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Healing
Tom’s father wanted someone to tutor his ten year old son. I duly arrived for our first session together expecting to talk to a parent about what they felt was needed for their child. However the information I was given was not at all what I was expecting.
Tom’s mother had died just three months earlier. I wondered if what I was being asked to provide was distraction for this grieving child.
Hearing the Story
Tom and I worked together on maths and English while we got to know one another. Once we had become acquainted I asked Tom to tell me a little about his mum. It was so difficult for him to say very much let alone touch on how he felt. He was stuck with his grief so I talked to his father about Tom and I working together in order to help him grieve. Dad was happy for Tom and I to address the issue so I made sure that he understood that the work would take ‘as long as it takes’. Everyone grieves in their own way and in their own time so it literally takes as long as it takes.
I had noticed that there weren’t any photographs of Mum anywhere in the room where Tom and I worked so I asked him if, by the following week, he could gather together some photos of Mum. I wanted him to start telling me the ‘Story of Mum’.
I arrived at our next session having prepared some academic work for Tom as I had no idea how he would have coped with gathering photos. I needn’t have worried! On the table in our workroom there were at least six photograph albums.
Healing Begins
One by one Tom talked about the photographs. Some were of Mum as a young single woman with her friends and sisters. Others were of Mum and Dad early in their marriage before Tom was born.
We looked at pictures of Mum holding Tom as a baby and talked about how he thought he would have felt being with her. I wondered aloud what Mum would have been saying to Tom. It was a very moving experience for me hearing this young boy reminisce. He just wanted and needed to talk about how much he had loved his mum and acknowledge how much he missed her.
Moving On
It took many weeks for us to complete Mum’s story but once we had finished I asked Tom what he thought Mum would say to him at that moment. Never a child of many words he said that she would say ‘don’t worry, everything will be alright’. I then knew that he had reached a point where he felt that he didn’t have to worry. He believed that everything could be alright. And indeed it was for Tom. He was able to move on and the last I heard from him he was at university.
To conclude our work together I had asked Tom if he would like to choose some pictures of Mum to put on his bedroom wall. Photos to remind him of happy family times and how much Mum had loved him. He chose four!
Sadness is not just about death but about any loss that has impacted our lives. It belongs in the past. To hold it in the present is a terrible burden so we need to find ways to grieve and let sadness slip away to where it belongs.