In the latest piece of the Keep Talking series on B&T, Mike Wilson reflects on the loss of his father, an unexpected moment of vulnerability over lunch and why grief has no league table. It follows pieces by the likes of Pat Crowley, Kirsty Muddle, Tom Phillips and Ian Perrin, the man behind the series.
The Edinburgh Castle pub on Pitt Street in Sydney always seems to be full at lunchtime during the week. There’s a great mix of city workers, tradies, tourists and shoppers. And it’s a nice spot for the agency team to unwind, have a quick drink after work or catch up for an informal meeting every now and then if a break from the formality of a meeting room is called for.
Because of the general happy hum there, you think you’d be safe from the emotional surge when sitting across the table from Graham Webster, a senior colleague and friend in the industry. The tears on my cheek told a different story.
Dad had died a few months before, and earlier in the year, I’d spent the best part of a month in London organising his funeral, clearing out his house, dealing with all the shitty admin and everything that goes with it. Now back in Sydney, I thought I’d just be updating on my news before we started talking about business. But then the eyes started to sting, the tears came, and I realised I wasn’t in control anymore. I felt embarrassed and I felt guilty. I was grateful that Graham acknowledged it – he knew just what to say, and how to say it.
He asked how it was affecting me at home and at work, and we moved on.
I had believed that my experience didn’t rank as tragically as some of the other stories I’d heard. It was too everyday, too normal. It seemed that others had been through far worse. And that meant that I had kept quiet about it. This perceived ‘ranking’, I now understand, becomes a reason not to speak.
But there is no grief league table.
This ’Keep Talking’ article series, as I said to its creator, Ian Perrin, is one of the best initiatives in the industry in recent years. Others have since built on it. Pat Crowley added ‘Keep Doing’: making room to live, even briefly, as part of recovery; Imogen Hewitt urged us to ‘Keep Asking’, something that the workplace doesn’t always do. To this, I’d add ‘Keep Listening’. Acknowledgement is certainly one part of the dialogue, but listening a few weeks later can also be powerful, when the impact has sometimes landed more fully. And one personal thing that helped me was reading the Red Hand Files (The Red Hand Files), where Nick Cave answers readers’ questions about grief (amongst other things) at length and in his own words. If you know his story, you’ll understand why.
In the US, nearly two-thirds of people in their late forties and early fifties have lost a parent. With Australians living to a median of about 80 (men) and 85 (women), it’s likely similar here. The national minimum requirement is two days of compassionate paid leave per occasion for permanent employees. At Hatched, we now schedule a check-in a few weeks after anyone returns from bereavement leave.
The check-in is automatic, so nobody has to ask. If you lead a team, put a calendar note in for four weeks after anyone on your team returns from bereavement leave.
A few months after our meeting in the Edinburgh Castle, I met up with Graham again. He was playing guitar in his band, and I’d been wanting to see him play for a while. He asked me on arrival: “How are you doing, Mike? Are you feeling happier than when we last caught up?”
We had a warm conversation, and then he went back to his band, his family, and his friends who were smiling with him and surrounding him with affection.
His mum had died earlier that morning.
