Inner you
Christmas is always a difficult time when you are grieving. As Good Housekeeping’s Dr Sarah Jarvis comes to terms with the death of her father – while sharing the national loss of The Queen – she reveals the advice that she will follow in the hope it helps others, too
Like so many of us, Christmas for me was inextricably linked to The Queen. Christmas dinner was meticulously planned around her annual message. This means that Christmas this year will bring an unwelcome reminder of change – a sad and sombre note when we are only just beginning to return to ‘normal’ Christmasses after the pandemic.
What’s more, for those already grieving the loss of a loved one, this additional bereavement for our longest serving monarch brings with it an added poignancy. It’s another break with the past and the familiar.
And for me, it’s personal. Where grief is concerned, I’m a daughter as well as a GP. I lost my mother, Joyce, almost 20 years ago and, even now, I’m stopped in my tracks at several points over each Christmas holiday, when some tradition or another reminds me of her. The pain has become less acute as the years have passed and I’ve been able to focus more on the happy memories, but that was little consolation in the early years.
I also went through two miscarriages before I had my children and was knocked sideways by waves of grief at what would have been their early birthdays and Christmases.
This year, meanwhile, will be my first Christmas without my father, Derek (or ‘Colonel’, as he was always known in his care home), who passed away peacefully in July this year. He was 96 and I have lost count of the number of friends who have pointed out that he ‘had a good innings’. But he was still my father and he’s gone – and, no matter his age or mine, that hurts.
My father was just five months older than Her Majesty; he was born on 11 November – Remembrance Day – 1925. They were both 96 and, as with The Queen, I thought he would be there for ever. When she died, all the emotions surrounding his death, still raw after just two months, were brought into sharp relief. Suddenly, I shared my sense of loss for a 96-year-old ‘parent’ (she a parent of the nation; my father a parent of two) with millions of people. Despite decades of advising and supporting others, I was genuinely surprised at how hard I found it to cope with these twin losses.
If you’re talking to someone who has lost an elderly loved one, it’s important to acknowledge that grief knows no rules where age is concerned. My best friend summed it up when he recounted the story of burying both parents within six months. At the funeral, his 87-year-old uncle put his hand on my friend’s shoulder and said, ‘Oh,
