What about Grief?
Dominic Thomas
Nov 2025 • 3 min read
What about Grief?
The taboos of my childhood era were sex, death and religion. These, I was told (not by my parents), were topics that would divide and were not really up for discussion. The way the world seems to have evolved; the only remaining taboo seems to me to be death.
Like many of you and all of us eventually, I have had an ample dose of bereavement in my lifetime. The loss of very close friends, family members and clients. I can (obviously) only speak to my own experience and how facing each has been different, depending on the circumstances and relationship. There is a common process for grief or loss, but each has its own nuance.
An attempt to reflect on the misery, devastation and despair of losing a spouse is brought to life on screen from the book by Max Porter. I’ve not read the book and now intend to do so; the film attempts to make the unfilmable a film. Visually violently and bleak, it’s not one for those traumatised by Hitchcock’s The Birds and suffering ornithophobia.
As I watched I couldn’t help but think of one of my closest friends and wonder if I had even come close to helping him enough as he wrestled with the challenge of raising two boys alone. I realise that many people do this as single parents (mainly women) but that isn’t quite the same as also processing the permanent loss of the other parent forever. No conversations or arguments about the exhausting parenting experience with one another.
I’m curious and a little apprehensive to learn what he would make of it. The film shows ineffective conversation and platitudes of help. I hope that my approach of simply doing stuff was more useful. As a taboo, perhaps most of us aren’t really confident in our ability to talk about death with one another. I hope that I’m not misguided in thinking that I don’t find the topic threatening, I’m comfortable sitting with the uneasy … my psychotherapist spouse may want to add some thought to that though.
I found the film difficult to watch, not because of its content but because I was bottling up a list of seven things that could have been done to make the process better.
- A properly connected therapist
- A cleaner
- Someone skilled to help with childcare
- Someone to alleviate or handle a lot of the practical administration of death
- A lot of life assurance
- Relationships with friends who properly engage and get in the mire with you
- A community
The sense that we have to do everything on our own is one of those ridiculously badly communicated notions set at school about our independence.
You do not have to do everything on your own. That’s certainly harder when you are single or your circle of friends is relatively small or you don’t have any obvious community. However in my experience, those can be discovered, built and encouraged. Even as your financial planner, we will more than readily get involved to help you with any elements within out remit.
You don’t have to be a genius or expert in all of life’s topics. We are here to help you master money management, we don’t expect you to simply figure it all out yourself and should grief arrive at your door, we will be on hand. In the meantime, we will encourage you to be ready by being prepared and making the most of now.
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