We need to learn to talk about grief

It made her plans for one last Christmas even more poignant.

But, by refusing more treatment and telling the world how she was and how she felt – right down to the nickname for her colostomy bag – she showed us how to die. What’s more she even got us talking about death. Never our favourite subject.

Because none of us really believes that it’s ever going to happen, right?

Which makes us so hopeless at dealing with it.

Just over a year ago, novelist Sian Busby, wife of BBC journalist Robert Peston died, also of cancer, at the age of 51. Peston, whose working life involves very unemotional facts and figures, found it hard to cope. He was, he said in an interview this week, “a high functioning emotional cripple”.

Grief was like “a gaping wound”.

And it was made worse because friends and colleagues – however caring and well meaning – didn’t quite know how to deal with him.

We’ve got very sentimental about death in recent years. Think of the way we rush to leave flowers for strangers, or all those teddy bears getting soggy in the rain at sites where children have died. But actually talking to someone who’s lost someone close to them, is much harder.

In the early days people will still cross the street because they don’t know what to say. And they expect people to heal and move on so quickly.

Whether because of hard-heartedness or embarrassment, we’ve become impatient with people’s grief. The bereaved can’t cope with grief and the rest of us can’t cope with the bereaved.

Peston has a hankering for the old Victorian idea of mourning and half-mourning for a set number of months “so people know you are badly damaged and can make allowances”.

Death’s not going away. The least we can do is talk about it.

JUSTICE OR REVENGE?

FOOTBALLER Ched Evans – who raped a drunk girl while his friends filmed it – seems a pretty unappealing sort of bloke. Now he’s freed from prison there are those who don’t want him to go back to his footballing career.

But it’s his job. He’s served his time and if the legal system is about justice rather than revenge, he should have the chance to get on with his life.

Anyway, just think of the grief he’s going to get from opposing fans…

GCSEs FARCE

SO what exactly is the point of GCSEs?

Nearly 30,000 GCSE grades have been changed this year – and that’s just the ones that were challenged.

It used to be rare to challenge grades. Not any more.

Now it’s almost routine for schools who realise that marking is often more of a lucky dip than an accurate exercise. So let’s just ditch them.

We could still offer the subjects, but bin the centralised exams.

Other countries, including the USA, manage quite well without an outside examiner, so why can’t we?

More useful would be a national exam just in English, Maths and something like logical thinking, taken when students were 14. Once we knew they could read, write, add up and think, they could choose what they wanted to do, whether practical, vocational or A levels.

There’d be a lot less pressure, more time to do other things, including sport and music which are in danger of slipping out of the picture. Or even learning for fun.

With fewer public exams, there’d be a lot more examiners too, twiddling their thumbs and able to tackle the A Level marking – 16,000 A level grades were changed too.

GCSEs have become too large, too unwieldy, too unreliable. Their day has gone. There must be a better way.

IN SICKNESS AND IN WEALTH

YOU could just see the Duchess of Cambridge taking deep breaths to get her through her first official engagement since extreme morning sickness laid her low for weeks. Throwing up on a state visit could be tricky, especially when the president of Singapore was in the firing line.

No wonder she looked a lot happier when it was over…

HEAD GIRL

ONCE upon a time students always had their head in a book. But after a night out, fresher Chelsie Redwood got hers stuck in a bottle bank and had to be freed by firemen. Oops.

She was apparently looking for more drink and clearly didn’t realise that bottles in a bottle bank are empty. Silly girl.

What DO they teach them these days?

TEETHING PROBLEMS

SCHOOLS must teach children to brush their teeth, say senior dentists, in a bid to halt rampant tooth decay.

Oh yes, teachers are going to love that – just add it to the ever-growing list of stuff schools are meant to do.

Why bother with parents? At this rate we might just hand our children over to the state at birth and be done.

HAPPINESS - AND HELP?

RENEE Zellwegger looks different. Sort of younger, thinner, not much like her and not at all like the Bridget Jones we knew and loved. And it’s causing all sorts of comment, which seems daft.

Renee Zellwegger is an actress. There’s a clue. She spends her working day pretending to be other people. She has to be able to look like all sorts, including the glamorous and sophisticated and not just like one long-gone role as a character whose greatest attribute was her imperfection.

Renee’s face is her fortune. Of course she’s going to make the most of it. Just don’t try and fool us that it’s just because she’s “content and happy”.

Happiness is wonderful – but it rarely looks that good without a bit of help, so why not say so?