Compassion, Autumn 2021

Autumn 2021 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 11 three years since Max died. He would now be thirty-one. I have seldom come across such a thorough, dedicated and generous record of how a parent feels having lost a child. In the early days Allan explains, “My pain alternated with an absolute gut vacuum, a very conscious physical emptiness”….”deep depressions every weekend”…”flashbacks with sudden descents into turmoil”. He tells of how he and Sarah separated, “our nuclear family did not explode like a bomb but unravelled at the seams”…”I had no love for anyone, not even myself”. Excessive drinking followed, with thoughts of suicide until time, and bereavement counselling, came to the rescue. We’re told it took Allan eight years before he could say he was “leading any sort of normal life”. But - and this is the triumph of this admirable book - he ends, “A bright and vital light shines at the end of the tunnel. Reach for it.” You may find this book really painful but, like reading a difficult classical novel, it is worth the challenge. Christopher Compston Legacies from Grief by Freddie Bagley Tragedy is always tragedy and this book tells the stories of 23 heartrending and all too early deaths. The first of them is about Andrew Bagley, the son of the editor of the book. Some who died were infants, most were in their teens and twenties and a few were over 30. Many of the deaths were quite unexpected while others were painfully anticipated. Bereaved parents will probably find their own agonies reflected in several of the stories. There is some kind of strange comfort in knowing that in our sufferings we are not alone. Tragedies are always tragedies but out of them good things can come. In his foreword Freddie Bagley writes of a legacy that “is a positive outcome of a tragic event”. All the stories in the book illustrate this in one way or another. The death of a child is life changing for parents, siblings and others left behind. Legacies include such things as precious memories of the one who has gone, changes to British law (eg Sarah’s Law, which allows anyone to ask the police to check whether people who have contact with children pose a risk, and Helen’s Law: killers who withhold information on their victims could spend longer behind bars), organ donations to save the lives of others, the support of existing charities and the establishment of new ones. In the case of Dilly Ovington, it was several years after her death in an avalanche that her mother took steps to raise money to provide music lessons for children. This book will help many to look, at the appropriate time, for some rays of light in times of deep darkness and to search for ways to bring hope out of desperate and grievous loss. Henry Whyte