On grief and work - a year after losing my Dad

Trigger warning: Loss, parental loss, grief

This weekend it will be a year since my Dad died. There’s us in the pic at my wedding in Sept 2022. I had toyed with whether to write about this but I have decided to for a few reasons. First of all, Dad was a writer, too. Not a journalist, but someone who used words in an amazing way. He was a salesman, a coach and trainer. A businessman. He wrote so many things, from course notes to brilliant clues on Christmas present labels. His speech at the wedding is another example - he had notes but you could tell he was just speaking naturally. Don’t tell Mr Holliday I said it, but Dad’s was the most amazing speech. I have a video of it and while it’s painful to watch, it’s also a joy. Dad, and words. Not so different to Jenny and words.

So I feel that writing is honouring him in a way he’d relate to.

I also re-named this Substack after something he used to say: He’d call HR ‘The Cardigan Brigade’ (I only found this out after he had gone) so I changed it to bring in the idea that it’s about work, careers and all the things that go with them, whether we like the things or not.

Finally, I want to share my experience of grief in relation to work in the hope it might comfort or help you if you are experiencing something similar. Working as both freelance and in a staff role in this year of grieving dad has been a strange experience, one I’ve learned from, for sure.

Grief hits you at the strangest moments, and it can be hard to keep going with work when you have those trigger times. It can also be a place of comfort and focus when everything else around you seems to be (or indeed, is) in utter chaos.

When Dad died, I was self-employed/freelance. I was so grateful for the flexibility that gave me, so that I could spend time with him and grieve at my own pace.

But as the year went on, I felt like the process of grief actually needed some structure. I wanted to belong somewhere, to be part of a team. I’d done that before, with contract work, and shifts. but this time I ended up in a full-time role, at a website focusing on HR.

‘Wonder what dad would say about me writing about The Cardigan Brigade!’ I thought.’

Problem was, I could only wonder.

Would he be proud? People say a lot ‘he’d be proud of you’. It’s second only to ‘I’m sure he knows/he’s looking down’. If you have lost a parent people might have said it to you, too. It’s strange, especially if they didn’t know the parent. How could they know they’d be proud? It makes me a little angry, (sorry to those who might have said it). The thing is, even if in some amazing world where his spirit does know, I want HIM to know. Living, breathing him.

It is, I think, unrealistic to think they’d be proud of every single thing you do. Their job is to be realistic, too. He might be thinking ‘What have you done now, Jensie?’ ‘Why did you quit that job?’

Over the years I often railed against his opinion, but now I’d give anything to hear it.

I sometimes imagine his voice in my head - always calling me Jensie - saying something supportive or challenging. And I have picked up habits from him, like writing down a month’s diary on a piece of paper when plotting content ideas.

Grief and work are a strange coupling: You can hide in work, you can throw yourself into tasks and forget all about the loss, it can be a huge release.

You can find comfort in work, perhaps even if the person was a colleague or you worked with the family member you’ve lost. Some people even decide to make death and loss their career, and I saw that first hand, from funeral directors to vicar and celebrant.

Work can be an outlet for the anger of grief - if it’s physical, for example, a practical job that demands focus or repetition - or it can be a place for comfort as you lean on colleagues.

It can also be a place to hide. Many of the people at the new job I took didn’t know, of course, that dad had died. I could be ‘pre dead Dad Jenny’ there. But of course, things will always trigger you. There will be people who refer to their parent, or, as happened near Christmas, someone innocently shares a tik tok video that reminds you of them and then you’re sobbing and wailing at your desk (thankfully, work from home meant I could turn my teams off).

I actually left that job in December 2023, and am now back to freelancing, looking for contract roles which I think is my happy place. Part ‘belonging’ part ‘freelance’. I like to think Dad would say ‘Well done, Jensie’ for being brave enough to leave, but also give me a knowing look and some advice about making sure the next step is one that still builds my career.

Grief can also make you be reckless with work. The phrase ‘life’s too short’ suddenly comes to mind each time you think about resigning/setting up that amazing business/running off to be another candidate for Ben Fogle’s ‘New Lives in the Wild’.

Dad and I didn’t always see eye to eye when it came to my career. Back in my student days, I shunned his offer of a placement he could secure with M&S in Paris, in favour of going to university in Lyon for my year out (true middle-class father-daughter problems, right?)

It’s funny but it’s only now, at 46, that I see so much of his creativity in me. I was always trying too hard to be a writer I never looked to him as one.

I know that I am talking here about a particular kind of grief - not only my experience but also that of losing a parent. I know the grief of losing a very close friend, and I also wonder what on earth she’d think of the way we work these days. She was a creative person, too, and I know she had joined Instagram but I wonder if she’d tell me I was on social media far too much.

Just before Dad died, he told me about a box of letters - we managed to find them a little while later. Letters he had written to his parents, from school days (he went to boarding school) through to university. My grandparents had kept them, then he had, too.

This bundle of writing has been the hugest comfort: A little bubble of analogue grief in the midst of the day-to-day, which can be so digital. I loved being able to learn from him, through his writing, to be inspired and to learn about his early days in business, too. He charted his ups and downs as a computer salesman, his drive and focus emanating from the page.

In his 40s, he set up a business running training courses, and he was very proud to achieve a Masters in psychology. Now, when I often think about how I’d like to go back to uni one day, I laugh at the idea I am morphing into him. But I am, in many ways. I do try to imagine what he’d say when negotiating a rate, or putting myself forward for a new role.

Dad worked hard. He was driven and he was ambitious. He was also very fair. And it’s those things I hope to bring to my work, too. To be true to my values and to do my best. To be a person who was known - and remembered for - their way with words.

I send love if you are going through grief alongside your work.

If you only read one book after losing a parent, I recommend You are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd. It’s brilliant.