Letter: Don't shield young children from the reality of death

Letter: Like most of us, Peter Rhodes is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. In his column he says Elizabeth Archer should not have allowed her twins to attend their father Nigel's funeral. Sorry, Peter. In this you are wrong.

Jill Archer urged her daughter to let them go, remembering the trauma she had suffered in not being allowed to go to her own mother's funeral when she was a girl. Okay "The Archers" is only fiction, but it dealt so sensitively with this problem.

I well remember how when my grandmother, who lived with us, died. I was seven, and was sent to school as usual on the day of the funeral. My parents did this from the best of motives.

Yet 66 years later I still remember coming home on that day to find the house full of relatives I had never met. My feelings of loneliness and rejection, of not being part of the family, are still vivid in my memory.

Through the years I have always advised, when asked my opinion in situations like this, that children should be put fully in the picture and given the choice of attending the funeral of a close relative or not. In every case, the children have chosen to do so.

My own grandchildren attended my wife's funeral 18 months ago. A six-year-old grandson even asked if he could go to see his grandmother. We talked it through with him and his request was granted and he coped with it perfectly.

The pain felt by the loss of someone we dearly love will always be there and things will never be the same again, but we can pick up the threads and live happily.

Peter remembers that Queen Victoria refused to attend Prince Albert's funeral in 1861. Her not saying farewell could well have been the reason why she never recovered from her distress and remained in grief and mourning for the rest of her long life and reign.

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