80 years ago a young married couple bought these shoes for their baby boy.
James and Ann called their baby Terence. Their “little diamond” as they referred to him in the ad in the local paper to announce his birth.
Ann was from a Catholic family and James a Protestant background. So clearly, they must have overcome some obstacles in order to be together.
37 years later, their little diamond (my father) had his third child: me.
He died 1 year ago.
We remembered him on the anniversary yesterday with a picnic of his favourite foods (pork pies, pickled red cabbage and fry’s chocolate cream sat on folding chairs in the cemetery. It was lovely.
How does this relate to my work as a therapist?
Well, the cliches are true – we *do* often talk about childhood in therapy. Because the family structure you grew up with often serves as a template for life.
It’s crossed my mind a few times since my dad died that parents are a bit like a theatre backdrop or set.
If a play has a ropey, inconsistent or rickety set then it mars the whole theatre experience in a really obvious way.
But a great backdrop? That often gets overlooked or fades into the background.
Then, later on, often when we have families of our own, we realise just how hard it is to create something so steadfast.
We’re lucky if we have a backdrop which provides us with an early experience of secure attachment that we can then take into our adult relationships. If we’ve had it, we know what it looks like, then we can sniff it out in others, we can create it again.
We also take on or share attributes of our parents/caregivers of course. After they die, that seems to get supercharged. As if their character traits have been implanted into you now they’re no longer present on the earth.
So my dad’s qualities of perseverance, taking responsibility, getting the unglamorous jobs done. These developed in me over the last year. Even my dad’s slightly less positive attributes of shouting at other drivers in the car (I’ve had to try to put a lid on that one after I heard one of our 6-year-olds start shouting about “idiots on the road”)
And the importance of recognising endings. And having rituals to mark them. Having a funeral, a grave, an anniversary meet-up have helped me enormously.
So does talking frankly about death. That’s why I never said that my dad ‘passed away’. To me, it feels like sugarcoating. A euphemism. A denial of the pain and suffering that usually accompanies illness and death. When you’re grieving you need people to be able to talk about the difficult stuff, to use the hard words. If you avoid them, you’re not magicking the pain away. But you might make that person feel a bit less understood.
I’m grateful that I had no loose ends with my dad. Nothing left unsaid.
I turned up consistently in quiet ways that he would have appreciated.
I think it’s important we talk about grief and death frankly. What do you think? Let me know in the comments
