My mum died in January 2022. In the weeks following her passing, myself, my sister and my dad were inundated with sympathy cards and messages of condolence. As news of her death spread, there were text messages, Facebook messages and phone calls.
A week after my mum’s funeral, I went to see my dad. He was still grief-stricken of course. But that grief was made worse by a complete lack of contacts from the friends and family that had been in contact before the funeral and that had been in attendance to pay their last respects.
“It’s like they’ve forgotten her already,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “They’ve all just moved on.”
I tried to tell him that people have busy lives; that they may be grieving privately; or that – like me – grief is just too painful and is, therefore something to avoid.
He was right though. Me and my sister both noticed it as well. The news of my mum’s passing brought long lost relatives and friends out of the woodwork; but they all vanished again when the initial fuss was over. Maybe they thought they had done enough.
108 days from now, it will be the 10th anniversary of the Didcot Disaster that claimed the lives of four demolition workers. 10 years. 3,544 days.
In all that time, I have sat here and written about and talked about that incident. But did I do enough? Did we?
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