Jackie (1968-1987)
In Loving Memory
The Start of a seemingly endless Nightmare
On a fine morning in June 1987 I was sitting in my office facing another normal day running a Pollution Control section of the Yorkshire Water Authority. The phone rang. It was my wife, Pauline. She choked out the words, "Please come home now, there's been an accident, Jackie's dead."
I muttered something about coming home, and put the phone down. I felt as though I had been anaesthetised. I do remember walking into my team office and telling the nearest colleague that my daughter was dead and I was going home. I walked out into the corridor and started walking in the opposite direction to the way I should have been going.
A colleague caught up with me, put his hand on my shoulder, steered me in the right direction, and asked if he could take me home. I declined, feeling more and more like some kind of zombie, got into the lift, went down to the ground floor and walked out into the car park. I drove the 26 miles home, though I do not really remember how I did that. I must have been running on some kind of auto-pilot. My son, David, who was seventeen at the time, was there with Pauline. We just held on to each other and cried uncontrollably. I cannot begin to describe the feeling of having a daughter one minute, and then in the next minute, to have no daughter. I knew this happened to other people all the time, but never understood what it meant. Now I did, and the whole of our world became a lifeless, meaningless place.
The next thing we had to do was to get back in the car and drive to a small town in Derbyshire, where the local police would take us to Derby General Hospital to identify the body.
Jackie had been on holiday in Cornwall with her boy friend. They were coming back to Yorkshire prematurely because the boy friend's father had died. They were driving through the night, boy friend at the wheel, when for no reason that has ever been established, at three o'clock in the morning the car veered across the central reservation straight into the path of an oncoming truck. Jackie was killed instantly. Her life had come to an abrupt end at the age of nineteen. The boy friend very nearly died, but survived. We had never liked him, and now we liked him even less.
So far as I am aware, nobody disliked Jackie, and she had lots of friends. She was full of fun for most of the time, but was sometimes prone to fits of depression. She was bright at school, and soon after leaving she was champing at the bit to strike out independently. She got a job as a sales administrator with Dunlopillo in Harrogate, left home and rented a small bungalow with her boyfriend just outside that town. We were proud of her.
The Pursuit of Life in the Shadow of Death
Soon after her death I was promoted to oversee river quality management in the final two years of the Yorkshire Water Authority leading up to privatisation, and to provide some input into the creation of the National Rivers Authority, Yorkshire Region.
In a way this helped to take my mind of what had happened to our lives, but within eighteen months my mental state was becoming more and more fragile until I felt I could no longer withstand the pressures of the job. Rather than transferring to a senior post in the new National Rivers Authority I felt compelled to opt for voluntary redundancy and start some kind of new life at a simpler level.
My wife, meanwhile, was suffering panic attacks and agoraphobia as the after-effects of our bereavement. It was difficult for both of us to come to terms with the fact that many of our acquaintances would cross the road rather than face the embarrassment of having to talk to us. This was not true of everyone, of course, and many real friends "came through" for us.
My wife managed to occupy herself with secretarial employment and eventually became a General Practitioner's Secretary and Receptionist.
Identify Crisis and a Major life Change
For myself, I did nothing for six months except muck about with the house and garden, wondering who on earth I was, and why I existed. I had to adjust to not being part of a large organisation, and no longer having any status or influence at regional or national level. After six months I took up part-time taxi driving, most of which involved transporting children, who lived in remote farmsteads, to and from school.
My Message of Hope
I want to tell any of you out there who have recently experienced this kind of thing, that several years down the line, things do actually return to a kind of acceptable normality. Time does not heal - contrary to what people keep telling you. The pain is always there, but over time you do develop ways of living with it. Moreover, life sometimes has the surprising capacity to throw up certain kinds of compensation (for want of a better word) for your suffering.
We like to think that the paths we take through life are determined by our own conscious will, but we often find ourselves going down a path mapped out by someone (or something) else. Whether this is the Will of God or just Fate, or simply the Lottery of Life depends upon your own beliefs. But regardless of whether you are religious, agnostic, or plain atheist, you have to accept that you can lose control over your own destiny. Indeed, you may have already lost it without realising it.
In our own case, this untimely death set in train a series of life changes that eventually led me, several years later and apparently quite by chance, into contact with another group of lives and a whole new set of relationships, one of which was connected with more tragedy. Had my own tragedy not occurred, I would not have lost the will to pursue my career in environmental management; I would not have taken early retirement; I would not have taken a part-time job as a taxi driver, involving the transporting of children to school and back; I would not have met two children who enjoyed an idyllic, but short-lived, existence with their young mother, Susan, and her partner, John, on a smallholding in the depths of a North Yorkshire forest.
There was so much love in that forest setting that it was impossible not to be affected by it. It was a privilege to have known Susan and the children. It is an even greater privilege that the children, in spite of now being two hundred miles away from that woodland scene, maintain regular contact with me. I was, after all, only their school taxi driver.
I met these children because their young and beautiful mother was terminally ill with cancer, and I was appointed to provide their school transport. I had a good relationship with them and grew fond of them. In the end, all Susan's hospital treatments came to nought and her life came to a slow, painful, and undignified end. Her partner of two year's standing had no legal claim on the children, and their natural father was, at the time, a sometimes violent alcoholic. And so they were whisked away down south to live with their grandparents. But we are still writing, and we still see each other from time to time. This is one of life's compensations that I mentioned earlier.
The young girl has written that it is sad but true, that had her mother not had cancer, we would never have met. But she is glad we met, and she values my letters and my friendship. What greater privilege can a man be given to than to have this said by a child? It is equally true that had my daughter not passed away, I would never have been in a position to come into contact with these children. I cared for these kids a great deal!
I wrote a poem called "Forest Shadows" dedicated to those Children of the Forest.
Jackie in Death Fulfills a Promise made in Life
I have just been describing a positive outcome to a very negative experience. There was another one ... My wife's mother was widowed at a relatively early age, and she lived alone in a small apartment in a London suburb. Here we were, living in North Yorkshire 250 miles away from her - hardly in a position to be on hand in any kind of personal crisis or illness as the years began to take their inevitable toll.
Jackie had always been a very loving granddaughter and had frequently said to her "Nan" that she would always look after her in later years. Of course she could not have known that her life was scheduled to end at the age of 19, and yet, rather wonderfully this promise was kept in an unexpected way.
A few weeks after Jackie's death we were contacted by Dunlopillo - Jackie's employers. Unknown to us it was company policy to provide life insurance for all their employees. Jackie had only been with them for six months or so, but we were informed that there was a cheque for £12,000 in the post.
It was clear to us immediately how this money should be spent. We built a "Granny Flat" on to the side of our house and brought Jackie's Nan up from London. She has been able to live a reasonably independent life in her new abode, knowing that we were on hand right next door. A few years ago she suffered a stroke, but made a fair recovery. Nevertheless she needs (and receives) daily attention from us - all made possibly through that life insurance payment. I can't think of a better memorial to Jackie than a comfortable apartment for her Nan, with help immediately to hand.
Final Message to other Bereaved Parents
It's awesome when you realise how many of us are members of this dreadful "club". None of asked to be members, but we have been handed Life Membership. Those of you who might now be in the depths of despair, please persevere, and keep struggling along that difficult, shadowy, thorny path you are now on, because ahead of you lies the real possibility of sun rays through the gloom, and a renewal of hope and purpose. You can become stronger. Your life will not be the same again, but it doesn't have to be worse - just different. You will gain new strengths. Allow for the fact that you and your partner may grieve and recover at different speeds and at different levels. Above all talk to each other about your shared loss. Most importantly, if you are fortunate enough to have been left with other children, understand that they might feel utterly neglected and unloved as you are (unwittingly) taken over to the exclusion of all others by your grief for the one you have lost. Finally, make allowances for those people who have never experienced what you have experienced, because they mean well. They just have no idea what you are going through and don't really know what to say or do (which is also distressing to them).
Finally, a few very weird facts about Jackie's life and death ...
- She was born on the 19th of the month.
- The letters in her name add up to 19.
- The digits in her Harrogate telephone number added up to 19.
- She died at the age of 19.
- She died by crossing the reservation that divides the A38 in half. Half of 38 is 19.
- Her funeral was on the 19th of the month.
Does anyone have any explanations? Or is the universe just some kind of mathematical joke?
I am grateful to an anonymous visitor to this site who has provided the following poem.
Think me not dead,
Think me only gone awhile,
To return a sunny day,
As the wind blows you a reminder
And crossing your mind
I enter your heart and fill your soul
With the love of forever,
And forever our love is remembered
Until I return to you.
If you are thinking of someone you have lost ..
You might like this song and the associated story.
The site also has a useful page of bereavement links.
Lionel Beck, North Yorkshire, England