Smiler

Grief has been a preoccupation for philosophers, psychologists and clinicians for over a century. Theories of what it is and how to deal with it have proliferated since then. For me, grief has been my only obsession for the last ten years. On 3 October 2013, my son, Dominic, was killed by a drunk driver. I’ve been trying to deal with the aftermath of his loss ever since. Psychologists call this process ‘meaning making’ or ‘meaning reconstruction’. In bereavement, this is how we try to create new meaning in our lives after our loss. The grieving person often can’t return to a pre-loss level of functioning. This is prolonged or complicated grief. However, it is possible to learn how to develop a meaningful life without the deceased.

Smiler, my name for Dom as he was growing up, is my journal, ruminations and now my book of that story. A record of the pain and anguish as I tried to fill that empty gap in my heart that is Dom-shaped.

It’s 6 a.m. and Susan is at the kitchen sink. It’s a remote lake district farmhouse and it’s dark. There are no street lights for two miles in any direction, so the rotating blue lights bouncing off the damson trees are stark. Car doors slam and two policemen in high viz jackets appear framed in the light from the window. They remove their hats as one.

Grief is exploration but without a map. We look for and see signs along the way, but we don’t have the code to read the hieroglyphics. If you didn’t feel the pain you wouldn’t feel anything. There are tormentors at every step, some are just the photo of a smiling four-year-old boy, sat on his dad’s knee.

Grief is exploration but without a map. We look for and see signs along the way, but we don’t have the code to read the hieroglyphics. If you didn’t feel the pain you wouldn’t feel anything. There are tormentors at every step, some are just the photo of a smiling four-year-old boy, sat on his dad’s knee.

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