Is child loss different for men? After losing his son to suicide in 2021, Dave Thompson opens up about his mental health journey, support groups, and his newfound love for Stockport County.
To find out about Mentell, click here.
Healthy Minds was NHS driven mental health support and may be called something else where you live. NHS Mental Health Support can be found here.
To reach Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SoBS), click here.
Stockport County Community Trust information can be found here.
GHTonline: https://ghtonline.co.uk/pages/about-ght
George’s flag at Stockport County (via X)
Strong Men Our aim is to support men following bereavement. Grief can cause severe emotional and physical health conditions which are often overlooked and even ignored, especially in men.
Dad Still Standing: We’ve created Dad Still Standing as a way of helping other dads along their journey with grief. To discuss the difficulties we go through in bereavement, both in the immediate aftermath of baby loss and as time moves on. If your experience is anything like ours, you’ll have found that there are no resources or support for dads…by dads…and that’s precisely what we’ve tried to create.
Dave also pointed me to this podcast that he’s found helpful as a bereaved dad: The Exclusive Club That Dads Don’t Wanna Belong To
Midowed: a mother’s grief, by Debbie Enever
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Debbie Enever, Host
Dave Thompson, Guest
[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Bereaved Parents Club podcast. It’s the club none of us want to be members of, but here we are. My name is Debbie and I’m a bereaved parent. This podcast is for all of us to share and celebrate the stories of our children and offer support to each other. Each episode will explore topics that have relevance to us as we navigate the world as bereaved parents, whether your loss was last week, last month, last year or even last century, you are welcome here. And whether your child was a baby, a youngster, a teenager, an adult, or even a parent themselves, you are welcome here. Please be aware that each episode will deal with themes of death and loss.
Dave’s Story; [00:01:00] Losing George, Finding Support.
In today’s episode, I’m joined by Dave, whose son George died by suicide in 2021. Dave’s participation in this podcast series provides a chance to share a dad’s perspective on being a bereaved parent. Dads have traditionally been underrepresented in forums that involve talking about and sharing feelings of loss, and today we hope to redress that a little bit.
Dave will tell us about George, including talking about George’s final day, so please consider whether this episode is right for you before listening. Dave will also talk about the support he’s accessed in the last couple of years. We’ll hear about a fast-growing mental health charity for men called Mentell and another national charity that supports people bereaved by suicide. And we’ll also learn why Dave is Stockport County’s biggest fan these days. And be aware, it’s a very emotional episode.
So welcome Dave and thank you for [00:02:00] speaking to me today. Let’s start with you telling me all about George.
Cor, this is the hardest part. I’m actually sat in his room now. He was fantastic and that’s what, that’s uh, that’s what does upset you actually, which is strange talking about him in a nice way upsets you. He, he was wonderful. I’ve said before that we were blessed to have two fantastic sons. His younger brother, Will, was his best mate. As a little boy he was very caring and would always, he was always very careful with ladybirds or ants or, you know, he wouldn’t go around stamping on ants like I did when I was a little boy. He loved all of that stuff. And that was him throughout his whole life as a person. He was, A fabulous personality, very loving towards his family. Had a really good relationship with his grandfather, Caroline’s dad. And would often just go around and sit and watch snooker with him and have a brew after college, or on his way home from school.
He was just sort of starting [00:03:00] to discover himself as well through Going to the football with his mates from around 14, 15 years old and then he, as you do at 16, started to discover a little bit of drink or whatever. I don’t think, I don’t think there was anything else. I think it was just drink.
What football team did he support?
Well, he, Stockport County was his team, but again, that’s become part of the story. So, I was a Stoke City fan. I took him to County because I thought he should at least make an effort to support his local team. And me and his dad, me as his dad, should direct him that way. That’s the story. And we went a couple of times, and he enjoyed it.
He did enjoy it and he’s like, you know, chanting and ‘go on County’ like kids do. Took him to the pub beforehand, like dads do. And then I started going to Stoke a couple of times, driving home and, and I asked him if he wanted to come. And he came with me to a Premier League game. They played City. They drew 1-1. And we had a great night, just me and him. And as I say, he was about seven years old then. So, um, That lasted about, maybe, a year, 18 months, and he kind of drifted off from [00:04:00] football, wasn’t really bothered. And when he was 14, he came home one day and he said, ‘one of my mates has asked me if I want to go to County on Saturday’.
Now, bear in mind, County were absolutely bobbins at this point. They’re rubbish. He came home, I think there was like two men and a dog there, probably like 1000 people. He could not stop talking about the atmosphere. What a great day, I can’t remember if he won or lost or whatever, but he absolutely was buzzing, flying talking about County and that was him on a County hook then forever and he had probably about four-ish more years of going to County. So that was one of his big things.
He was just getting into, just started to get into MMA. He was really enjoying that as a way of keeping fit and he’d been working part time. He used to get himself up at five o’clock every Saturday and Sunday morning from the age of 16 to go and do a part time job at Sainsbury’s. Now, When I was 16, I was perhaps just getting in, at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, and again, it just shows the difference, I think, in generations as well. And he was disciplined enough [00:05:00] to get up and do that, and earn the money, so then he started to earn the money, so then he started to buy his clothes.
And, as I look to my right, now, above the wardrobe, there’s about 25 boxes of Adidas trainers, most of them are his. He was just starting to become this wonderful young adult. I mean he also once spent 350 quid on a Versace dressing gown. As a dad you’re very much tearing your hair out, but then you’re like, but he’s earned the money. He’s got up at half four, five o’clock, Saturday, Sunday to start his shift at six, seven o’clock. Who am I to tell him what are you going to spend that money on?
So that was, that was him, you know, latterly as an 18-year-old lad. He was wonderful. He really, really was. And very, very loving of us as his family and, and, but also as I say, very open of his feelings throughout the struggles that he had up until the, you know, the age of 18.
Well, he sounds fab. He really does.
He was. [00:06:00] And, you know, we were speaking beforehand, weren’t we, about being 21? We’re in that year now. Which, we had his 18th birthday, and he took his own life three months after that. And he was the youngest of all his mates, so we’d sort of, we didn’t really know them all back then like we know them now.
But we’re aware this year that we’re seeing them all turn 21. And I think for us, as parents, that’s one of the hardest things. So, it’s that. We’re going through a lot of stages of life where we will never see him in that position. My full-time job is I’m a self-employed photographer. So, as well as photographing sport, I also photograph weddings. And I’ve found those really tough in the last 12 months because I’m constantly thinking I’ll never see George giving a best man speech or at his brother’s wedding, or I’ll [00:07:00] never see George as a groom, or I’ll never see him. Just within this environment, full stop. And his 21st is very much like that.
And I often think again that we asked him, did he want a birthday for his 18th or a birthday for his 21st? And he always said his 18th. And I kind of thought, why, why, why? Everyone has the 21st. Surely everyone has the 21st. Why do you want your 18th? And I don’t know, maybe he knew he wasn’t going to see 21.
I don’t know. And these are the things as a parent, or when you lose a child in a way that is so sudden, it leaves so many questions unanswered.
Very true. Will you tell us about George’s last day, Dave? I know you’ve shared this story before, and you said to me that talking about this is in some way helpful.
He went off, um, to work. He’d been working with a builder’s firm for about three months and he’d got off in the morning and one of the last things I said to him was, ‘Come on, hurry up and get your boots on, he’s waiting’. [00:08:00] Because the work van was outside to pick him up because he didn’t drive, he hadn’t passed his driving test.
So, I kind of, you know, hurried him on his way, and I said it from the lounge, I never even saw him walk out the door. I looked out the window, and I just saw him walk out, shut the gate, pull it to behind him, put the latch on the top of the gate, walk off, get in the van, and the van drove off. And that would have been about eight in the morning.
I carried on with my day, it was a Wednesday, Caroline went to work, I was working from home doing some editing, and I had a phone call from George’s boss, who was actually on holiday. And he rang me, and he said, he said, I’ll just let you know, George has gone missing. We can’t find him. So, I made my way over to Cheadle, which is where he was working, and I rang his phone several times and it went straight to answer phone and left him a few messages saying, you know, ‘I’ve heard you’ve gone missing, mate. Don’t worry, whatever it is, we’ll sort it out’. Because he’d been very open about his struggles with what he called thunderstorms from around the age of 15.
So, I got to the site and [00:09:00] there was, um, a policeman stood across the drive of the house they were working on with police cord and tape. And I said to myself in the car, ‘oh fucking hell, what have you done, George?’
And, because I knew that, you know, they don’t, they don’t put police tape across the driveway for someone who goes missing. And I knew that the house they were working on was next to a railway embankment. And so, I parked up the car and I walked up to a policeman and said ‘I’m the father of the person who’s gone missing’ and they told me ‘just stand over there’.
So, I didn’t. I went walking off and shouting his name. Shouting and shouting. But, I realised I couldn’t go any further round so I came back round towards my car and the policeman who I’d spoken to was with another policeman who was in a suit. They were explaining to me, which was fair enough, that they didn’t want me running in the road in desperation trying to find him.
And they asked would I like to take a seat in their car, which I declined. And I just said, ‘if you’ve got something to tell me, tell me now’. [00:10:00] And he said, ‘well I found a body on the line and from George’s workmates it matches the description of the clothes he was wearing’. So I asked for a percentage. You know, what kind of, what are we talking here, we, are you telling me it’s 100%? Is it 50%? And I wanted a percentage as well for survival. And he said to me that they would never say they’re 100 percent sure, sure of who it was, but they were 99 percent sure it was George. And if it was, then there was no chance of survival. I think I thanked him. And, again, declined the offer to sit in his car and I said I want to go and sit in my own.
I remember closing the door and just screaming like I’ve, I’ve never had a feeling like that before and I screamed and screamed and I punched the dashboard of my car, I punched the roof, I punched the glass, I punched the steering wheel, I was just [00:11:00] hitting things and hitting things and just shouting his name, apologising in a way that you don’t even know what you’re apologising for.
And then my next thing was I thought I’m just going to sit in the car because I was meant to be at work that night. So, I had to ring people to say I couldn’t go to work. And I went back to the, the tape by the house and I saw the lads he was working with, and I remember saying to them, ‘I don’t want you blaming yourselves at all, you did everything you could to look after him and help him through’.
And I stood there and I’m waiting around and I said, I’m not going until he’s gone. I can’t leave here knowing that, you know, his body is still up there. And then I became aware that Caroline didn’t know. Will was at home and Will had been messaging me because I said look I’m just going to find George he’s gone missing and because of the way whatsapp is Will messaged me and he saw he asked me if I’d found him yet and he saw two blue ticks and because I didn’t reply he put two and two together and he knew he knew he’d lost his brother but Caroline didn’t know and I was saying to the police you’ve got to tell her, [00:12:00] you’ve got to, I need her to know.
So she works in a supermarket and she’s working on the shop floor and she hears this voice go, ‘Caroline Thompson?’ And she turns around and there’s two police officers there with a member of staff and they just said, ‘can you go and get your belongings? You need to go home’. Never told her what it was or what. And then she eventually got her phone and she had missed calls from me. I had to tell her over the phone. So, and then obviously I had, I drove my car back with two police officers in who, who kept me talking all the way home.
Yeah, and we got in and they left after a little while and then we had to break the news to all the family and that was incredibly difficult.
And then what do we do? How do we tell the wider world? And Will wanted to put something on Instagram, and we were like, well, let’s just wait. And anyway, the next morning we thought, you know what, that is the best way to do it. So as a three, we sat down, and we wrote something and we were all happy with. Will shared it on his Instagram, I shared it on Facebook and, [00:13:00] and things then just went bananas. The support we got was just unimaginable. There was an amount of money raised for us as a family, we had florist after florist, we were relieved when someone bought a box of biscuits, because it meant it wasn’t flowers. And then a friend, a friend baked some scones, was bringing stuff so he could give people as a brew. And it was, and people coming round and just wanting to, to be with us, and it was overwhelming. But I’ll always be grateful for the support we got on, on that, that period of three or four days.
And that was the day, and then I always remember the night, Will said, he, Will said, ‘it’s half four, he’d be home by now’. And it was those, throughout the day, the little hours of realisation, the little moments of realisation. And then, I don’t know what time we went to bed, that first night, I don’t think we slept.
Then the second night, Will slept in with us. The third night, I slept in Will’s room, and Will slept in our room. That’s one of the things I’ve never really spoken to Will about, about how he [00:14:00] felt that night. Was it fear? Was it loneliness? I don’t know. But I know he was, I know he was a young lad who was desperately, desperately upset.
I think as a child there’s something just really comforting about being in your parent’s bed. It’s basic level comfort from the people who love you best.
And I think from a mother’s point of view it goes back to the maternal point. You know, the whole, like, instantly wants to bring everyone closer. And how we got through those two or three evenings, I’ll never quite know.
I remember about three or four nights in, after he’d died, I remember thinking, right, I’ve got to get everything ready for his funeral. To the point where I would wake up at half four, and I’d just get up. And I’d sit down, and if I couldn’t think of anything to prepare, I’d write poetry. I think, in about a week and a half, I wrote six poems plus what I was going to read at his funeral. But I also found that helpful.
How did you find things once the funeral was over?
As a family, [00:15:00] the funeral goes, the funeral goes and is done. And you’re maybe two weeks after. And everything’s starting to quieten down. But not for you. So, the phone doesn’t ring as much, the door doesn’t ring as much, there’s no more flowers, there’s no more scones, there’s no more cakes, there’s nothing.
Because life is going on. But you’re not ready for that. You’re not ready for that moment. But you are aware that at some point we will need to start putting one foot in front of the other again. Without disregarding what we’ve lost and how empty and raw we are at that moment, we somehow have to start looking at what the next hour is going to be like or the next five minutes.
At first you were looking ahead at the next, how am I going to get through the next year? How am I going to get through to it? I’ve got [00:16:00] 40 years to live with this. How am I going to get through that? And you realize pretty quickly, you can’t, you can’t think that far ahead. You’ve literally got to think one minute at a time, and over time obviously that grows, and you can think a little bit more and then you feel what I call my bungee rope pulling me all the way back, and I’ll go right back to thinking one minute at a time again, because The grief just doesn’t go. It just will not go away.
And, I know we spoke before about trying to talk and say things that people who are in our position may be, in a way, wanting to hear. I can’t ever sugar coat anything to do with talking about George. I don’t, I’m not going to say to someone, ‘yeah, two years after it you’ll feel fine’. Yeah, you will laugh. And you, and you will have days when you think, oh God, I’ve felt great for about three weeks now. You will. Maybe I am, maybe I’m over the hill, maybe I, and then whack! There goes that bungee rope, pulling you back and keeping you in check. I’m just reminding you, that little body shot as I [00:17:00] call it, that just comes up and reminds you of, of what you’ve lost.
What I’m trying to do now myself, is, I’m also, when I do feel that, I’m trying to feel feelings of gratitude. So okay, yeah, that is awful, that is an awful feeling, but what am I grateful for? Well, I’m grateful that I had 18 fantastic years with George. You know, and I see pictures of him as a little boy, and how happy he was at the zoo, or sitting in his room on his Xbox, and I’m grateful for that, and I’m grateful for having Will and Caroline still in my life.
Within three hours of finding out he died, I remember saying to myself, I’ve got to keep this family together. We, we are close. We were close when George was with us. We’re still close now. And God, I couldn’t imagine life without either of them. So that’s, that’s a privilege. That’s something to be eternally grateful for. And I’ll, and I’ll always think that, forever, every day.
Thank you, Dave. It is a real privilege to hear the story. So, can you tell us now how you got involved with Mentell?
When I started to look for support, this is post [00:18:00] funeral, we’re looking around March 2022. Caroline had been seeing a counsellor for a short period of time and she would come home and, and I’d sort of say, ‘you don’t have to tell me anything, but how did it go?’
And she would very openly sort of say what she’d spoken about and, and how she was feeling it was really beneficial and I can see me sat in the lounge now talking to her, one day I sat down on a settee and said ‘I think I need to talk to someone’. I was struggling desperately with coping with missing him. I couldn’t find a way of understanding what this feeling was inside me that I could not get rid of. I knew I wasn’t going to see him again, I knew he’d died, I’d accepted those things, but oh god, this feeling of emptiness and loss and sorrow and and just sadness. It wasn’t even anger. It wasn’t guilt. It was just missing him desperately.
So, we spoke to my GP, um, my GP turned [00:19:00] the screen round when I went in and showed me Healthy Minds website and how to go home and self-refer myself, which I told her I wouldn’t be doing, because I wanted to leave with it done for me, because I don’t care who you are, what grief you go through, you are not in a position to go home and start filling out forms and clicking links.
Whether you’ve lost a child, whether you’ve lost a grandparent, whether you’ve lost a parent. At that moment of grief, when you are pretty low, you don’t want to start clicking links. You want, you want some support, you want some hope. Help and hope, they were the two things I wanted. And I remember, I remember saying, I don’t want to leave here until I know I’m getting some help.
So, she did refer me. Which I was grateful for and then I think about a week or so later I got a letter saying that I would receive a call for an assessment to see whether I qualified. So that so basically from leaving the GP’s door to me getting that call was going to be about two weeks but actually getting any sort of [00:20:00] counselling would be a total of about ten weeks and I didn’t know how I was gonna fill that gap from leaving the GP to sitting in a counsellor’s office. And a friend from Stockport County very early on had mentioned Mentel and said it was too early for stuff like that and everything else and I thought well actually, maybe that’s the place to go and try.
So I went on their website, I signed up on a Wednesday, pretty sure it was a Wednesday because Wednesdays used to be the worst days, and I was in a face-to-face circle on the Monday night. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, five days. And I sat in the circle at Stockport County, which, funnily enough, is where the circle is, and I walked in and a couple of guys shared their stories, and then I was given the chance to speak.
And I grasped it with both hands, and I absolutely sobbed my eyes out for most of the first half of the session, telling George’s story, explaining why I was there, what I needed from it, and they [00:21:00] listened. They just sat there and listened. You know, I was getting, I was talking to family, and they were listening. I don’t think I said anything different in Mentell than I’ve said, than I had said to my family. But for whatever reason, it felt different. Whether it’s because it was a room full of strangers, I don’t know. And they were just there for me.
They just listened and I remember coming home and saying to Caroline after the first one, she said, ‘How did it go?’
I said, ‘well, I can’t tell you anything because it’s all about confidentiality’. I said, ‘but from my point of view, it’s really, really helped me’. And she sort of said, ‘are you going to go back?’ I went, ‘yeah, I will’. And I kept going and I kept going and I kept crying and I kept crying. And then it got, and then I was all right. And then one day I thought, I’ll take a picture of George. And I took a picture of George and then I started crying again.
They’re there for me, even now, they’re just there for me, you know, and, and I see what it does as a charity, I was always very cynical with charities, but what I see Mentell do for men in communities, just, [00:22:00] making sure they know it’s there, and then when they do find out it’s there, once they’ve taken that step to get through the door, which is, takes an enormous amount of bravery, I don’t, I acknowledge that, I don’t, didn’t feel it myself because I knew I needed to go somewhere.
But I know for a man to first of all admit he needs some sort of help and support, and to secondly then go into a room full of strangers who he’s never, clearly never met, and then he might actually walk in and realise ‘oh my god there is someone who I do know, well what happens if he tells my story to somebody?’, but then after two hours realising this room is based on trust and trustworthiness, a lack of judgment and if you don’t want to come back again you don’t have to. But if you do, you know, there’s a really safe space for you to come and that is what Mentell is?
And men come along and tell good stories as well. You know, some men check in as a ten because, I don’t know, they’ve just got engaged over the weekends. And that’s great because [00:23:00] that also lifts the room, you know. They encourage men to come back when they’ve had good news. I don’t know, one day soon maybe I’ll go with good news. I don’t know, but I kind of, I still go.
Oh, your good news, Dave, is that you keep turning up, you’re still here talking.
That’s it, and it is, it’s now my, it’s part of my, I suppose, my self-wellbeing that I know that at the moment I’m busy so I can’t go on a Monday and I won’t, I think there’s about four weeks running where I won’t have gone. Apart from being away out of the country for work, that’s as long a period as I’ve not gone to Mentel for. And I know I’ll be ready for it, bizarrely, when I go. I can feel it already, I can feel it coming in the last couple of weeks. It’s like I’ve not been, and I know I’ve not been. And that’s how it works. It’s so supportive, it really is.
I know that there are new groups popping up mainly across the north of the UK at present, but is it online too? Is there a limit to numbers for circles?
So yeah, they have, they have a Monday night Zoom from 7 till 9. So, they don’t try and have a maximum, they always try and, so [00:24:00] for example, at Stockport County, some weeks we have to split the circle in two. Because we can have maybe 23 men. So 23 men in one circle is far too many. 13 works better. But they always try and, on average, they’ll sort of try and gauge. They’ll, they’ll never, oh god, they’ll never turn around and say, ‘sorry you can’t come but full’. They will always accommodate men who need to come to circle.
That’s why, partly why, they have two facilitators. They have a lead facilitator and a support facilitator in one circle. One for in case someone was desperate and had to get up and leave the circle, well one of the facilitators can go, make sure they’re there as a duty of care and the rest of the circle can carry on.
Or if there are too many and they need to split in two and then there’s at least a trained facilitator in each of the, of the breakout circles. But they do try and keep the numbers around 10, 12. Some of them, I’ve been to some before and there’s maybe five men there, but they’re the face to face and obviously Zoom can be accessed from anywhere.
Dave, I know that as well as attending the [00:25:00] Circle, you have taken another step on your Mentell journey. Can you tell us more?
So, I now have a part time paid role within Mentell to work with Jo in the community team. But we’ve been up and down the country, talking to people from businesses and talking to their staff about Mentell and so we’ll go around and we’ll talk to all these, these men over the age of 18 who are in the workplace and some pretty, what you would class as tough working places, tough working environments. And they’ll turn round to us after five minutes after we’ve finished our talk and everyone’s left. And they’ll come and talk to us just ‘oh, didn’t want to talk to you in front of all the lads, but I’ve been stuck with this’. And, you know, a week or so later they’ve gone on a Zoom call and, and, got on their Mentell journey through that.
It is growing though, but as a charity it’s growing enormously, and very quickly, and it’s doing it well. It’s doing an awful lot of good, I know that much.
It clearly is, and I’m glad it was there for you, and now you’re there for it.
I class myself as a cog in a brilliant Mentell wheel. I’ve seen lots of people come to Circle after [00:26:00] I first went, who I still see there now. So I’ve seen their Mentell journey, because mine started before theirs, and I’ve seen the progression they’re making. I know it works for me, but that’s fine. How do I know it works for other people? Well, I’m seeing it. I’m seeing men come to Circle, and men who checked in as a 2 maybe a year ago are now checking in as a 7 or an 8. Most weeks, so it does work.
Right, you’ll have to run those numbers past me again so I understand them.
Sorry, yeah, yeah, so, so a Mentell circle basically works on once you’ve walked through the door and taken your seat, the facilitators will open up the circle and they’ll just explain about what can be spoken about and what can’t be spoken about.
Most things can be spoken about if they’re fine with your story. So, once someone’s checked in and those ground rules have been put down, a ball is just passed around the circle, clockwise. And a man will introduce himself with his name, so I would say, ‘My name’s Dave, and at this moment in time, on a Monday night, I am a [00:27:00] 5 out of 10’.
So, 1 being the lowest, 10 being the highest. And the reason they do that is the facilitators are then able to gauge who in the room needs to speak first. So, if someone, if someone had gone for their first night and checked in as the lowest number, they’re not going to jump on them and go, ‘right Dave, you were a 2, tell us why you’re here’.
They’ll acknowledge it and they’ll just say, ‘we’re going to come back to you, we’re just giving you a chance to settle in the room, see how a circle works, then we’ll give you the chance to speak’. So, they may start with someone who’s a 6, then they may go to someone who’s an 8, then they may go to someone who’s a 4, then they might come to Dave who was a 1.
And if Dave wants to speak, Dave will speak. If you don’t want to speak, you don’t have to. You can just listen. You don’t have to share anything. And then in the second half, if you’ve, if you’ve declined the chance to, to share your story, you’ll be offered the chance again. But again, you may not want to. So, you won’t have to sit there and say anything.
You may just decide at the end of your first session, you wanted to listen. And [00:28:00] then never, and then never ever go again. You know, there’s, there’s no, there’s no commitment, there’s no advice, there’s no, it’s, it’s free from everything.
It sounds like a really welcoming space, and I hope that men listening to this who feel that perhaps they’re bottling stuff up or that they need to talk have the courage to find out about joining a Zoom call or a local circle um, and they can head to our episode page for details.
So, we know Mentell are doing amazing things. Have you accessed any other support?
One of the other things that we found supportive as a family, certainly for Caroline and I, was a group, which is another charity, called Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide, SoBS for short. They met at a church in Hazel Grove, although it’s not a religious group, and they’re nationwide.
We went there not long after George died. It was one of the things that we did find of that we thought may be useful. For me that was harder than going into Mentell for me. I don’t know why, but we walked in, and we were greeted by lots of lovely people who were all [00:29:00] very smiley and very friendly and had a cup of tea and a cup of coffee.
And then we all sat in a circle and the circle opened and I knew what I was there for. I knew that everyone who was there had been somehow affected by suicide and the stories started going around the room, then the next person, then the next person, and we were sat there looking at each other thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is us. They’re saying exactly how we felt last week, the week before, the week before, the week before’. And that was one of the first places where we went to where we realised it wasn’t just us that was in this position. That these feelings that we had were actually quite natural for the position we were in.
And then it got to a point where I was working again. So, I couldn’t go, and it meant Caroline was going on her own. And she ummed a lot and then she went, ‘you know what, I’ll be alright there. I feel quite comfortable going there on my own’. Which was ace. For me, as, as her husband, was just like, she will, I know she will, because I’ve been there, and it sounds awful to say she loves going.
They have the odd little social event, and they’re [00:30:00] so nice to go on, because you see friends that maybe weren’t at the circle that you went to the previous month, or, and you’ve not been for six months. And you just catch up again on a barge or on a walk up in the Peak District or somewhere, and they just, it’s a fabulous charity, which again, anyone who’s listened to this podcast that has been affected by suicide, whether it’s directly or whether it’s an indirect family, or it could even be your neighbour or something, it’s still an effect on you. I would recommend them to everyone because they’re just another great support.
I think there’s something very freeing about just being with other people that simply get it. Details of SoBS can be found on the episode listing. Now we’re going to change tack because I want you to tell us about Stockport County. I know they’ve been a significant source of support for you, and especially in those early months, but I want you to be the one telling the story. So how did it all begin?
We were due to go to a football match together to Stockport County versus Bolton. This is why and now why I’m a Stockport County fan. I mentioned about being a Stoke fan. [00:31:00] The football club just were ace. That gets me emotional as well. They, uh, so we were going, we were, me, George, his brother Will and his uncle Nick, um, we’d agreed, right, come on then, I’ll come on a county away day with you George, yeah, let’s have an away day. So we went to, we were going to Bolton away in the cup and the four of us had a ticket, um, so in the end, George’s grandad, Nick’s dad, Um, that’s my brother in law, Nick. Uh, he had the ticket, so the four of us went.
And County just, after we’d posted something on Facebook the day after he died, that spread to within County. Someone contacted us through a friend of the club and said, would we be happy for County to put a tribute out? That snowballed to what became people saying at the match let’s have a minutes applause for [00:32:00] George on the 18th minute.
The next game was at home on a Wednesday night. A guy called Steve Bellis at the club had asked us to come onto the pitch at half time because he wanted to give us the match ball from the previous game which was signed by a Bolton and County players as a, just a gift from the club. And we walked off and fans in the Cheadle ended up singing ‘there’s only one George Thompson’.
So proud, I’m just so proud in a way that that many people could support us as a family, and they still do. They still do now. The same with the club as a whole, but they, as a football club and as a community, they helped me enormously and they still do now.
That’s all so touching and brilliant. Picturing the crowd singing George’s name goosebumps. Will you tell us about the flag?
We, we got a flag made George’s uncle Nick’s pub that he drinks in. They had a whit round in there and a few County fans had a whip round and, and we got a flag made with George’s name on, which goes home and away now to most county games. Whether we can go or not, it’s not just a [00:33:00] flag, which is fab, it’s almost as if it’s a little reminder for people to just check in on themselves and, and know Will has had people who he doesn’t know, who have come up to him, who are around his age, and have openly said, ‘you’re the lad with the flag, aren’t you?’ And when he said yes, they turned around and said, ‘My friend spoke to me about not feeling great when we saw that flag at this game’, or that game, or wherever. It’s magic!
Sometimes we’ll go to grounds and they’ll say ‘you can’t bring that flag in’. You know, it happens about a week before a game. And I have no shame in admitting this. That all I will then do is I’ll go on Twitter and I’ll tag, I’ll tag the club because genuinely having that flag is as close as I will ever have to go into the football with George. So whilst I don’t take liberties with it, I will want it to be in the ground with me as often and as much as I can get it.
And if I get to the point where I can’t get any help from the club, then I’ll go to Twitter. And as soon as that happens. It [00:34:00] helps because County fans, County fans want that flag in there. The football County staff want that flag in there. Which again, just goes back to what I said right at the beginning of what a huge support they’ve been to us as a family, and continue to be.
And the fact that the flag that was produced, that was just a flag to remember George by, has now become something that every fan who goes to, or a lot of the fans that go to County will see, want to see in the ground, home or away, and they will get as upset as me if it doesn’t get in, because they know what it means to them as a fan base.
It’s magic. It’s just so, so, so, it’s so kind and generous and thoughtful and loving and that’s why they’re the best football team and the best fans in the world.
Oh, they are now, are they? No sneaky slipping back to being a Stoke fan?
They are now. There’s no going back. I was born in Southport, so I grew up an Everton fan. Then we moved to Hull, I went to one Hull game, but that apparently makes me a Hull fan. [00:35:00] Then we moved to Stoke when I was nine, so I became a Stoke fan. I moved up here when I was 22, and I was still a Stoke fan until, I mean, let’s be honest, if George was still with us, I’d still be a Stoke fan. You know, the whole point of me being a County fan is because I want to be near George, I want to be with George, and I want to be, it’s my love, it’s my love.
Um, and again, this is the crazy thing about it, that County were absolutely bobbins until, it sounds awful, until, that’s until George died. And then after that, they’ve bloody hardly lost. And it’s, and, and, again, I’ve said it to people, I’ve said, said it to people at the games, you know, I wish he was here, and I do, they’ll always say he is, and I do believe that. I do believe that.
And again, the pull, the pull towards Edgeley Park is there, his ashes are at the ground. You know, his ashes are buried just behind one of the posts at the Cheed Land, in line with where his season ticket was. I asked if I could have the, the ashes, if I could scatter them just somewhere on the terraces, and [00:36:00] the most, one of the most incredible men you will ever meet, a guy called Steve Bellis, he’s the club president. I’ll never, ever, ever have the words to describe how I felt when he spoke to me and he said, ‘the club have said it’s okay for you to bury his ashes at the ground’.
Now, I know they don’t do that for everyone. So again, an enormous privilege to be able to do that. So, it’s just those kind thoughts that people put in place that when you go there and, and you, you know, you go through that horrible moment of a final goodbye, if you like, and the three of us, me, Caroline and Will, we were there and we put his ashes in and, and I’ll go there before every game or either before, during or after.
And I kind of, I bet people think I’m falling over the advertising boards, because I have to almost rest my hips on it, kick my legs up, to swing myself over, to just kiss my hand, to touch the grass, to swing myself back up [00:37:00] again. So, I bet people think, what the hell is he doing? But that’s why, and so I just, I just lean over and just touch the grass and just say hello to him. And that’s why I can’t ever, I can’t ever support any other football club in the world. They’ve just been, they’ve just been brilliant and they can, and I’ll do anything for them. I would do anything for the people there.
I can a hundred percent understand why you feel this way about the club now. That is truly outstanding support from them. Well, thank you for taking us through everything today. You’ve really covered loads with us. Now, at the end of each episode, I ask guests to share something with us that they’re grateful for just so that we can try to lighten the room again after these quite emotional chats. So, Dave, what have you got?
Well, you hopefully have been able to tell how grateful I am about Stockport County, for having them in my life. I wish it had been under other circumstances. My family, obviously, I know that. But, I [00:38:00] have to say, hot pot, in a slow cooker, with crusty bread, a french stick, with loads of butter on it, honest to God. Now I think it’s up there with my favourite tea. Now when I was a kid, hot pot, you’d turn your nose up at, do you know what I mean? It’s a load of meat with a load of veg and a load of gravy, what a load of slop. Sorry mum, if you’re listening, I’m sure it wasn’t slop, I’m sure it was cooked with love.
Honestly, we had it the other night and I thought, this is getting a mention. It’s just- having said that, having said that, I don’t make it. I’m taking the credit as if I’ve made it. Caroline put it all in the slow cooker. Before she went to work, it started about nine in the morning. We ate it about six at night.
You walk into the house, all you can smell is hot pot. But, honestly, I think it is now one of my new favourite things. Hot pot in a slow cooker with French stick and butter.
Oh, you’ve got me salivating, I want hot pot! Tell Caroline I’m coming for tea.
Well, you’ll have to be quick. It gets eaten pretty quickly. It doesn’t, none gets [00:39:00] left!
That was my conversation with Dave Thompson, George’s dad. Since recording this, there’s also been an exciting development in that George’s artwork has been used to promote some fab merchandise, 50 percent of the sale of which goes to supporting Mentel. His page is www.ghtonline.co.uk and that’s both George’s initials and Get Help Today. Good, isn’t it? So visit ghtonline.co.uk for more about this fab initiative.
I should also give a big shout out to Stockport County for their promotion to League One. And if you want to see George’s flag being part of the celebrations, then head to our webpage.
For links to organisations in themes discussed today, please see the episode listing and our webpage at https://www.bereavedparentsclub.org.uk/
Head to our socials to leave your comments and suggestions about this and other episodes in the series, or email your feedback to hello@bereavedparentsclub.org.uk And please do share the [00:40:00] podcast amongst your networks, so that we can reach everyone that might benefit.
Finally, if you want to know more about my grief journey, you can find a link to my book, Midowed: A Mother’s Grief, on our webpage. Thank you for listening.
This episode is dedicated to George.