When my dead parents come to “visit” me!

The problem with death and the associated trauma is that the sadness and stress doesn’t ever go away. Not completely. It gets easier to cope as time passes and sometimes you can fool yourself that you are “better” or “over it now” but then some quite minor event brings the unhappiness flooding back.

The other side of this is that something as trivial as a dream can help reduce the sense of isolation and I’ve been so lucky that at a number of real crisis points since Mum and Dad were killed I have felt their loving presence around me.

The most recent of their “visits” was in the last few weeks. I had had a very stressful two weeks preparing for the Granddad’s court case (he is accused of abusing me emotionally, financially and physically in the months after the fatal accident) and I was missing Mum and Dad such a lot that it had been keeping me awake at night. I would lie in bed with my head churning away and that made the night seem about 2 weeks long. Then on Wednesday Mum and Dad came to me in the night. I suppose it was a dream but I felt as if I was awake. Mum stroked my head like she used to do when I was little - she called it her magic stroke - and quite suddenly all my fears and uncertainties just vanished like a cloud. I have felt fine ever since!

Mum and Dad were not religious – they were both scientists – but not too long before they were killed we talked about what happened when people die. Dad said he would try to contact me from wherever he had gone during a thunderstorm because he so loved them. On the anniversary of his and mum's death what happened? We had a short sharp thunderstorm at breakfast time! Thunderstorms in January don't happen often so it was really spooky that one should happen on such a special day. As soon as I heard the thunder I just knew that Dad had kept his word and was letting me know that he will be watching over me until the time comes for me to join him and Mum again. It is hard to explain why a simple co-incidence made such a difference to my moral – but it did! The rest of the day was a bit of an anti-climax after that. I was mega busy with course work so I didn't have much time for thinking about what might have been and I suspect that my mum and dad would have wanted it that way.

Mum and Dad also found me at Christmas. I was staying with my aunt and uncle and they had spent ages putting all the family photos of my dad on a DVD plus all the bits of film of Dad and Mum at family events after they had got married. It must have taken my uncle (Dad’s brother) ages to do the work. It was only the last few bits of film that made me cry, one bit was taken six weeks before Mum and Dad got killed and that was very painful to watch. My reward was a long involved dream in which I spent ages talking to the two of them about my life at university and my boyfriend.

But the most important “visit” of all was when the two of them persuaded me to move on with my life. I had another lengthy dream in which Mum and Dad sat with me in an enormous sunny park full of benches. On every bench there are just three people and I just knew that this was the special place where all the teenagers who had been left behind come to see their dead parents. I have had a similar dream before where I talked to them both and they had promised that we could meet at the park again and again until I was ready to let go. This final time – and I have never had this dream again - I told them that I thought I was ready. They seemed really pleased and reminded me that they would always be inside my head if I needed them. I knew it was time to stop the full-on mourning for them and to move on with my life. I will ever stop loving them or wishing that we could have had lots more years together but you only get one life and I didn’t want to waste it in mire of self-pity.

 

 

 

The never-ending cycle of "having to cope".

I don’t know if Neighbourhood Watch exists in other countries or if it is just a UK group.

Back in early 2013 the local Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator called at my house to have a good grumble about how having students renting a property attracts crime to an area. I was cooking tea at the time so I just took his literature and didn’t think too much about it.

A few months later a new Co-Ordinator called round and like a good hostess I invited him in for a coffee. After a few minutes he asked, "I really need to speak to the owners about my concerns".  According to his records Mum and Dad live elsewhere and I was just some random student living in the house. I explained the true situation – that I had inherited the house when Mum and Dad were killed - but I don't think he believed me for a minute! H claimed his records were very reliable.

Fast forward another few months. One Friday I found a note had been put through the door while all four of us were out. The note was in rather flowery and old-fashioned language but the message was clear. I was to make myself available to meet with him the next day at 10AM, or else! I tried to give him the benefit of every possible doubt about what he had written but even after doing that the note left me feeling angry. It was obvious that he thought I was some irresponsible student playing some stupid game with him. He seemed to think that I was lying about Mum and Dad and about owning the house.

Saturday 10AM came, but he didn’t.  Saturday 11AM came, but he didn’t. He finally arrived 80 minutes late. He was quite frosty with me from the start and almost the first thing he said was, “I don’t want to seem difficult but I really do need to speak to your parents rather than to you.”

I explained again that the house was mine but he didn’t accept that. Next, although it wasn’t any business of his, I explained how the house came to be mine. But he still didn’t believe me so in the end I had to show the stupid man their death certificates and the massive file of financial and legal papers. It seemed like the only way of getting rid of him.

Finally he accepted that the house was mine. I waited for his grovelling apology but no, he then started having a good grumble about students. And then I lost my temper! I now know what they mean when they talk about a “red mist descending”.

Not long afterwards  I saw there was a Police-Community Forum meeting just down the road so I went along. And who should be there but a senior person from Neighbourhood Watch! So I asked her about what had happened to me and she promised to "look into it". But the audience were not satisfied and people kept asking her more questions and she got more and more flustered. Even the Community Policeman joined in against her.

I now know that Neighbourhood Watch people have "no statutory right of access" to my house and I am under no obligation to provide them with any information unless I chose to do so. She has now got to go back to her people to remind them about how the scheme is supposed to work. It was brilliant!

Is it all sorted out now? Actually it isn’t because I have had another note put through the door from yet another new co-ordinator. So the whole cycle is starting again!

 

Why was the school so disrespectful to my Dad's memory?

My Mum and Dad were both science teachers. At the time they were both killed they were employed as Head of Science in two different schools. Not long after he died the school where Dad had worked named the largest science laboratory after him. There was a notice by the door with his name on it plus a comment "a much loved and respected teacher and colleague" plus the date he died. In June 2013 I found out from one of his former work-mates that the newish Head Teacher was going to remove the notice because she wanted to rename the room after another member of the science department who has just died from breast cancer. I realised that it was over 3 years since Dad had died and that the Head Teacher had never known him but I found what was going to happen quite upsetting.

In the end I sent a polite note to the Head Teacher saying what I had heard and asking if it was true.  In the letter I said that it has meant such a lot to me to know that my father was remembered and honoured and that I would be sad if his memorial was taken down.

I didn’t get any reply to this letter but a few days later when I got home I found that somebody had been to my house and had just left Dad's memorial propped up against the front door. No note, not even in a bag, just the memorial on its own.

I wasn't 100% surprised because when the Head Teacher didn't bother to get in touch with me I guessed that the decision had already been made and that she wouldn't think she needed to justify it to an outsider like me. But I was sad and Stewart and my other housemates were sad for me.  I have a support package from the university and if I have a crisis I have a phone number that I can ring - so I did. I think the first person I spoke to was quite shocked at what has happened so he passed me on to his own boss. She was very unimpressed with the school and, with my permission, approached the school on my behalf.

I knew that Dad would be laughing at all of this. He never had a very high opinion of some Head Teachers and I didn't think he would have been even a little bit shocked at how things had worked out. But I knew that he would be cross that they upset me because he would think they were acting like bullies and he hated bullies!

Eventually the Head Teacher agreed to meet with me. I didn’t go alone!

The absolute boss of the legal section of the university came with me. Before we went in he told me that every single person in his department had wanted to come along to sort out the Head so he had exercised "bosses rights" to choose the best job for himself. It made me happy and sad at the same time that a busy and important person like him wanted to help me.

I don't think the HT was expecting me to come with a legal expert and she wasn't very pleased. She started off trying to be all bossy and to make herself seem so important and to make my Dad and I sound as if we didn't matter at all. But my legal helper wasn't having any of it. He was very firm with her and made her seem rude, insensitive, ignorant and all sorts of other nasty things in front of her PA who was taking notes. But the clincher was when he made it clear that unless everything was sorted out at the meeting our next appointment was with the local paper and the one after that with the local radio station.

He pointed out how much advertising the university puts in the paper and how the editor would "just love" a human history story like this. He came up with some headlines - all designed to make the HT look like some kind of monster. It was brilliant to watch him in action and my Dad would have been so proud!

Between us we drew up a list of all the things that needed to be done and the Head Teacher signed both copies. I've kept one copy so she couln't wriggle out of anything.

 

I very nearly had a little cry when I got back to my car because I was happy and I knew that I had done the right thing by my Dad.

Two and a half false offers of "help" - grrrrr!

I have always known that I would need emotional or practical support if I was going to get over Mum and Dad being killed and I would like to think that I have always welcomed into my life anybody who wanted to help me. I have been lucky that loads of people of different faiths or of no faith at all have supported me on what became a long and rocky path.

The only people who have offered help that wasn’t help at all were an evangelical Baptist counsellor (suggested by the local vicar), an American lady I met through Facebook and my Mother's closest friend.

Mum's friend was the saddest of the three. The two of them had been best friends for years and I knew her, her husband and her children really well. She had spoken to me before and immediately after the funeral but after a couple of weeks of providing really valuable support she seemed to lose interest. Her emails got shorter and shorter and the delay between me contacting her and receiving any reply got longer and longer. I still see her in the town, she shops in the same supermarket that I use, but even four years after the accident she still cannot bring herself to have a proper conversation with me.

The evangelical Baptist was only ever on Granddad’s side. She actually supported his right to beat me on biblical grounds. Her main interest seemed to be trying to get me to see the error of my ways. What I wanted and needed counted for little or nothing. She wanted me to have a theological debate with her and her colleagues and to give up almost everything that made my life half way bearable.

The third of the three was as recent as August 2013.  I had an exchange of emails with an American lady who had contacted me totally unsolicited. She approached me as a mature (good), lady (better) and experienced (crisis hot-line) person. She said “there was nothing that is too much for me to handle” – (perfect). I feel I gave her every possible opportunity to share her relevant knowledge or experience with me but she didn't seem to want to do this. So exactly why did she, as she claimed several times, “reach out” to me? It felt as if she was putting her church at the centre of the process rather than me and that seemed a horribly cruel thing to do! Her first email was on Monday, by Tuesday it was a Bible Study course that was being promoted, by Wednesday it became clear what religious group she belonged to, by Friday I was feeling pressurised to meet with members of her church and by Saturday she had researched in detail exactly where I lived. This was all rather frightening if I’m truthful.

Overall I know I have been extremely fortunate in the support I was able to access but sometimes I do wonder exactly what was going through these three people's minds!