Bob Davies

Our two year old son Simon, was violently killed in 1989, how is it possible to recover from that? It felt like a bid for survival.....

For Tim and Sinead, his brother and sister.

Simon was two years old when he was killed, blond hair, blue eyes and at that time, our only child. My wife was three months pregnant when he died. As he and I stood on the pavement, a car mounted the footpath at speed and subsequently he was crushed to his death outside our very own home.

My wife was woken by the sickening crash, no parent should ever have to witness that but then, now that it has happened, perhaps I am fortunate that I did. Perhaps we would imagine worse if we had not been there, I was there at his birth and I was there at his death. It was however pure terror, the sort that you need to physically shake from your brain, pure revolting terror that would often catch me unaware and unprepared.

A cup of tea that's really all there was, after having witnessed the violent, terrifying death of your only beautiful child, one would surely expect to be given more than a cup of tea, this was very, very serious, our lives had suddenly changed for ever. Everything we thought we knew, everything we had learnt to that moment was no longer valid and everything needed to be reassessed.

Some people may be fortunate, they may be completely so in touch with their emotions that they could let everything go at once. But how could one possibly let that all out, it would surely tear your head off. The constant rage was surely enough to vent blood through your ears, nose and eyes, let alone the guilt, which sniped constantly and put me back down at every opportunity. Let all that go at once? That was for me, totally humanely impossible, it was just far too big, too huge, too enormous and too fearful to be borne like that, but it needed to come out and it would come out eventually but only when I was ready.

I had failed, my perceived job was to protect my family not to destroy it and by being there at that precise moment, I perceived that I had failed and surely then I must be punished. The alcohol seemed to be helping at the time, it was, after all a question of survival, without doubt, that's what it was; that's all it was, a desperate continual bid for survival with no room on my raft for anyone else, every man and woman for themselves and still no help forthcoming, no follow up, no one seeming to care and no skills to cope with what had happened... but then who has? Who can possibly understand how a bereaved parent is feeling, only really one who has experienced similar. The Compassionate Friends helped immensely, understanding who and where we were and supporting my wife especially and unconditionally.

Tensions were obviously raised because couples grieve at different rates, as everyone will experience bereavement in their own peculiar way so we didn't really have time for each other. No one can possibly understand what that trauma is like unless they have experienced similar themselves. One would expect one's doctor to understand or at least perhaps, given the circumstances, expect that there may well be complications but he too hid behind his desk. The Priest who had marred us and christened my son didn't know what to say or what to do and bumbled along red faced. We felt sorry and made it easy for him. No one could really understand and we were isolated.

Six months later our blond haired, blue-eyed boy was born, whom I cared for whilst my wife was working. We now had a role and purpose back; the grief was unavoidable because we were following the same pattern, doing similar things. My son's room remained intact however, even though we had to move from our home. It was reconstructed exactly in the new house as it was in the old, until probably three years later. This was necessary, healthy and appropriate. So was the cemetery, visited every day, saying goodbye takes many years.

Healing

Memorials need not be of stone, a living memorial for me is necessary, healthy and appropriate. From as early as day one I realised that because this experience was so huge and all consuming that I would have to do something positive with it, it would have to be positively turned round, 180 degrees. It would have to be integrated into me in such a way that it should become part of me but not completely control me. So how to make sense of such loss and trauma? How can someone possibly face such pain and trauma and then survive?  Slowly and almost imperceivabley I started to heal. For me, unconditional love is the key; it forgives everything, even a ‘guilty' father.

Searching is the main preoccupation for the bereaved, my new answers needed to be found, my previously held truths and knowledge needed to be challenged and reassessed.  It was not until I began to find my new answers that I could start to understand how to deal with this. This took a very long time, everybody's answers may be different to another's, I needed help but I began to see how to cope.

It was important for me to use this knowledge positively.

It takes courage to stand up and face the pain, my ability to survive had been challenged and I had to fight it. I had a new family that needed a father. Our daughter was born in 1993, another positive investment into the future. My wife and I both trained and worked as bereavement counsellors, me first some five years after my son was killed, my wife trained a couple of years later. It proved to be very, very painful, some would probably say foolhardy, however we both received accreditation and acquired some extremely valuable skills and understanding. To consistently work on a verbal level however for me would be too painful and I would quickly burn out. It has been possible to develop other ways of healing others, again investing back into life and I currently work with my knowledge in a subtle yet powerful and professional way. All the time the essence of something very pure and beautiful, being the guiding and special light.

Love lives on, it can not be destroyed, the unconditional love between parent and child will remain for ever, the pain will always be there but I have learned how to live with it and to cope with it. For me, it needs now only to be channelled in a different way, to give meaning and purpose to such a beautiful short life and tragic death; to give words to those things, which cannot be expressed, by words alone. 

It would have helped me to understand that there is potentially light at the end of that very long tunnel.

Bob Davies