Not easy to laugh
At its
best, even in the midst of all this, there is laughter too, often centred on
my joker son. Laughter, of course, is no longer straightforward. Happiness
and sadness co-exist in the same moment, cradling the same memory in a way I
never thought possible. Boundaries no longer matter.
Suddenly, every story about someone
who has lost a child, whatever the age of parent and whether by bomb or
bullet, accident or ill-health, in this country or elsewhere, takes on a
different complexion. Where once I could feel only sympathy, now, to a
degree, I can empathise. I have a link. I, like all those others, am part of
a club I never wanted to join. There are no rules on how I make use of my
membership, no handy guides. It's just me.
Natural order
If you're living, as I do in London,
or any part of the affluent West, you "know" that children do not die before
their parents.
My Mum died in 2005 and my Dad in
2006. They were of the wartime generation, an evacuee and a Normandy
veteran, straight out of the school of hard knocks. I grieved long and hard
for what I'd lost.
Yet they were old and Tom was young.
Their deaths were the natural order. His was not. But children do die.
Although the specific cause of Tom's death is comparatively rare, the fact
of his passing is not. As a parent, I mostly chose to stay away from this
inconvenient fact on the basis that if I thought too hard about such things,
I wouldn't be capable of much else. It wasn't something I wanted to think
about.
In the immediate days after Tom's
death, shock took over. Shock helps. Shock protects. On the afternoon of
Tom's funeral, I drank more than I've done in decades, by my standards
enough to sink a battleship. I didn't feel a thing. Next day I had no
hangover, total recall and an overpowering sense of "What next?". The rest
of my life was the answer.
Too many questions
Shock has been replaced over the
following weeks by endless questions revolving around "What if?" and "If
only?". It is draining. I struggle to get out of bed. I make myself do so
because it is only by physically putting one foot in front of the other,
walking and talking with my wife, that I can start another day and head to
work.
I try to confront as much as I can, go
to the places he and I used to go, watch what we used to watch together. It
is a battle and I am fighting it as aggressively as I am able. Anger, I'm
told, is natural at this time.
Ever eaten a fried egg in a fury? Tom
liked fried eggs. So do I, yet I wasn't sure I could face one. The first
time I did, I did so because I am not going to give up what he or I enjoyed.
I forced it down. It was a small victory.
Nobody to blame
So anger can help, it can help me to
push back against fate, to tell myself that however low I go, I will not
stay down, I will look the world in the eye and to hell with anyone who
doesn't want to look back.
I can
honestly say I'm not angry at any individual. There is nobody to blame for
Tom's death, for which I am grateful. My rage is at the unfairness and it
means I do not always cope as I should.
Sadness, though, is the predominant
emotion and I have my own strategies for self-preservation. I've gone to
counselling for the first time and found it useful.
I've always enjoyed a beer, now I've
cut right back because just one occasion so far was enough to show that
grief and too much alcohol doesn't work for me.
So no booze and a shrink is the
answer? Whatever works is the answer. Being prepared is also part of my
self-preservation. The perfectly normal question "How are you?" can throw me
completely. Now, I have my honest, autopilot replies of "It's hour by hour"
or "Ask me in 10 years". If you're really lucky, I might give both replies,
or I might take you through things. I simply don't know.
What can people say?
Therein is a huge issue. Not only is
there no guidebook for me - well, there are a few and I'm reading them -
there're also no guides for friends or colleagues. People are unsure about
the approach to take. Do they say too little or too much? Do they
acknowledge or do they ignore? Do they talk about their children or not?
It's therefore not only about when I am ready to speak to people, it's also
about when they are ready to speak to me.
I try to keep in mind that, even when
I've been asked a truly insensitive question or had to listen to someone
muse on how they might feel in similar circumstances, they're trying to
reach out. We're all walking on eggshells which break without warning.
The absolute truth about how I feel
remains within me, within my family and with my closest friends. Upon them
rests the dubious distinction of me admitting if I feel terrible. I'm not
going to dwell on it any more than I can help, neither am I going to say I'm
okay if I'm not. If they feel terrible, they tell me, or at least they claim
they do. I don't trust another person's protective instincts. I can't see
any other way other than such honesty if relationships are not to fracture
under the weight of tip-toeing around the big bastard elephant in the
corner.
Many tributes
Our friends are mourning our son and
trying to support us. They are doing a magnificent job and I do not
under-estimate the cost. This is just about the most public way I know of
saying: "Thank you - and look out for yourselves."
I acknowledge, too, that so many
people have shown a huge generosity of spirit, cooking food, running
errands, putting time and effort into showing they care.
Tom's own friends have posted all
sorts of tributes on the net and I take strength from what I see. Type in
"RIP Tom" on You Tube and my son appears alongside others who have died too
young. There, that link, again.
The kindness of strangers is also
remarkable. People have shared what they had previously kept hidden - their
own similar experiences as parents or siblings. One person confided that
they were an alcoholic in an effort to steer me clear of seeing drink as the
answer.
I want to thank them all: from the
bloke who installed our boiler to the builders working on our house; from
the people at Cardiac Risk in the Young to the journalist Matthew Engel, who
responded to my wife's ad hoc letter.
No closure
After so many words, I think what I've
written is an aide memoire. I've loved my son and daughter equally, learned
from both equally and will continue to both love and learn from them.
I'm not looking for "closure", I'm
looking for Tom to stay with me in a way that allows me to smile as well as
mourn. It's a different journey from the one I wanted, no doubt with many
missed turnings and steep hills along the way. However, it is a journey that
I hope I - and we as a family - will continue to go on.
And we will make it.
Paul Clabburn
