An article written for the Widdows' Association reflects on a child's bereavement:

I can clearly recall the day my father, an RAF pilot was killed. 

I was five years old. It was my second day at my new school and the teacher was at the back of the classroom talking to two people.  I was escorted through the hall and driven home.  I was told to be a brave girl for my mummy.  I don’t remember the following two years at all.

I didn’t attend the funeral, playing with my sister instead at a friend’s house. With hindsight I wish we had because there was occasionally some doubt in my child’s mind that he had died.  I remember asking my mother if he had been taken by the Russians (this was the seventies) or had he decided to live with another family? 

We were fortunate to have a close knit family and the RAF community rallied round.  We seemed to have a house full of people much of the time but I dreaded the sound of their cars pulling away leaving the home empty to us three.  Gradually the friends stopped coming and life resumed to some sort of normality.

No-one should underestimate what the death of a parent does to a child.  I couldn’t articulate it and never cried but the grief was real in the house, an unspoken thing, the dread of people leaving and a heaviness descend sometimes when we were alone.  It has hit me again now that I am a mother with children of a similar age.  I look at how close they are to their father and feel sad for the little girl denied of all those hugs and all that love.

When someone dies in the family it’s not just the loss of that person but your whole world as you know it – your future is changed, your heritage wiped.  You adjust, and move on but the loss is always there and I didn’t realise it at the time - a sense of rejection - which I believe should be looked out for and addressed by professionals for a child to move forward.

I am grateful for the few precious private memories of my father and a delightful tape he recorded of us singing nursery rhymes – these mementos are important to me and my sister confirming who he was and how he loved us.

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