Coping with Grief
For many years I adopted my family’s view of grief. ‘Life goes on so just leave the dead behind.’ My brother Bobby was only 18 months old when he died and that was before I was born. My parents never visited his grave and, as I grew up, I never learned where Bobby was buried. The day before my father died, he told me he did not want to go to the hospital again. He was very ill and had had enough. I respected his wishes and spent the next twenty-four hours with him, while my mother had a well-deserved rest. I slept fitfully that night and he passed away peacefully at ten o’clock the following day as I sat by his side. It seemed that I had done my duty and although I would miss him, I had my life to consider, a wife, children, and a job to get on with. I can only remember one distressing moment: when I returned to work. People were chatting and enjoying a joke, and, in that instant, I felt desolate, as I thought, ‘My dad is dead, and everyone is laughing.’ I was thirty-eight years old.