How It Started
This is me with my dad, John
Not long after this photo was taken, he died in a car accident. He was only 21, my mum was a 19-year-old widow.
I became a bereaved child.
Mum eventually re-married and I grew up in an incredibly happy and caring home.
But.
There was always a sense of ‘the missing piece’. He was a photograph, this photograph, a one-dimensional figure.
Roll forward 50 years and a random post on Facebook opened a door I didn’t know I needed to go through. This one comment was like a lightning bolt:
“I remember the night John died, I saw him before he went into town, the weather was vile that night”.
People I didn’t know, had stories to tell about him.
They knew him in a way I never would!
This Was Them was borne from that lightning bolt.
I was inspired, by my experience, to use my publishing background to create something unique that would benefit bereaved children everywhere.
The Story of The Ring
My dad died in a car accident along with one of his best friends.
At some point my mum received his belongings back which included his watch and wedding ring (you can see him wearing it in the photo above). Over the years I often asked about them, but mum had no recollection of what had become of these items.
Forty plus years later, mum needed a dog groomer who could visit the house. She found a young lady called Sandra, who duly turned up to give our lovely dog Andrew a wash and brush up. Sandra mentioned in passing that her family were local to the area. When she returned a few weeks later to give Andrew another spruce up she came with a story to tell.
She had visited her father, Mick, and told him about this lovely dog called Andrew and his owner. Mick realised in an instant who mum was, and who I was. It emerged that he had been dad’s other great mate and should have been out with them on that fateful night, but he had been waylaid. He told Sandra that at the funeral my mum had given him dad’s ring saying, “he would have wanted you to have it”. He’d just lost two of his friends, and he was touched by mum’s thoughtfulness. Over the years he lost touch with mum, but he had worn the ring every day since.
The mystery of the where the ring had been, was solved. He had sent a gift, for me. The ring. His message read “it’s time for you to have this back”.
The ring is a metaphor for memories.
Mick kept something of my dad with him. He held on to it. When he looked at the ring, he was reminded of his friend, and the happy times they had shared. When he sent the ring back to me, I was now able to have something tangible. Mick gifted a small part of my dad’s life to me.
When we collect memories and stories, we are ensuring they come to belong to the bereaved child. They aren’t their memories, but they do build up a picture of their lost parent. They form missing pieces of the jigsaw.