This week I received a letter in the post which has lead me to write this article. The letter was from St. Crumlin’s Hospital – the hospital my son Craig was attending for his Brain tumour – and they were inviting us, Craig’s mother and I, to attend a day-long meeting for parents who had lost children in recent years.

When I opened the letter and read the details my first and lasting reaction was that I was never going to attend it. The meeting was to include talks by parents and experts about their personal and professional experiences with child loss and also to allow general conversation and mingling among the parents themselves. Part of the setup for the day was to break up mothers and fathers into two groups so that the parents could individually talk about how their grief was affecting them and indeed how they grieved differently.
When Barbara read the invitation she was immediately eager to go. She wanted to talk to others about Craig. She wanted to hold a picture up of Craig and talk about him. She felt it was a rare opportunity to speak about him without others shying away and fearing her words or emotional state. She was right of course. But I’m so different.

When I read the itinerary for the day it just did not appeal to me. For some reason the idea of sitting with these other parents, these strangers, held no attraction for me whatsoever. I’m aware how blatantly hypocritical this is, giving that I’m writing this in my capacity as Child Loss editor for BellaOnline. I looked at the invitation and felt that I should go; that I’m meant to go, but knew also that I wouldn’t. I’m being perfectly honest here when I say that I did not, nor do not want to meet face to face with these strangers and swap our sob stories. I cannot escape how hypocritical this is, given that I share my stories with the world every week in this article, and I’m at a loss to understand why the idea of actual contact with similarly grief stricken parents is so unappealing to me.

Maybe writing each week gives me a certain zone of comfort and non-committal detachment while allowing me to communicate my personal situation and experience. Maybe it’s the perfect trade-off for me. Maybe I’m afaid of releasing emotion publically: God knows I hide it well enough. Barbara remarked the other day that she’s never really seen me cry in a long time. I don’t know why, but I hide it. I cry every day but only when I’m alone. I never show it to anyone.

I wonder how many men, how many fathers out there, feel the same as me.

Maybe I have so much further to go than I thought.