Sarah’s Story

In 2020, Sarah wrote about the death of her mum Meryl, after a stroke. Here she explores the experience of losing her father when she was just two years old - a loss that was never talked about, never properly grieved and which ultimately led her down a very dark path.

Sarah lives in Cambridge and is married, with three children and three grandchildren. She works as a social prescriber, enjoys

‘My dad died when I was two’.  I must have said this sentence hundreds of times in my life, since I was old enough to articulate what had happened. And yet, for many years, it was a simple factual statement. There was no emotion behind it, no thought of what this had meant for my life and, to be honest, I was usually quite surprised when people looked at me sadly and made noises of commiseration.

He died, aged 34, in 1966. He had been to his work Christmas do (he was a scientist at the university) and on his way home, so nearly home, he skidded on a patch of ice and came off his motorbike. No crash helmets then, no traffic, no individuals in the village lying awake, scrolling on Facebook , to see or hear him. He wasn’t discovered until 6am that morning, by a lorry driver.

The story continues. The police went to our home and told my mother what had happened; my eleven year old sister came down and heard it all, and two year old me bounded through saying ‘My daddy calls me chucky egg’.  It’s almost a lovely sad tale, full of pathos and sweetness. Little Sarah, no idea what was going on.

I don’t know when I really became aware of a missing person in the house. A memory comes of me sitting on the loo saying to my mum ‘where is my daddy?’ (Maybe I’d heard about ‘daddies’ at nursery), and her just replying ‘He’s gone to Jesus’. There were no photos of him anywhere, he wasn’t mentioned as far as I can remember and any questions as I got older tended to be answered snippily, or with ‘You’re just like him’ - which I soon learned wasn’t a compliment. I guess, to understand this, the dynamics of my parents’ relationship need to be delved into, but there isn’t time! Suffice to say, I wasn’t expected to miss him, talk about him or feel anything about him.

My relationship with my friends’ fathers went one of two ways; I idolised and probably really irritated them with my need to ‘play’, or I feared them.  I remember, when I got to nine or ten, watching them interact with their daughters and just not understanding it.

In the background, I was also going through a lot of surgeries and spending time in hospital, so mummy was the only person in my life I could cling to.

I was a Very Good Girl. I worked hard at school, I had ‘nice’ friends, I was in all the school plays, played the trombone, made everyone laugh and did well in my O levels.

Then it changed.

The reasons why aren’t really important, but things went a bit awry. At the age of 16, in my second term at Hills Road, where I had begun to realise I wasn’t as clever or as talented as I thought, I started to drink, to abuse drugs and to generally not be a Very Good Girl anymore. My mother was outraged, and I got more ‘you’re just like him’s.   I thought that if she could just talk about him, tell me more about him, actually get some photos out (I had found three or four which I stashed in my room), then maybe I could understand and be ‘better’.  She never did though.

A psychologist would no doubt say that I got into wholly inappropriate and hopeless relationships with men because of the absence of my dad. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I did spend the next twenty years desperately trying to find the ‘one’ while pushing every single potential ‘one’ away.  I missed him, without knowing what I was missing. Until about five years ago, I had no idea where his ashes where. I only found out by looking at the Cambridge Crematorium website – they were scattered in the grounds – so nowhere to even go and mourn.

Having my own daughters and watching them with their fathers is still quite difficult. It’s very hard for me to say the word ‘daddy’ and I think it always will be.

Finally though, after so many years of this invisible grief – for I believe that is what is must be, grieving someone you didn’t know and weren’t allowed to know – plus other traumatic things in my life, two things happened. My mum died, and I could get all the photos I’d never seen of him and put some in frames on the wall. The one thing everyone has noticed is how much our son George is his double.

Secondly, I stopped drinking and got a therapist to whom I actually spoke honestly.

The way of doing things until relatively recently was ‘they won’t miss what they’ve not known, so stay quiet’.  Thousands of children were kept in the dark and I’m really not convinced it was the best plan…

Seeing how much help is out there for children who lose parents young nowadays is wonderful. I admit to feeling jealous of this help, but I also know that if anything were to happen to my daughter, my grandchildren would never have to carry the burdens I did as they grow up.

Losing a parent at such a young age is horrific – I never knew that, because I wasn’t supposed to be affected. Now though, I can accept people’s compassion when they say ‘I’m so sorry’. I can mourn him and say I mourn him, but I can also look at his photo and smile a bit more.