The bewilderment that Adrian Chiles describes is very familiar – one might even say, predictable (I’ve spent a lifetime dreading the loss of a parent. And now it’s finally happened, 20 March). Nothing can prepare you for the loss of a parent. There is no roadmap for bereavement. Losing a parent means an enforced “stepping up” on the generational ladder – it’s a step nearer to death. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a step further away from childhood, now the all-protective figure has gone. We mourn the person we remember from long ago as much as the person we sat with last week.
However long-expected, the finality of death is always a shock. The platitudes abound – “a long life, well lived” – and comfort nobody. The sheer tedium of the administration, the registration, the organisation of a funeral, the contacting of old friends, can alleviate the initial shock, but it can also feel, as Adrian describes, like a repeated hammer blow of a horrible reality. Later, the disposal of effects feels intrusive, offensive, unnatural – clearing a house is like dismantling an entire life; intimations of mortality on a grand scale.
More cliches, but some cliches are so true (that’s why they were repeated): time does help; one step at a time; one day at a time. I wish the Chiles family the best of luck.
Gill Othen
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
• I read Adrian Chiles’s piece on his father with tears in my eyes. I am an only child and I too, as my own daughter does now, feared the day my parents were no longer here.
My dad died nearly six years ago after a very long illness and so my mum and I were left, and the grief for me was easier to bear because she was there, but then a cancer diagnosis came. Even though I knew our time was coming to an end, it never felt real. Even on the day when I knew “this is the day”, it wasn’t real. And so it was just the two of us as I prayed for her, listening to Foster and Allen while I held her hand and shared her last hours until she finally slipped away with peace and dignity.
No amount of preparation or even experience of death prepared me for the pain I’ve felt since her death. Adrian, grief is a cruel thing. A painful reminder of love and loss. Take the ride as it comes.
Jacqueline Beards
Coventry
• My dad just passed away as well, at 86. There is nothing that can prepare one for this. As I held his lifeless hands crossed on his chest, two versions of me wept. The man in his 50s and the child in me, losing his daddy. I too wasn’t prepared for the wealth of emotions bubbling up to the raw surface. They remain for ever in our aching hearts.
Charles Rouleau
Sutton, Quebec, Canada
• My sister and I separately viewed our dad lying in his coffin. I burst into tears when I saw him, and told my sister afterwards that I felt stupid. She replied: “Don’t worry, he’d have loved it, he always enjoyed a good greet.” “Greet” is Glaswegian for cry.
Paula McEwan
Manchester
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