Newsletter for Childless Parents, Summer 2020

Newsletter for Childless Parents | www.tcf.org.uk 8 Just Another Day This year Fathers Day is likely to be quite surreal for the entirepopulation. I’m sat here writing this piece for the TCF in mid-April, we are locked down because of Covid-19 and looking at the calendar, the travel restrictions could well still be in force by Fathers Day in mid-June. Even if they’ve been lifted however, it is likely that the loss of life across the country will be so significant that it will dampen down the usual Fathers Day celebrations. For me, Fathers Day will pass just like any other day. We never really marked it before Evie died; a card and that was it. The kitchen is my territory anyway, so I’ll be cooking dinner as usual. I’m not actually sure that Patsy knows where the kitchen is. It will be my third Fathers Day without Evie, and just like the previous two, I expect to feel utterly rubbish once again, a heightened feeling of loss on a day when I should be with her. I’ve said in previous writings that I don’t feel like a father any more, just a bloke. So, Fathers Day is a real contradiction, full of complex emotions. I have sat and thought on many occasions how other bereaved fathers with surviving children may feel. They must be truly conflicted. I can’t offer advice or comment simply because it feels a world away from my own experience. Fathers Day brings the feelings of loss into sharp focus for a bereaved father but in reality, it is little different from any other day of the year. The commercial aspects of the day shine a spotlight on it and serve only to ram the point home. Evie’s gone, never to return. How do we survive it? Part of me wants to recognise that I am still a father, but another part just wants to push through and get the day over with. I do believe that whether we like it or not, the vast majority of people focus on the emotional impact of a child’s death on the mother because for generations that has been what we did. Men’s mental health has always taken a back seat. Call it what you like, stoicism, stiff upper lip or just a societal expectation. I also believe though that as fathers we are also guilty of perpetuating