There is no moratorium on grief
As Government cuts threaten benefits for bereaved families, Martha O’Neil shares why grieving children don’t deserve to be deprived twice
Eighteen months.
A lot can happen in 18 months. Back then, Brexit was inconceivable, Barack and Michelle were still living it up in the White House, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership bid was laughable, the idea of Donald Trump becoming President simply bizarre.
According to the Tories, however, one realistic thing that can happen in 18 months is to overcome the death of a parent or partner.
Yes. Shall we have a moment, just to take that in?
Eighteen months.
How dare they?
The Tories have cut the Bereaved Families’ Benefit Payment – a benefit upon which my family relied so heavily after the death of my father. It offers support to widows with children under the age of 20, ensuring the reduction in household income following the passing of a parent is at least partially reversed. George Osborne set this in motion some months before his tragedian fall (and potential second coming à la editor of the Evening Standard), with the intention to save the Government money. But this is done at the expense of the weak, the vulnerable, the grieving. Such an action can only be described as callous.
The Bereaved Families’ Benefit Payment has been operating for the best part of 70 years, offering a system whereby the National Insurance contributions of the deceased are redistributed to their family every month, until the children reach the age of 20. This valuable addition to a single-parent family goes little in the way of making up for the loss of such an important person in one’s life, but both the dying and their families can at least derive some sort of comfort from the fact that after the worst happens, families will be able to survive financially. Now, payments are to be reduced to 18 months.
My father passed away when I was ten, and my little brother was six. It was sudden and difficult to comprehend and it hurt somewhere deep inside, a gaping crater in my little world. Something was missing – the house felt strange, my Dad’s things still all around, his smell on his pillow, his coat still hung up by the door. But no Dad. Now it was just the three of us. Mum, my brother and I – my Dad’s memory binding us together.
Despite the pain, the grief, the never-ending feeling that ‘something’s not right’ on family occasions or on the school-run or the day I picked up my GCSE results, my Mum always made sure that we would have access to all of the opportunities we would have had if my Dad was alive.
“We were deprived of our Dad, but we were not deprived of opportunity – and I will be forever grateful to my Mum for this”
Our bereavement did make us different – of course it did – but even after my Dad’s death, I was still able to have piano lessons, singing lessons, to go on school trips, to buy school books, to have a roof over my head and food and shoes and family holidays. These were all parts of establishing my ‘new normal’ – and my Father’s National Insurance contributions certainly helped foster my Mum’s ethos that being different, having our worlds torn apart, did not equate to being unequal. We were deprived of our Dad, but we were not deprived of opportunity – and I will be forever grateful to my Mum for this.
That’s not to say it’s still not difficult. It is. I remember my first day at Cambridge, lugging the last of my cases from the Porter’s Lodge to my room. As I crossed the court, I saw a man hug his daughter. His eyes sparkled from tears he was desperately trying to hold back, and his face beamed with pride and affection. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t watch this beautiful moment because I had been deprived of it. I got to my room as quickly as possible, and cried, hugging my Mum and wishing my Dad was there to see me and my brother grow-up.
I still grieve now. Nine years on. The Tories may not believe me, but I do. Eighteen months is not long enough for a child, for a parent, to create the ‘new normal’. It takes years, years of hard-work and re-evaluation and the careful building of a new life.
The thought children losing their parents today will not have access to these payments is truly heart-breaking. I heard a terminally ill father on the Victoria Derbyshire Show will his own body to die some few days earlier just to ensure that he passes before the new scheme comes into action. He wanted his family to be safe, to be secure after he was gone – the most human of desires. Yet, the Tories may indeed deny him of this.
The only hope for the bereaved children of the future and for their parents, is that the Lords will be able to see through this dreadful, ill-conceived plan and rein the Government back on their proposals. Children do not need to be deprived twice and dying parents should not have to worry about the future of their family. We need a government of compassion. There is no moratorium on grief
