GUEST POST: “I lost one parent but at times I feel I’ve lost both”
After Beccy's dad died, her mum moved on. Quickly. Here she shares her story...
Before we get to Beccy’s story, here’s a quick intro from me…
When I set up this newsletter, I wanted to be open about grief. Not the simple, already spoken about parts (though of course they’d be covered) but the more gnarly, complicated bits. The why the fuck am I like this behaviours. The am I the only one internal nags. I wanted to open up, even when I didn’t have the answer.
But I knew I couldn’t do this alone. I invited others to share their stories too. As what makes grief so intriguing, so impossible to ‘solve’ is that we will all experience it differently. Not just from others, but also from ourselves. This is something we will go through multiple times in our lives and each time will be different and each time we will be unprepared. What! A! Ride!
Yet, despite its uniqueness, we want, we need to find someone whose grief matches ours. And this can be hard. There might be similarities, I’ve certainly witnessed that through writing this letter: I’ve type-whispered things that I have been terrified to voice… and found others who experienced similar. But my grief will never be yours, and your grief will never be mine.
This is true even if the loss is the same. When someone dies they leave behind multiple people, all with different personalities and different ways of coping. After mum died I needed to throw myself into partying and people; my sister embarked on a solo tour of the Scottish Highlands sleeping in empty hostels on cliff-sides, the wind howling. These were our coping mechanisms and they matched our personalities (I now live in London, my sister lives in a tiny village in Northern Scotland.) This worked for both of us, mostly in part because how we wanted to grieve didn’t impact the other’s process. But what happens when it does? When the person experiencing the same loss as you behaves in a way that you simply cannot comprehend? That causes you even more damage?
This was Beccy’s experience when she lost her dad and found her mum’s desperation to move on impossible to understand. She has shared her story below, and I really am in awe at her bravery here opening up. This is a side of grief that is seldom spoken about, it’s all ‘we got through it together’ and ‘how would I have coped without you’. Something I believe to be an over-simplified, often totally false narrative that can leave people feeling even more alone.
As I’ve said, I want us to be open about the thorny parts of grief that are hard to understand. As human behaviour is so baffling, complex and - at times - heart-shatteringly painful. There are, as I’m learning, often no answers or explanations for it. But God! How I wish I did have an answer for Beccy, for her mum, for anyone going through something similar. All we can do is keep going. Keep trying, learning and taking lessons when we can. As Beccy has done. Thank you so much Beccy for your story, and openness… Read her story below…
I’d really love to be able to pay writers like Beccy for their time, and writing, as I believe it holds great value. So I can do this in the future, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You should also all sign up for Beccy’s clever and interesting newsletter, Pitch Graveyard which you can find here.
“I lost one parent but at times I feel I’ve lost both”
Almost all of my formative memories are wrapped up within the walls of my family home. I had never known that house as anything other than a place of safety, comfort, and belonging. That was, until I moved back home, as an adult, after my dad died.
Along with my then boyfriend (now husband) I moved back into the house I had called home for 20 or so years because my dad had died, and I couldn’t bear the thought of my mum having to handle things on her own. It’s strange to reflect on that now, because that’s exactly what she did, regardless of my presence.
In the days after he had died, my mum set out on her mission of what she called–and still does call coping. She replaced their bed (understandable), toolbox (slightly less understandable, but she insisted she needed to know how to fix things), and even the hoover (I remember being stood in John Lewis, trying to help her choose one, and getting the overwhelming sensation that I was in fact living in a simulation). Other random items she purchased include: a coat stand (apparently hanging coats on the bannister at the bottom of the stairs as we always had done was now unbearable), mugs (I had gotten my sister one for her birthday, which my mum then insisted on going to the shop I had bought it from and buying every single one they had in stock, much to the confusion of the person behind the till) an enormous birdhouse for the garden (genuinely can’t remember the reasoning behind that one), and copious amounts of demisting pads and anti-freeze spray for the car “just incase”. All in all, it was a bizarre time. I watched everything that I knew, a life that I had almost taken for granted, dissolve instantaneously.
The mugs
This January marked five years since my dad died of an undetected heart condition called SADS (Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome) at 57 years old. I had never heard of the phrase before, and even now, most people assume I’m referring to the more common Seasonal Affective Disorder (which, as far as I know, you can’t die from). It’s undeniable that every kind of death is shit for those who are left behind. But I would say a sudden death leaves you in a state of complete shock, where it’s difficult to process reality as you have known it up to that point (hence the whole simulation-whilst-shopping-in-John-Lewis thing).
Beccy’s dad in her home town
Without going into the details, my dad effectively died in bed next to my mum. Now, that’s enough to fuck you up for life—nothing could have been done to save him (unless they had just so happened to have had a defibrillator in the bedroom). However, her coping mechanism for the past five years has been to disassociate from that reality as much as possible—which extends much further than just unnecessarily replacing household items. Whilst I’m not saying I blame her, it has made our relationship (and subsequently that of mine and my two sisters) incredibly challenging.
My mum met somebody new less than six months after that night. My parents had been married for 28 years, together for 32. All things considered, I guess I had expected her to play the part of the grieving widow. Instead, she went out on dates and tried to get my opinion on potential new relationships. I was furious, but I also felt rejected. I overheard her one day on the phone to a friend, complaining about “being alone”. I didn’t understand—between the three of us living with her, we had made sure she was never alone. We would compare and adjust our work and social schedules to ensure someone was always in the house, to cook dinner, do the shopping, or just to watch a film together. But it wasn’t enough. She insisted on scattering my dad’s ashes straight after the funeral, took off her wedding ring, had her teeth whitened, and got dropped off in a Ferrari late at night—she was simply desperate to ‘move on’ (her own words).
The idea of ‘moving on’ hasn’t exactly sat well with me. What if you’re more of a reflect, digest, and honour the wonderful person that you have prematurely lost, kind of person? Unfortunately, this approach has caused plenty of friction between myself and my mother over the past five years. I have gone through phases of not speaking to her at all, arguing with her constantly, or pleading with her to at least attempt to see my point of view. She has said and done some unimaginable things—things that without countless hours of therapy I don’t think I would have been able to forgive her for (if I’m being honest with myself, have I really forgiven her?).
On TV or in books, the story usually goes that upon the death of a parent, the rest of the family inseparably bands together. I found myself sobbing pathetically whilst watching Jack Rooke’s ‘Big Boys’—why couldn’t my mum become the supportive BFF as his had done? Why wouldn’t she hang out with me and my sisters, instead of going on lavish holidays with her boyfriend? And, truly at the core of the matter, why can’t she see that we’re all hurting too?
Together, my parents were a supportive, dedicated, and reliable presence in mine and my sisters’ lives. To lose my dad, and then have my mum putting herself as her number one priority at a time when we all needed her the most, was incomprehensible. Everybody grieves differently—I remember hearing that in one of my very first counselling sessions. But what about when the way you’re dealing with your grief (or lack thereof) affects everyone around you?
Shortly after my mum had met her partner and was forcefully suggesting group dinners, meet ups and sleepovers, I suggested we try family counselling. Maybe it would help her understand the reservations, why it felt like it was all moving too fast, and why (as three grown up, grieving women) we weren’t in need of a new father figure. To say it was a disaster would be a complete understatement. I liken it to giving up smoking—to be successful, you have to want to do it. You have to practise what you learn in the room outside of it, in your everyday life. My mum openly tells anyone who will listen that she “doesn’t believe in therapy”. She sat in those sessions, arms folded, one question away from shouting that this was all a huge inconvenience, reminiscent of Naomi Campbell in court. It used to make me angry, but now it just makes me sad. At 55, she comes from a generation with so much shame and stigma attached to discussing their mental health, that she would literally rather ‘stiff upper lip’ her way through life, regardless of the consequences.
She’s since sold the family home (another painful loss, as we weren’t talking to one another at the time) as is her right to do so. All of my dad’s belongings are now in my loft, because she didn’t want them in her new house. Funnily enough the aforementioned hoover, coat stand, birdhouse and mugs didn’t make the cut either. I want her to be happy, I really do—I just don’t see why her happiness has to come at the expense of others. I’m terrified of putting these thoughts out into the world—my mum has repeatedly told me that I act like a spoiled brat, that I’m too sensitive, and the best one of all, that losing my dad is harder for her than it is for me. If somebody tells you something enough times, you start to believe it.
Whenever those dark thoughts start to take over, I try to remind myself of how far I’ve come in the five years since it felt like I lost everything. That doesn’t always bring the level of comfort I’d like it to, and there are definitely days when the longing for the past feels unbearable, but I’ve had to develop coping mechanisms of my own. Turning off my phone, resting, watching reality TV, going for long walks, finding small joys—these are just some things that tend to help. One of the most difficult lessons I’ve learned is that I can only control my own actions, not other people’s.
My parents may have defined my past, but now it’s up to me to define my future. It’s hard work, and often lonely (even though I am lucky enough to have a fantastic support network) but I truly believe we are born alone and we die alone. The relationship I have with myself has to be the most important one, because when you strip everything else away, that’s what you’re left with.
Once again, I want to thank Beccy for writing this brave piece (remember, she has a newsletter, found here. I’ve found that, even though it’s FUCKING TERRIFYING opening up about the parts of our grief we’re most afraid of, pays off, as it a) is a process writing it down and b) helps us find others who have felt the same. So if you have experienced similar to Beccy, please do let her know in the comments below.
