10 tcf.org.uk COMPASSION | FEATURE - GRIEVING DADS Grieving Dads Wayne Bandell. Reprinted from NSW Focus and lifted from TCF Otago Chapter What is traditionally a day of celebration (socks and jocks as presents) takes on a whole different meaning for grieving dads. It is truly a day of conflicting emotions. On one hand there is the joy of getting presents from my daughter on behalf of herself, Zac and Sean. On the other hand, there is the sadness that my sons are not where they should be. In my experience, when Zac and Sean died, I entered a state of existing in the moment. I had to handle the here and now as this was all I could cope with. There was no guarantee of the future as this could change in an instant, so there was no point thinking that far ahead. I did the things I was socially expected to do, like plan the funeral. Like many men I focused on what I was expected to do not what I needed to do. Societal convention told me that, as a man, I am the protector of my family. I was not able to protect my sons (as one grieving dad said to me: I fix things, but this is something I cannot fix). However, I needed to protect and support my wife with her grief. I like to call this the stoic husband syndrome: We set aside our own grieving as best we can (suck it up/harden up/drink a cup of concrete) and focus on our wives because this is what social convention says we should do. We kid ourselves by saying that they are the ones that are suffering more and need to be cared for or protected. As many men do, I went back to work, not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Grief does not pay the bills. In public I put on the “I’m OK face”. I honestly don’t know why as no one was going to approach me if I broke down or really ask me how I was coping. In a strange way some people treat grief and the death of children as a disease. That in some way they might get infected by speaking to me, or they fall back on “I don’t want to say anything as it might upset you”. I became very good at compartmentalizing my grief. I would put my grief or bad feelings into a box and place it in a well inside me and this allowed me to function each day (or so I thought). Like many, I filled the day or space with things to distract me on how I was truly feeling. Eventually though the boxes in the well will break open and the well needs cleansing. It was sort of like if I pretend for long enough that I’m OK and that every-thing is normal then the grief would go away. I work as a secondary school teacher and in the past we have had staff and students die. So as a school and workplace we have had to deal with significant grief situations. We have had the education department crisis team visit us (to provide counselling) and the focus has always been the same: “Let’s keep the students and staff routine as normal as possible”. So that’s what I did, tried to keep things normal. I now realise that this does not work for those directly affected by the death of a child and it "I focused on what I was expected to do not what I needed to do".
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