“Mum died on a Saturday. I went back to school on the Monday. I just felt
ditched. Two months later I was sent to boarding school where I became
seriously ill because I had no other way of expressing my grief.” Faith
Hall, 40, a hospice volunteer, is recalling how she lost her mother 30 years
ago, in a past that we might like to think is a foreign country. Surely it
no longer applies in our talk-about-everything culture? Yet it is still true
that bereaved children – those left behind when a mother, father or sibling
dies – are society’s forgotten mourners.
We know so little about such children that, unlike the children of divorce,
there is no official statistic for the number affected. The Child
Bereavement Network estimates that 40,000 children in the UK lose a parent
each year and for a similar number a brother, sister or baby dies.
However, on Monday, a group of children aged 12 to 18, many of them bereaved,
will try to tackle this ignorance by embarking on a three-week trek across
the Sinai desert to raise awareness and money. The Youth Desert Expedition
is aiming to raise £100,000 to fund a dedicated children’s counsellor and
support groups for two hospices in Surrey.
Hall works at the Yo-yo Club (reflecting the ups and downs of grief), a
children’s support club at Woking Hospice and the first specialised group in
the UK. It meets twice a month to offer activities and time for reflection
for about 20 children. Hall, who is one of the co-founders, says: “An awful
lot will come out in paintings or drawings. If they’re traumatised, the
pictures are quite strikingly black; sometimes there’s a lot of anger, a lot
of red in there.”
Will Stephenson, 16, is one of the trekkers. His mum died in March last year
after a long illness. “When you lose someone very close to you it’s
slightly, um, how can we describe it? Er . . .” He shakes his head. “I know
that talking about it is the most important thing, but I’m a bit
hypocritical because I don’t really talk to that many people about it. I
didn’t really discuss it much with my dad. After five years of having an ill
mother, it becomes part of your lifestyle and not a particularly pleasant
part. So, when it ended, it was like a release.”
He went back to school the very next day. “I told one teacher. He thought that
I was joking: ‘You what? Will, this isn’t funny.’ I got off a lot of
homework assignments that week. They were a bit naive about the type of help
they offered. It was, ‘Will, if you want to go and sit in the corner, you
can.’ I was just like, ‘Thank you, it’s all I’ve ever wanted’. ”
Another of the young trekkers, Craig Ellis, 13, found reassurance from
familiar routines after his brother died last year, aged 7. “I go to school
and I go to Scouts, not to get away from it, but to take my mind off it,” he
says. “The best way for me is if people can make it clear that they do know
that it’s hard and let me deal with it. It’s tiny little connections like
just saying ‘Hi’ to me in the corridor.”
The idea for the trek came from the expedition leader, Mark Gillett, who has
years of experience as a desert guide in Oman. Gillett, a professional
tennis coach, raised £20,000 for the hospice last year because a friend, a
fellow coach, had recently died there. He then wanted to target his efforts
towards children’s support because, with 300 juniors a week through his
tennis school, he already knew three children who had lost parents.
“I was watching the BBC programme Serious Desert [in which eight
children spent a week testing their survival skills in the Namibian desert],
on CBBC, and I suddenly realised that these strands could come together.”
Five adults, including a nurse and a mental health worker, will accompany the
nine children in their two-week, 140km (87mile) walk in temperatures of
about 45C (113F). But Gillett is determined that the children are in charge.
“We haven’t given them a kit list, for instance. Of course, if they do
anything dangerous I’ll let them know, but if it’s a matter of a one-tog or
a three-tog sleeping bag they’ll have to find out for themselves.” He
believes that this school-of-hard-knocks approach will be a great benefit to
the children.
“I’ve seen so many adults come off my expeditions and say that it totally
changed them. They learn to live with themselves. In the desert you can’t
change things; you have to find a way through them,” he says.
Will is certainly looking forward to the adventure: “It’s everything you
imagine about deserts: hard, rocky sand, scorpions, vultures, cactus, Sinai
leopards. We’ve got our Bedouin guides, our camels and three goats. The
goats don’t know it, but they are going to be the food for the journey.
We’re going to get close to them and then kill them and eat them,” he adds,
with wry humour.
He worries that bereaved children are often overprotected by the adults around
them. “You shouldn’t try to wrap your child in cotton wool too much,” he
says. “They are going to find out what happens. Parents are generally naive
about their children and less honest than them sometimes.”
The uncertainty about how to talk about death with children cuts both ways,
says Lauren Thomas, 14, who lost her dad last August.
“Children have different ways of dealing with things; they show their emotions
in different ways. They’re not always sure how to talk to adults about it.
With the Yo-yo club, children get to talk to each other.”
Lauren found one-to-one counselling helped her to ask questions that were
bothering her when her dad died. “I was expecting his death. I knew that he
was very ill. For the first couple of weeks after he died I wasn’t that
upset and I wasn’t sure if it was OK to feel like that. I was a bit worried
that that wasn’t normal. The counsellor helped me to feel like that was OK,”
she says.
Susie Baker, who runs the family counselling service at Woking Hospice, says:
“Our approach is gentle realism. Even adults find it hard to ask some of the
questions that they’re really worried about. People think that if they talk
about it, that will make it worse. Actually, it can’t get worse. The thing
that children really hate is to hear whispering in the other room and not
know what is going on. Not to know is more frightening than to be told the
truth.” One child that Baker met even thought that people with brain tumours
turned blue and exploded.
“It may sound ridiculous because when a parent dies a huge amount of
articulation and support goes on, but it might not include the children.
They are less able to articulate their feelings, so they just close up. The
surviving parent may be so locked in grief – overwhelmed by this completely
pulverising experience – that the children are a bit lost.”
For more information on the Youth Desert Expedition, call Sarah Priestley
at Woking Hospice on 01483 881750. For donations, visit www.justgiving.com/youthexpedition
Long-term effects of a loss
Children who have lost a parent are more prone to depression and anxiety in
later life, according to a recent study in the British Medical Journal.
By the age of 5, according to a BMJ report, a child will usually
understand that death is final. After this age he can benefit from preparing
for the death beforehand.
Boys are more affected than girls by parental bereavement, says a BMJ
study, although a ChildLine survey suggests that they are less likely to
seek counselling. Boys tend to act out their distress, often aggressively.
Children who lose a parent can become so anxious about the survival of the
other that they hide their feelings to protect them.
For more help . . . Muddles, Puddles and Sunshine is an activity
book for younger bereaved children. To buy, visit www.winstonswish.org.uk
. For a list of helpful organisations, visit: www.childbereavement.org.uk/
www.rd4u.org.uk is a website designed
by young people to help with bereavement Other sources: For Better or
Worse (W. W. Norton) by E. Mavis Hetherington
