Letter to a friend

I grew up earlier than either of my parents would have hoped. Circumstances intervened. My Father had his first heart attack, which I saw him have, as we were sat in his car in a carpark in a northern town. Had it not been for my mother being able to get someone to drive us to a nearby hospital and for that person's utter kindness in doing so, I would have been the single child of a single parent. I was seven.

The event is very hazy, it's more of a sense now than anything else, after all it's nearly forty years ago for one thing. How was I ? Bewildered without doubt, certainly frightened, and likely as not I pushed the memory of it all as far away as I possibly could. Denial, if it's not there then did it really happen? No, can't have. Let the spiders weave their cobwebs over it until it disappears from sight completely

It's being young and not knowing what to do or how to feel your way around a world that has changed irreversibly - up is no longer up, it's now down; all the points of safety and reassurance have shifted. Your landmarks have gone and as a kid, it takes time to grab hold of them again.

My story just like all of our stories is unique and it's personal, but it's how I dealt with preternatural growing up. It might provide clues as it could answers in some ways. I have your son in mind here.

Almost straightaway I became extraordinarily superstitious. If certain things happened, it'd spell doom, no half-way house, it would only ever be bad in my mind. I loathed, hated, feared going to the town where he had been taken so ill, the place had such dire significance; even the thought of going there would terrify me - something would go wrong. It became overpowering

It does n't need a skilled eye to see two behaviourial patterns at work: superstition is essentially trying to control events - if I do this, then this will not happen, or alternatively it might, if I don't; wrapped in and around this was the further idea of me as an agent of disaster, because of something I did, bad things happened, I'm to blame, it's my fault. It does n't take too many steps to walk from these two behaviours and then pick up another pair - anxiety and very poor self esteem. Natural bedfellows.

Anxiety is gross worry, a perfect accomplice to superstition and control freakery; someone over reacts to something that in for all intents and purposes is n't going to happen: for me it was always if I had n't done this, or heard that song playing on the radio, however I've now done it or heard it, then....(that's what it became eventually - I associated certain songs with my dad being unwell, to such a degree that if I heard them I'd panic. You will not have known that. I deeply internalised a lot of things. I was a kid with a lot buried).

I've been dogged with anxiety all my life. I never knew, utterly ignorant. Blank to it. Me ? Anxious, oh please...It was only after my mother died and I went through a slow, subtle self appraisal, one that for some time I was utterly unaware of, before I realised how engrained it had become. It manipulated me. Now, it's a non-issue. I know it's there, except now I manage it, I have the whip-hand for once and I'm not letting go.

When it came to self esteem, I'd blame myself for everything, apologise almost in advance,before something had happened, remember how often I'd say sorry when I was kid ? (not my innate good manners, more the damaged part of me talking, the rest of me blissfully unaware). For a long time, many years in truth, I firmly believed I was no good at anything.

Today, I know it's nonsense. We are who we are: complex, complicated individuals, fragile, strong, demanding, dull, funny, effervescent, lively, sad, and so many other things at the same time. I know too that in life things just happen, there is no intelligent design pulling the strings to delight or thwart us. It happens pure and simple; what does matter. though, is how one responds. Taken me a long time to reach this level of understanding.

What I experienced and then my subsequent series of emotional responses are n't a model. Everyone reacts differently irrespective of age, all paths are unique. Your son is going to react in his own way. Maybe he'll ask questions, seek solace, I don't know. It'll happen. But spend time with him. I can't underline that enough.

Things were different with me, it was a different time, people thought differently; the notion of emotional intelligence was unknown, the power of emotions were equally as unknown, the same for emotional engagement, really asking someone how they felt. It was another age. I don't think anyone then was properly aware that distress leaks out unexpectedly and in behaviours that are n't necessarily anticipated. In my case: acute superstition (still a legacy even today. I can't leave a book if it's on page 13 or chapter 13, have to read on, usually to page 15 or chapter 15, 14 is too close. Bet you did n't know that!); troublesome self esteem; over exagerrated levels of anxiety; and I'm the reason things go wrong. All of it beyond nonsense, if you're young, however, and in challenging circumstances, with perhaps the right questions not being asked, what's to prevent them becoming literal truths.

Spend time with him, ask him how he feels, what's he thinking. He'll need confidence.