious and a practising Roman Catholic started to become cross "Surely its for me to decide if its important, what is it?", so I told her "He said he was truly sorry that he'd left, especially as he'd promised he wouldn't but he had no choice". It was like a gunshot hit my mother. For the only time I can recall, she burst into uncontrollable floods of tears. For me this vindicated my decision. I said "I'm sorry". I thought she was so upset as it was nonsensical and that she'd wanted a message such as "I love you" or the suchlike.

Eventually she got her composure and said "I have spent the last two years feeling furious at your father for his betrayal in leaving me. He promised he'd stay with me to the end. How could you not tell me that?" She slung me out of the house on the spot in a massive temper. The whole thing was simply too much for me. I didn't see her for a couple of weeks, as I thought she was so angry at me that she wouldn't want to see me. Eventually she told my wife to tell me to come up for a Guinness. I didn't raise the subject but after a while she said "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be like that". I said that I was sorry too. She then explained that she'd gone to bed furious at me. In the night, she dreamed that she was with back with my Dad alive. Then she remembered what had happened and said "Why did you tell Roger, why didn't you tell me or one of the girls who would have passed the message on?" He replied "I knew you weren't ready for it. I knew he'd tell you when you were ready to hear it".  She said that she was still angry for a few days, but had thought about it and realised that if one of the girls had told her, she'd probably have not really taken it in during the aftermath of the funeral etc. If he'd have told her, she'd have dismissed it as dreaming or imagination. As it was, the fact that I'd thought it was nonsense and waited till she was strong was proof for her that he'd actually told the right person. She said that she felt guilty for doubting my father, but I said "Don't be stupid, anger is a big part of bereavement. You can't escape it.".

I will leave it to the reader to decide whether this was simply all a figment of imaginations that desperately needed some kind of reassurance. I drew my own conclusions. At this time of year I always think a lot of my father, who passed in 1987 and my mother who died 31 years later in 2008. Whilst my father's death was a shock and I was left with a bitter sense that he'd gone far too early, my mother's death almost came as a relief. She'd had a stroke just before Xmas 2000 and had never really been the same again.  In 2006, she broke a hip and nearly died of c-diff whilst on a recovery ward. Her eyesight had started to go, robbing her of the ability to read, which was, along with alcohol, was one of the few remaining pleasures in life. I was abroad with my family when she had another stroke and passed away. In truth I wasn't surprised. It is hard to find more of a contrast between my feelings when my father and my mother died. I was sad and I do miss her, but there was no sense that it was wrong or I was cheated of time with her. Over Christmas I gave this some thought. I think that when you are in your 40's and have children of your own, you are far better equipped to deal with such things as when you are 24 and have little experience of life.

Paul stage left with The Falsedots at Dingwalls 1984

Every Christmas, as a family, we always raise a glass to lost friends and relatives. The list gets longer. Losing parents is one thing. Losing close friends is another which I've struggled with. Back in 2012, I lost Paul Hircombe, one of my oldest and closest friends. We'd played in the same band, The False Dots on and off for 28 years. We toured Scandinavia and got up to all manner of shenanigans. Paul was a massive risk taker. He was full of life and full of mischief. Sadly this lead to drug addiction, prison, poverty and the estrangement from many friends. Following a spell in HM prison Belhaven, he vowed to get his life back on track. Ultimately we never found out how seriously he was taking this commitment because he developed cancer of the oesophagus. A year of ever more debilitating illness ended in a horrible death. Paul was two years younger than me and I struggled to make any sense of what happened. Although I'd not seen Paul at Xmas too often in recent years, it is a time when my thoughts return to him. As teenagers in a band and in our twenties, we shared many an Xmas partying and getting up to all sorts. New years in 1986 is one that sticks out. I'd just met my now wife and we all went down en mass to Dingwalls to see Desmond Dekker, then adjourned back to my sister's flat in West Hampstead to party into the morning. I recall very clearly something Paul happened to say, a throwaway comment at the time. He quietly said to me "you know I think this will be the best new year, this will be the one we always remember". At the time it seemed a very odd thing to say, but strangely it came true. Due to work/life/other commitments that group of friends never spent New Year together again. We never saw Desmond Dekker again and though we've had some great ones, they've all been slightly tame in comparison.

Whenever I hear Desmond Dekker, I always think of that. I always make a point of listening to "The Israelites" at New Year and I always shed a tear for Paul. We wrote many songs together and it has taken a good few years before I can play them in a setup with another bassplayer and feel happy. Over the years, I've repeatedly had dreams that he's come back to step into the band, assuring me that the dead can do that any time they like, they just choose not to. Then I wake up and I realise that it's all a dream, a very difficult one. I've often read that dreams help you deal with things, I've found that in relation to bereavement they have quite the opposite effect and just make you start feeling bad, when you think you are coming through something. It is nice to be reminded of those we love but to repeatedly have that snatched back from you can be very hard to take.

In some ways I'm lucky. Dealing with the loss of a child or a partner must be the most devastating loss of all. That is something that thus far I've been spared. The thought of it is too monstrous to want to even contemplate. The one thing the loss of people I've loved has taught me is that you should not hold on to anger with people you love. We never know when the grim reaper will come knocking. I am in some ways lucky that I've been in a good place with all of those that I've loved who have passed away. Perhaps the people who struggle most are those who feel they have something to say or some unfinished business with someone they lost. In my father's case, this was so nearly true. We had a massive bust up a year before he passed away. We didn't speak for six months. Eventually a very good friend of mine, Ernie Ferebee (also sadly departed), took me to one side, told me in the most unflattering terms that I was being an arse, told me this was really upsetting my parents and pointed out that my Father was getting on a bit, wasn't in great health and wouldn't last forever. He then said "how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and he'd died of a heart attack". I was lucky as I took this to heart and made up. Shortly before my father died, my mother went away and we went for a curry and a few beers at Mill Hill Services Club and a nightcap. It was one of the very few adult conversations we had. I felt robbed of the ones we couldn't have but at least my last memories of my father were 100% positive. The last conversation I had with him was by phone for Xmas 1986. He was in Florida visiting my sister. It was a short conversation, neither of us knew what would happen. I can't even remember what we said, it was along the lines of Happy Christmas, hope you are enjoying yourself, don't get too pissed". Like everything in the real world, it was really quite unsatisfactory in the context of what happened next. But we can't lead our life as is for each of us, it may be the very last day. Sadly that means that when we get to Christmas and we think of those we love who have gone, it is always tinged with an element of regret.  As I get older and the children have grown up, I've got to like Christmas less for these reasons. We always have the conversation about all of those who used to come when I'd cook dinner for 22. "Oh there was my mum, Clare's parents,  Aunty Jo, and Mary and Tommy and Uncle Leonard and oh yes there was.....". And this year there was eleven. So that is a lot of empty places at the table.

What is death?

As regular readers will know, a good friend of mine recently passed away. Losing someone who I grew up with has been a massive shock to me and I have struggled to deal with some aspects of the experience. It strikes me that if I've had major issues, maybe other people have as well. Maybe writing about some of the things which have gone through my mind, will in some way help to deal with it.

Perhaps the strangest and most troubling thought is "what is death"? When do we actually die? From a clinical perspective, it seems to me that this is not as clear cut as we think. When Fabrice Muamba had heart attack playing for Bolton Vs Spurs, we were told he was "dead for 90 minutes". Wikipedia has a helpful definition of clinical death - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death -


Clinical death is the medical term for cessation of blood circulation and breathing, the two necessary criteria to sustain life.^[1] It occurs when the heart stops beating in a regular rhythm, a condition called cardiac arrest.

But it isn't that simple, is it. Organs can be taken from the body after death and transplanted, and work perfectly well. A body can be kept alive, almost indefinitely when all brain activity has ceased.  Which makes me wonder, how long after clinical death is the person conscious of what is happening around them? Near Death Experiences are well documented. These certainly seem to indicate a residual level of awareness. In my friends case, the cessation of breathing was taken as death. What troubles me is that we don't know what goes on in the brain. A certain peacefulness, following the battle against pain and cancer appeared to take over my friend. Given the terrible pain and suffering he'd been experiencing, I  must assume that he had a degree of relief that this had finished. Given his circumstances, there were no monitors checking for brain activity and given the levels of pain relief, we had no last message or goodbyes. Another good friend of mine died eleven years ago of Pancreatic cancer. He was lucid up until the final moments, giving a running commentary of the experiences and emotions he was feeling. He even sought to give me advice on the running of the studios and what I needed to do.

My sister is a hospice nurse and she has witnessed the death of hundreds of people. She told me that in her opinion spiritual people have spiritual deaths and non spiritual people don't. She is of the opinion that we tend to get the experience that we expect to get. I am not sure whether that is reassuring or not.

I was contacted by a well meaning reader of the blog, who assured me that I shouldn't worry about my friend, as they will be reincarnated and have the opportunity to correct all of their mistakes. I must say that of all the possible options, reincarnation is the one which I hope doesn't happen. If the atheists are correct and there is nothing, then there really is nothing to worry about is there? If my lot, The Roman Catholics are correct, I'll get judged. I like to think I'm one of the good guys, but I could be in for a very nasty surprise. Although my teachers back in the 1960's and 70's used to try and scare the living daylights out of us all, with stories of fire and brimstone, I can't really say I've ever seriously considered Hell as an option. Now if one of the other brands of Judeo-Christain-Islamic faiths is the right brand, I feel I may still be in with a decent shout. But then consider reincarnation. I love my life as an adult, I have a scream of a time. I  would not want to go through childhood and puberty again. It was a horrible time and I was deeply unhappy for most of it. Don't get me wrong, I love my family and my homelife, but outside of that so many things were rotten. School, until I was 15 was a daily battle just to survive with my sanity.

We had teachers who were merciless bullies and at times bordered on being evil sadists. Of course most  weren't, but the ones that were took great joy in humiliating and inflicting pain on children. To be honest, I became pretty immune to it. After the hundredth time I'd been called to the front of the class to be ritually humiliated, it stopped bothering me. I decided that if I was going to get clobbered, I may as well make it worthwhile, so I'd try my hardest to rile the teacher before they got a chance to hit me. They would then inform me they were really going to make it painful. As an adult I simply wouldn't tolerate that sort of treatment, the thought of being a child again and suffering it again is perhaps my darkest fear.

Then there was the uncertainty of puberty, with raging hormones and an ingrained morality that caused me to feel guilty about my feelings. I can remember being about 13 years old and being an alter server. There was an extremely cute girl in the congregation. As mass went on, all I could think about was her and what I'd like to do with her. I was so engrossed in my fantasy that I forgot to ring the bell at communion. I felt like I was doomed to hell for my sins as I realised the horrifying enormity of what I'd done. After mass, I felt like all of the congregation hated me. I felt that they knew exactly why I'd fluffed the bellringing and hated me for it. Would I want to feel like that again? No chance whatsoever.

There were many other things which I didn't enjoy. Becoming an adult meant no more shit from anyone. No one telling me I was a moron, no one berating me for coming bottom of the class. It meant shedding all of the self doubt and irrational fears which had been drummed into me.

Coming back to the question, What is death. I'm really none the wiser. It is something which I'm not afraid of, but am very apprehensive about. As to what comes after, I guess we have to believe what suits us.  I don't have any answers, I don't think I've even found all of the questions yet.

Coping with Death and Bereavement

I started writing this blog last Sunday. It was originally to commemorate the passing away of my beloved Dad 25 years ago and to comment on the fact that I've now been on the planet as long without him as I was with him. It was going to be a loving tribute to him. As I started to write it, I realised that even after 25 years, I have some painful and unresolved issues relating to his passing. I realised that the cause of many of these issues are social and cultural. I realised that if I still have issues and anger over the whole thing after 25 years, other people might as well. It struck me that maybe it's time we started a debate on how Great Britain as a society deals with such issues.

The seeds of these thoughts were planted listening to an excellent edition of the Robert Elms show on BBC London 94.9m, where the whole show was dedicated to the subject of death. I am not going to discuss the religious aspects of death or where we go or don't go, I try not to use my blog to promote my personal religious beliefs. I believe we need to have a discussion as to how we cope with the passing of a loved one.

I am an orphan. My father died in January 1987, suddenly after a heart attack on his return from a holiday in Florida. My parents had returned early as my mother's sister had died unexpectedly. They came back for a funeral. My father didn't realise that it would be his own. I wasn't living at home and I didn't even realise they were back in the UK. In those days, we didn't have mobile phones or emails. I was in a total state of shock when I heard the news. Perhaps the worst thing was the fact that no one seemed to know what to do. I guess if someone dies after a long and protracted illness, at least you have some idea and hopefully have made a few arrangements. My Uncle George died a couple of years later of cancer. He had everything planned to the last detail. His wake was in the "Load of Hay" pub in Hendon. At the end of the evening, myself and my brother Laurie were the last ones left. The landlord came up to us with two rather fine glasses of Johnny Walker whisky. He said "Are you Laurie and Roger?" We replied "Yes". He said "George said you'd be the last two in here and he asked me to give you these in his instructions for the wake".

With my own fathers funeral and wake, I remember virtually nothing, except one of his friends throwing a deck of cards on the coffin and a few old stick in the muds scowling at it disapprovingly. That and the sheer weight of the coffin (he was a big old boy). I had decided that I wasn't going to shed a tear and I would be strong. I built a huge wall between myself and the reality of the situation. I was devastated, but didn't want anyone to know. Sadly I found out almost immediately that as a society, we vandalise the emotional wellbeing of people who are grieving. Let me explain how, more through luck than judgement, at the time I had a dream job. At the tender age of 23, I'd managed to land myself a job managing a team of people doing a piece of work that to this day I'm proud of, for a blue chip company, which changed the face of High Streets in the UK. What could go wrong?

When my brother rang to break the news that my father died, I was stunned. I was getting ready to go to work. I immediately phoned my manager and said "I won't be able to come to work today, my father has passed away suddenly". What do you think she said? What would you say? Her response was perhaps the most incredible thing I have ever heard. She said "Under company rules, you are allowed one days compassionate leave for the death of a parent. I expect to see you in the office tomorrow". I was numb. I simply replied "I will be in when I'm ready and able to work" and I put the phone down. You may wonder how I felt. I don't know. I was just in a daze. The following Monday, I decided that the time had come to return to work. I made my way to the office. As I entered, I passed one of my colleagues walking the other way. This was a friendly amiable chap in his 40's. What he said took me back. "Decided to turn up at last have you?". I am not a placid person, I have a fiery Celtic temperament at times. Despite my general despondency, this roused me. I wondered exactly what he'd been told to make such a crass comment. I rared up and said "I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've not been told the full story. I have been off because my mothers sister died eight days ago. My parents flew back from Florida for her funeral and the the day after they returned, my father had a heart attack and died. My mother is in pieces, all of the family are in pieces and to be quite honest with you, I couldn't face working. I phoned in and said I'd be in when I felt capable of working". My colleague looked visibly shaken. He said "Oh my God, I didn't realise, Jane (the manager) just said you couldn't be bothered to come to work. She didn't say anything about your father". At this I became angry. I said "What, she told everyone I was skiving?". My colleague replied "Yes, I'm really sorry, we'd have sent a card and flowers if she'd told us". He then ushered me out of the building and into a cafe. He ordered me a coffee and said "Please wait here. I need to make sure everyone knows what has happened. I don't want anyone else to behave as I did".

I sat there alone with my thoughts for an hour. I couldn't make any sense of what had happened. Why would someone say that? Was it a personal thing? How could anyone be so cruel?  I'm a pretty tough character but I felt like I'd been violated by this horrible woman. Eventually my colleague came back. He said "I've phoned everyone and they all know. They are really upset. Jane would like to see you now, I will come along to make sure you are ok. Don't lose your temper with her". I said "Ok, I'll be alright".

I entered her office and sat down, my colleague at my side. I expected an apology. She said "Why didn't you turn up for work last week.". I was determined to keep my cool. I responded "As I told you, my Father died and I didn't feel capable of working". She responded "I told you that you were allowed 1 days compassionate leave, why didn't you attend work". At this my colleague piped up "Jane, company policy states that you are allowed up to ten days compassionate leave if you are making funeral arrangements". She responded "He didn't say he was making funeral arrangements. In most families, it is the eldest children who do this". I replied "I was making the funeral arrangements". She said "You should have notified me of this". My colleague then said "Roger has now notified you. The funeral is on Thursday, so he needs to go home and continue making them". She replied "Just because you are entitled to ten days, doesn't mean you have to take ten days. I took half a day off when my father died, for the funeral". I responded "There are plenty of arrangements we need to make, I'd better go home and sort them out". At that I walked out of the office. I realised that even though I loved my job, I couldn't work with this woman. I found another job within two months.

As I reflect on this, I realise that it is an extreme example of how bad the British are at dealing with death. The response of the company to my bereavement was appalling. Now, 25 years later, as I thought about it, I came to the following conclusions.

1) My manager had received no training at all in how to counsel a member of staff who was coping with a devastating loss. She'd interpreted company policy purely based on her own prejudice. This is completely inappropriate and an abuse of position. Company policy should be clear and transparent.

2) The company had no formal process for assisting a member of staff who was struggling to cope with a life changing experience.

3) Although my colleagues were outraged at what happened, none felt that there was any point in making a complaint. A couple said "We'd like to make a complaint, but it is a waste of time for issues like this". Such issues are paramount.

What should happen? I contend that every company should have a formal policy for dealing with bereavements affecting members of staff. As soon as a member of staff reports that they've been affected by a bereavement, HR/Personell should be alerted. They should then do the following :-

a) Offer counselling and assistance to the member of staff to deal with the emotional issues relating to bereavement. I believe that a counselling session with a trained counsellor should be a legal requiremnt. If someone is in employment, the company should pay for this. If a person is on benefits, the state should. My family hadn't got a clue what to do when my father died. We employed the Coop funeral services, who helped and were very good. We shared the responsibility, although my sister did most of the work. For many people, who don't have a large family and the support that brings, a bit of help would be invaluable. It would also give an economic benefit to the company as a person with help is more likely to be able to do their job properly.

b) Ensure all managers with a responsibility to staff trained in how to deal with bereavement. I would not wish my worst enemy to have the experience I suffered.

c) Ensure that the issue of bereavement is covered in the school syllabus. Coping with it is something we all will face at some point.

There was one little addendum to the story,which shows how badly men in Britain deal with death. About a year after my father died, a friends father died. He'd suffered for years with kidney problems. He'd been waiting for a transplant. He'd been looking forward to when he had one so he could resume a normal life. Eventually he got to the top of the list. He had a transplant, but the operation went wrong and he sadly passed away.

I went along to the funeral to pay my respects. As the service progressed, I was suddenly back (in my mind) at my fathers funeral. I started thinking about all the grief I had, how much I missed my Dad and how many things I'd failed to say to him. I was overwhelmed with grief. I burst into tears and had to leave the chapel in floods of tears. I couldn't stop for about half an hour. Although it was most embarrassing, I didn't care. I went home and drank half a bottle of scotch and passed out.

I woke up the next day and I actually felt normal for the first time in a year. The sun was shining and that feeling that my head was going to explode had gone. I went to my local cafe and had a big fry up breakfast. I picked up the Daily Express and read the sports pages (reading the Daily Express is one bad habit I acquired from my Dad). I felt like I could get on with my life again. How many people are there who bottle things up for months, years or even a lifetime? I am sure that I'm not the only person who is so dysfunctional that it takes a friends Dad's funeral to release my pain and anger. How long would I have carried the burden, had I not gone that day?

I wish I could offer some help and hope and guidance to anyone who is under that cloud. That is why I wrote this blog, so that if nothing else you know someone else on the planet has an inkling of understanding of how you feel. Yesterday, for some reason, I did something I haven't done before. As I walked through the hall of my house, I paused by a picture we have. It is a montage of various family members - I rescued it from my mothers flat, when we clearing it out after her death. There is a picture of my Mum and Dad at the "Ross River Dam" in Townsville, Queensland, Austrailia taken in 1976. They are both standing there, smiling, happy, healthy and full of life, enjoying a holiday. They were in their mid 50's then. As I looked at it, I smiled and remembered all of the good times. I realised that I am over the loss of both of them. My memories are of the good things and the bad things, but they are not tinged with the anger, frustration and guilt. I no longer look at the pictures and think "why?".

What I haven't properly got over is the fact that I feel abusively treated by my employer at the time. A time when I was vulnerable and weak. I am still full of anger and hatred towards a person I feel treated me in an appalling fashion. I write this blog in the vain hope that someone, somewhere will realise that such pain is unnecessary and that it much of such pain can be avoided. I still feel an apology is warranted (although I know I'll never get one).

Life is for the living, but as a society, we will never be truly happy until we learn to cope better with how we manage the process of our loved ones passing away. I am sure there are some situations, I'd never recover from such as the death of a child. What I do know is that until we move beyond the "we don't talk about it" mentality, we are fighting the battle of coping with both arms tied behind our backs.