Too young to die, too young to grieve

“The worst thing in my life was also responsible for some of the best things in my life.”

David Lawrence found so much comfort in Shakespeare’s Hamlet after his father died when he was fifteen that he made theatre his life, creating a lasting connection to his theatre-loving dad.

“All I wanted was for everyone to be together … that’s probably my greatest sadness.”

Her father’s fatal heart attack when Catherine Peters was sixteen had many immediate and obvious impacts on her family. Decades later, it’s perhaps the impact on her relationships with her sisters that is her biggest and most lasting sadness.

“Although people were kind, looking back I think there was a certain sense of isolation, or self-sufficiency, and just getting on with it”

Owen Marshall’s mother died when the boy, who was to become one of New Zealand’s most esteemed writers, was only two. He has a single fleeting memory of a woman who might – or might not – have been his mother, and it’s stayed with him through the eighty-plus years since.

“He just seemed impregnable. If there is an end that’s inevitable, be honest about it and discuss it.”

Michael Huddleston lives with a heart condition that’s possibly the same one that killed his father when Michael was only fifteen. Now a father of two, he’s determined to have more time with his own children than his dad did with him.

“It gets a lot easier to deal with emotionally, and there can be as much joy in what you had, as sadness in what’s been lost.”

James Bushell’s arts-loving dad died after a short illness when James was in his mid-teens. His mother gave him space and independence as they both grieved his father, something James believes preserved their still-close relationship.