Dear Bel,. Forgive me but sometimes the letters on your page seem so trivial. Like the one from a mother, quoting a second mother, in despair over their drug-addicted sons. The day I read this we were getting ready to leave our home in France for the second time in three weeks to travel to England, for my grandson's funeral. Our previous visit followed his sudden death from cardiomyopathy, aged 27.
Unlike those other people's sons, Jack was an absolutely lovely young man who'd never been in any trouble and always worked. He lived with his partner and three-year-old daughter in the house they were buying together. The daughter was unplanned but we are so grateful to have her because she's Jack's legacy.
Jack and family had their evening meal with my son and his wife on that fateful Monday. As Jack left to drop his partner and child at home before going to his football game his last words to his parents were 'I'll see you tomorrow.' But within two hours he was dead.
Another letter you published featured a grandmother worried that her granddaughter was not speaking grammatically correctly. I'm afraid I felt that issue paled into insignificance compared to having to tell a three-year-old having a meltdown and crying 'I want my daddy', that he can never come home.
I'm afraid other problems have struck me as incredibly trivial and I very much admire your ability to give reasoned replies as sometimes you must feel like slapping the writers. What I've learned from this awful experience is that the bereaved person does not want to be told about every other young person's sudden death.
Talking about your parent's or even sibling's deaths is of no comfort whatsoever, and I'd like people to realise that losing a seemingly-healthy child or grandchild at this age is absolutely no comparison to your 90-year-old mother dying in a care home.
Jack's many friends who attended his funeral reminded me just how nice the majority of young people are. They really do get an undeserved bad press – the two drug-addicted sons mentioned above are the minority. I've dealt with a lot of deaths in my life but none have hit me as badly. What helps is people just saying how sorry they are, giving me a hug and accepting I will still cry when something trivial sets me off like hearing the song 'Everything I Own'. And I truly would give absolutely everything I own to have Jack back.
JEANNE. Bel Mooney replies: You topped and tailed your email by saying you are not making a request for advice, but I'm choosing to publish something I consider very important, because it is as full of wisdom as it is of tears. I couldn't remember the song you mention so looked it up. Released by Bread in 1972, it encapsulates loss, longing and love and listening to the lyrics after reading your heart-breaking email reduced me to tears.
Millions know what it is like to feel like this:. And I would give anything I own. I'd give up my life, my heart, my home. I would give everything I own. Just to have you back again. …and yet, of course, every loss is unique. That is why you feel quietly outraged (I know you do and I understand) by the well-meaning comparisons people sometimes make to the recently bereaved.
Yes, you are right to say there is no equivalence between the demise of a very old parent in a care home and the sudden death of a young person with his or her whole life ahead. Death may be the common factor, but that's all. To tell somebody bowed by grief, 'I know how you feel,' may be well-meaning yet it is also presumptuous, simply because (I repeat) each death is experienced uniquely. At the same time I just whisper that there isn't a league table of sorrow.
Whatever the situation, just murmuring quietly and with utter sincerity, 'I'm sorry for your trouble' (in the traditional Irish way) is enough. To reach out a hand in silence and touch somebody's arm can convey a sympathy as eloquent as any poet's formal elegy.
But let me assure you that I never want to 'slap' people, metaphorically speaking, for writing to me with problems that seem pathetically small to you, so full of inconsolable grief at the sudden death of your fine young grandson. As I have said here more than once, people's frustrations, anxieties, guilt, sadness and other seemingly-trivial concerns loom so large in individual lives they can actually, in extreme cases, ruin them. They can cause quarrels and real worry.
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter. Love and desire and hate:. I think they have no portion in us after. We pass the gate. From Envoy by Ernest Dowson (English poet 1867-1900). Getting a 'trivial' problem off your chest can be so positive, helping you to find ways to deal with it. Just writing it down can help people start to make sense of whatever trouble is. Readers tell me that so often, and it makes me glad.
Interestingly, the derivation of the word 'trivial' doesn't reference being small, but it does imply 'common' in the sense –without giving a Latin lesson here – that the street corner you cross each day is a common thing. It's ordinary. Nothing to see. So, in one of those shifts of language, it becomes unremarkable, therefore 'trivial'.
