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!

Advice and support from beyond the grave

What seems like an age ago Mum and Dad and I 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. In January 2013 on the third 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. The tears just poured out of me but not sad tears, happy tears because I knew that the two of them were with me in the kitchen. 

The rest of the day was a bit of an anti-climax after that. I was really busy with my university course that day so I didn't have much time for thinking about what might have been and I suspect that my Mum and Dad would have preferred it that way. Dad's brother and Mum's sister phoned me in the evening so I was able to tell them what had happened and they both became quite emotional.

Mum had always said that she would come to me as a white feather and that it exactly what she did when I had a very difficult decision to make.

 

Each year a maximum of 4 students on my degree course are given the opportunity to do a paid work experience sandwich year in the USA. I knew it would be a great opportunity to see more of the world and to learn new skills and that it would look good on my CV and improve my chances of getting a good job in my chosen area when I come back to the UK. But I also knew it would mean saying goodbye to my boyfriend and my two closest friends and I wasn’t sure I felt strong enough to cope with that. I also knew that when I did return after the year away all three of them would have graduated and I would have to do my final year of my course with people I didn't know.

 

Just before the deadline for applying I was sitting upstairs (I had just made the bed) wondering what to do when I saw a white feather blowing against the window! And then straight away I knew that I just wasn't ready to go off on that type of adventure. It so felt like mum was telling me this. So I didn't mention anything about having a year away to my friends and never filled in the application form. I slept so much better that night knowing I had made the right decision.

 

Was the thunderstorm and the feather just a co-incidence? There is no way of knowing for certain but it gave me a degree of inner peace and that was a big plus in my life.

  

 

Did Mum and Dad dying make me a better athlete?

I have always been one of the tallest girls in my year at school and I have been in the school athletics team every year. Most of the events took place after school and because Mum and Dad were both teachers they were able to come to almost all of the regular competitions.

I was always the school’s representative in the high jump and I was usually also in whatever was the longest race in the competition. I didn’t have a particularly impressive top speed but I seemed to have a lot of stamina so I usually came in the top 3 out of 8. I enjoyed doing sport and having Mum or Dad there to cheer me on made it even better. Weekend events were fun. Quite often we were a bit late setting off so I used to get changed in the back seat as we drove along with Dad under strict instructions not to look in the rear-view mirror!

When Mum and Dad were killed I didn’t feel like doing anything but the Head of Girls Physical Education persuaded me to keep competing – mainly because she knew, being sensible, that it would be good for me to try to have some normality in my life. It wasn’t the same as before because neither Gran nor Granddad ever bothered to come to watch me and sometimes they used to complain because if there was an event I would be later home from school and that would upset their very rigid routine.

As the weeks went by and my relationship with Nan and Granddad spiralled down into emotional and physically abuse I used to escape from the house by using athletics training as an excuse. I used to go running every single day and I trained with an intensity far greater than I had ever done before. In a strange way doing sport kept Mum and Dad’s memory alive inside me: it felt that I wasn’t forgetting the special things we had used to do together.

The combination of far more exercise plus less eating had the predictable effect. My weight started to drop. I was just over 5ft 10 inches tall the last time I was measured a few months before the accident and I weighed 148lbs. After a few months of living with Gran and Granddad my weight was down to 122lbs. So I had gone from being in the middle of the healthy weight band to being into the underweight band.

 

But losing weight plus getting fitter made me a better runner and jumper. People that were about equal to me in sporting performance before Mum and Dad were killed were suddenly getting left behind. My personal best in the high jump went up by several inches and my personal best in the 1500 metres improved by the length of the finishing straight! As part of the support I get from the university as a vulnerable student the doctors monitor my health and they say provided I eat a balanced diet and provided I don't lose anymore weight everything is fine!

For ages nobody noticed that the weight was dropping off me. Truthfully I don’t think Nan and Granddad ever did notice. Eventually the sports staff did notice my changing shape – they tend to keep an eye on girls rather more than boys because of girls being more likely to have eating disorders – and we had a rather difficult conversation. It was that conversation that finally made me realise that I couldn’t stay with Nan and Granddad much longer and so I started plotting my escape back to the house I had inherited.

Now, coming up to 4 years later, I still haven’t put that weight back on. Sometimes I wish I had more girlie curves than I have but I guess it isn’t ever going to happen while I run or train every day.