The Good Friend’s Guide to Grief:
how to avoid making things worse.

Losing someone you love, whether it is a parent, a partner, a sibling, a child or a friend, is traumatic. While nothing can make the grief less painful, friends and colleagues can do a lot to help – if only they knew where to start.

Unfortunately, most of us have absolutely no idea what to do and we end up inflicting additional pain on someone who is already feeling overwhelmed.

Tamara Clark’s experienced is indicative of what can happen: “People we both knew used to cross the street rather than talk to me”, she says of the time after her husband died. “They think you don’t notice, but you do, and it was so hurtful. It felt like I was being punished twice.”

For most of us, death is an abstract concept. We all know about “media death”. We see it all the time in films and on television. Thankfully, bombs and earthquakes and hurricanes are things that happen to other people. We can shudder, and then look away.

Cocooned by low infant mortality rates and increased life spans, people in their twenties, thirties and even forties rarely encounter death in their day-to-day lives. Dealing with death has become a skill which has passed out of the private sphere and into the hands of professionals. On a day-to-day basis, friends and colleagues may have little persdonal experience to draw on when it comes to supporting someone who is grieving. As a result, once the first wave of sympathy and condolences has washed over them, the bereaved can feel incredibly isolated.

As in Tamara’s case, our fear of death and awkwardness in dealing with those who are left behind can lead friends and acquaintances to do appalling things. We can’t believe we would do something that dreadful, but it happens all the time – and not just to adults.

Caroline Smith’s mother died when she was a young child. At a time when, as children, they were struggling to make sense of what had happened to them, people were actively avoiding them. “It was bad enough that we’d lost our mother,” she recalls, “but on top of that, the way people behaved made us feel as if we’d done something wrong.”

Part of the reason for such unfeeling behaviour is that peope are worried that the grieving person will cry or behave “inappropriately”. From their point of view, the safest strategy appears to be to say nothing: to carry on as if everything was normal. From the perspective of the bereaved person, this is incredibly hurtful.

“People don’t want to upset you or remind you,” says Sara Bellamy, whose partner died earlier this year, “But do they really think you can forget? It’s like having an elephant in the room with you and everyone is pretending it’s not there. I wanted to shout at people: ‘it’s an elephant for God’s sake!’ We all knew Martin was dead. It was insulting to him and to me to pretend it hadn’t happened.”

“It’s not what people have said that has been painful for me,” she continues, “It’s when they haven’t said anything. Just not saying ‘I was sorry to hear about Martin’, adds to the grief.”

There are three simple things to remember if you want to help someone who is grieving, says Annie Kiff-Wood, of the charity Cruse Bereavement Care:

• the first is to listen
• the second is to allow them to cry without letting your own embarrassment get in the way
• the third is to offer practical support.

You aren’t helping your friend to cope with their loss by pretending that nothing has happened, says Kiff-Wood. Someone who is grieving needs to talk about it. It is an important part of getting to grips with what has happened to them. And if they need to cry about it, let them.

Sara Bellamy agrees wholeheartedly. “Just because someone’s eyes fill with tears every time the person’s name is mentioned is not a reason to stop speaking about them. I want to talk about him. I’m not going to cry every time his name comes up. . . . but I might. . .”

“When people are grieving,” Kiff-Wood points out, “they are going through one of the most stressful experiences they have ever had and they are likely to be exhausted by it.” If you don’t feel able to sit and listen, she says, then try to think about the practicalities: mow the lawn; offer to help with the children; cook a meal; do some ironing . . . Having said that, she cautions that you must not expect the grieving person to take up every offer of help or every invitation to talk: they might want to be on their own. What’s important is for them to know that you are there if they need you.

This advice holds true for the longer term as well as for the first few weeks. “Don’t stop calling after the first week or so to make sure that the person is alright,” she urges. “Keep doing it – especially if that person lives on their own.” This is particularly important for the first year after the death.

Kiff-Wood suggests that another important service that friends can provide is to remember important dates: the birthday of the survivor and the person who died; wedding anniversaries; the anniversary of the death itself, and to let the bereaved person know that you are thinking of them at these times.

Death is so final. We’re a society that believes that everything is available – you just have to be willing (or able) to pay the price. But death is binary: this person was alive: now they are dead. It is so frightening because we know that one day, we are going to have to face death ourselves. It would be nice to feel that our loved ones will be well looked after by their friends and family when the time comes.

Useful website: http://www.crusebereavementcare.org.uk/

A bulb named Marco

What kind of plant would you name after Marco Pierre White?

The reason I raise the subject is that when we moved house in September, we inherited a vast vegetable patch. We view this veg patch – and the accompanying greenhouse - with a mixture of joy and trepidation. Joy, because it means that we can finally grow our own produce and trepidation, because we havn’t the faintest clue how to go about it.

Sadly, because we had been trying to move to this house since about February, the preceding owners had not bothered to plant anything in it this year, so instead of inheriting the fruit and veg of their hard labour, we got a lot of dandelions and chickweed instead.

Having looked nervously at it for a few weeks; and having failed to locate the gardening books in all the cardboard boxes that remain unpacked, we finally plucked up the courage to go and seek some counselling. At the local gardening centre, I walked timidly up to an understanding looking soul and blurted out: “We need help! We’ve inherited a massive vegetable patch – what can we plant in it?”

It turns out that there isn’t much beyond onions and garlic that you can put in at this time of year – hence my renewed acquaintance with Mr White. Taylors Bulbs, of Holbeach, Lincs, do a fine looking bulb of garlic called Marco. As last weekend was a fine and pleasant one, I decided to get my Marcos out of their bag and into the ground. Armed with bamboo canes to make the straight lines (I do recall that vegetables need to be planted in straight lines) and with technical assistance from Youngest Son, we planted some 50 cloves. I dug the holes, he planted the Marcos: and now we wait . . . .

Meanwhile I speculate on the decision behind the choice of name and what it may imply for the eventual produce.

Having met Marco Pierre White, I have to admit to the same mixture of feelings about the garlic that I have about our vegetable patch in general . . .

My Marco Pierre White experience happened quite by chance back in April when we received a call one Tuesday night from a neighbour.

“Marco Pierre White has taken over The Highwayman at Exlade Street,” he said. “He’s looking for people to test out the restaurant and put the staff through their paces. Would you like to go?” Well, what would you have done?

I think we now hold the world record for finding a babysitter from scratch. We made it from receipt of invitation to restaurant table in an hour and a half. When you consider that this included getting two children fed, into bed and making ourselves look reasonably presentable, I think it will take some beating.

“It’s not the sort of thing that comes up very often,” I explained to the Chair of Governors of Eldest Son’s school (none of the usual suspects we use for babysitting were answering the phone and she does live pretty close by . . .). Bless her, she agreed with me, and even got a neighbour to sit for her children until Mr Chair got home.

It was a fantastic evening: champagne, foie gras parfait, Dover sole, an enormous crème brulee, and we met the man himself. He looked a bit dishevelled but was perfectly pleasant. So pleasant in fact, that I cheekily asked if I could interview him.

“Of course,” he said. “I will not talk to any of the local papers. You can have an exclusive.”

Two nights later, I was due to go out for a meal with some female friends. As I was getting the children ready for bed, I got a call from the neighbour. “Marco’s down at The Highwayman,” he said. “He’s asking when you want to interview him. I think you should get down there now.”

“I can’t!” I squeaked. “I havn’t done any background research and I’m going out with friends tonight.”

“You’d better go,” said Mr Darnbrough. It won’t take more than an hour. You can meet up with the others later.”

At about 7 o’clock, I walked into The Highwayman, clutching my notebook and trying not to look nervous. Taking a large gulp of the glass of wine that was offered to me, the interview began.

Nearly two glasses of wine and a lot of scribbling later, I announced to Marco that I had a dinner engagement and really had to leave.

“Where are you going?” he asked. And that is where the fun really began.

“You’re not going to eat there!” He expostulated (insert appropriate expletives). “Ring them up and tell them to come here!”

I obediently began scrabbling through my bag looking for telephone numbers while explaining that there was no signal for my mobile round here. He looked exasperated.

“Get me The Lamb’s phone number!” he exclaimed at a member of the waiting staff. “I’ll call them myself!”

And he did.

The trouble is that if you are three nice middle class ladies sitting in a restaurant waiting for their friend Susan to turn up, you don’t actually believe the person claiming to be Marco Pierre White when he says he’s got her at The Highwayman and you are to hightail it over here and have dinner at his expense: even if he is using characteristically colourful language.

Finally, he put me on the phone. “It’s not a wind-up,” I heard myself saying in a slightly higher voice than usual. “Please come!”

So there we were. Marco, four women of a certain age and income bracket and several glasses of champagne. Over the course of the next hour or so we did politics; we did the future of the restaurant industry; we did parenthood: I did too much drinking.

In my defence, I would like to point out that it had been a fairly surreal week. Tuesday we get to meet MPW and have a lovely meal for free. We also – quite by chance - end up talking to the people at the next table and find that they will be our new next door neighbours. Wednesday we hear that the house sale has fallen through and are predictably devastated. Thursday, I find myself (completely unprepared – knowing nothing about MPW except that he is a Michelin-starred chef and very litigious when it comes to journalists) back at The Highwayman for an interview with the great man and then another free meal - to which my friends are summarily invited. I think I was finding it all a bit too much.

Some people would sip mineral water on such an occasion. Some people would think “I’ll just have a little drink to calm my nerves . . .”.

I remember sitting back at one point and looking admiringly at my friends as they took Marco on with grace and style. There was no kowtowing to a celebrity. He did say some outrageous things and he did use the f-word a lot. They dealt with him politely and with enormous good humour: they gave as good as they got. I think that they enjoyed the occasion - I hope that he did.

Marco eventually left us to have our dinner. At the end of the evening, I left my car in the car park and gratefully accepted a lift home from one of my (sober) friends.

I did email Taylors Bulbs to ask if they had named their garlic after Mr White. So far, I've not had an answer. If I don't hear from them, I'll have to wait until my Marcos are ready next summer. I expect the proof will be in the eating. . . .


Part of this article appeared in Round & About in May 2006 http://www.roundandabout.co.uk/
www.taylors-bulbs.com

Whatever Next? is a column that I have been writing for a local magazine called Round&About. This is a slightly modified version of one which appeared earlier this year.

Whatever Next?
Susan Darnbrough tackles the gritty realities of family life in the Thames Valley: days out with the children; time off from the children, staying at home with the children . . . shopping (preferably without the children) and happiness. This month, she focuses on feet.

If there has been one constant theme running through my thoughts so far this year, it has been feet: how we look after them and what we wear on them.

Sadly, all this flexing of my mental faculties with regard to socks has not translated into much of an exercise programme. Most of my aerobic activity takes the form of carrying a laundry basket (full of socks) up and down stairs: but more of that in a moment.

The root cause of my feet on the brain problem was the discovery of a verruca on Eldest Son’s foot. “Aaarggh!” I cried in terror. “Put a sock on immediately!” And then later: “Crikey! Does this mean he won’t be able to go swimming?”

It’s probably true to say that I overreacted a bit, but when I was a child, someone told me that verrucas were insects that burrowed into your foot. I know better than that now of course, but it still makes me shudder.

Following consultations with other mothers at school pick-up time – and a visit to the NHS website – I have established that these days, no one bothers much about verrucas. The recommended treatment is similar to the advice you get on the telly about dealing with your badly behaved children: if you don’t give them any attention they will eventually go away.

This means that I won’t have to buy any special verruca socks in order to go swimming.

I am profoundly relieved by this because there are already eighty five pairs of socks in this house. Yes, I have counted them and this doesn’t include odd ones. Sometimes I feel my life revolves around putting them in the washing machine, taking them out again, hanging them up to dry and then matching them into pairs.

We all buy socks with gay abandon, wear them and then wait for them to reappear, docilely matched and sweet smelling in our sock drawers. But it doesn’t happen by magic. Someone has to put them in the washing machine and then . . . Someone has to Hang up the Socks!

What particularly gets me is when I end up doing the job twice because they didn’t quite dry properly outside and I have to unpeg them from the washing line and then hang them up all over again on the clothes airer. There are better things to do with my life.

My frustration is particularly directed at all the dull-coloured socks in the world. Honestly, how many dismal shades of grey, blue and brown do we need? How many subtle variations of weave and ribbing can we stand? Forget forced fingernail extraction. This is torture!

It’s not just me who is bothered about socks. A US website tells me that by the time the average person is 40 years old, they will have owned approximately 1,200 pairs of socks. I really do not want to think about that. I think I shall have to go and put my feet up.

www.roundandabout.co.uk

Wetsuits are for Wimps

I stopped swimming in unheated pools or in the sea years ago. At some point in my early thirties, something happened in the tummy area that made it impossible to cope with all that cold water sloshing around my belly button.

I’d stand there, willing myself to take the plunge, sucking my stomach in (as if that was going to help) as ice cold water crept slowly towards my midriff . . . . and then I’d bottle out.

All this wimpiness from a woman who swam in mountain streams in the French Alps as a girl; who jumped into lakes and rivers in her mid twenties while on an Outward Bound course in April; who, now in her forties, will fearlessly plunge her hands into freezer compartments and rootle around for ages searching for packets of sausages that she’s sure must be in there somewhere.

This timidity in the face of cold water has become more of a problem over the last few years. As the children have reached an age where beaches, or at least villas with pools have become the number one holiday priority, my reluctance to get wet (and cold) means that I am missing out on a lot of the fun.

It also leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. As a post-feminist I believe that women are equally as good as men at most things and I disdain girly-girls for being a complete waste of space for not wanting to get involved in physical activity. So what do I think I am doing standing at the water’s edge and saying “Ooooh, I’m not going in there. It’s far too cold!” It doesn’t line up very well with my self-image.

This summer in Guernsey, as I looked at those fantastic beaches and all that cold, cold water, one of the friends we were camping with came up with an absolutely fantastic idea. It was like that “Of Course!” moment in Winnie the Pooh when Christopher Robin is trying to work out how to save Piglet from the floods, and Winnie the Pooh comes up with the solution and Christopher Robin looks at him in wide-eyed admiration and thinks “Now why couldn’t I have thought of that . . . .”

“Why don’t we all buy wetsuits?” she said.

What a top idea it was. Up until that moment, wetsuits had been bracketed in my mind with windsurfers and sailing and surfing: things that ultra sporty young things with gorgeous bodies wore. The brackets had expanded slightly the year previously to include little boys who were going to want to go into the water regardless of what the weather was like . . . but I’d never considered myself to be in the market for one.

As the idea slowly sank in however, it started to make perfect sense. Why not take advantage of something that was specifically designed to keep out the cold? It did help of course that a shop on Guernsey called Aladdin’s Cave was selling women’s shortie wetsuits for only £20 each – a very reasonable price.

The very next morning, three forty-something mummies of various shapes and sizes turned up at Aladdin’s Cave and were soon fitted out with natty neoprene numbers in fetching shades of black and Seriously PINK pink, black and blue, and black and grey: the choice of colour being limited by the sizes available.

Wearing a wetsuit is a little like wearing a full-length girdle (I imagine). You do feel as if you are being held in in all the right places, which leads to an unexpected side effect of the whole experience: it gives you confidence. We duly assembled on the beach and found ourselves standing in various sporty poses (wearing a wetsuit seems to do that to you). Fathers were placed at strategic points with cameras and videos and then Cam, Fiona and I (Charlies Angels as we preferred to be called at this point) performed a slow motion run into the waves while various bemused children and onlookers stood and watched.

I think at least one of my fellow Angels had rather imagined that we would stop once we got out to waist height, but instead we plunged on, slicing through the water like dolphins (well, sort of). It was wonderful!

It must be twenty years since I swam in the sea. It was such an exhilarating moment to be actually in that water, feeling the movement of the waves and tasting that salt sea taste. It was so liberating. From the laughter and the squeaks of joy emanating from my fellow Angels, the sense of achievement was shared.

There is a funny moment in a wetsuit when the water first slides down your cleavage and sorts itself out around your bottom but hey, don’t let a little gurgling put you off. Believe me, getting into cold water in a wetsuit is as close to getting into a heated pool as you are ever likely to get – without of course actually getting into one.

I wore my wetsuit that week. I played with the children in the shallows and did everything I felt I needed to do. And the following week, staying at a villa with an unheated pool, I wore it again; and I loved it. As far as I am concerned, my assumptions about who wears a wetsuit and what they do in it have been completely revised. Take it from me – wetsuits are for wimps.