Lynne was expecting her fourth child with her husband Dmitry, living in his home country of Russia with their three young daughters. Family life was busy but happy and they looked forward to seeing their children grow up and flourish.
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However, their life together was cut short in 2001 when Dmitry died suddenly at the age of 39 from a suspected heart attack while travelling for business.
“It was totally unexpected….none of us had said goodbye,” Lynne says.
She had to break the news to her three daughters and remembers that the girls had “completely different reactions”. It took several explanations for her youngest child, who was two years old, to understand the concept of what death was and that her father was gone for good.
Dmitry had always wanted a son and one month after his death, Lynne gave birth to a boy. Still coming to terms with their loss, Lynne decided to stay in Russia with the children to ensure they knew their father’s family and to keep his memory alive for them.
“I knew it was important to talk about their father so he was part of our lives. I didn’t want it to be a taboo subject. Years later, I still say ‘oh daddy would have loved that’. It gives him an identity, especially for my son who didn’t meet him. I saw it was possible to be able to turn the whole situation around and not allow it to be our weakness but make it the rock that we could stand on together.”
The loss manifested itself in different ways over the years and Lynne says each child travels their own path as they learn to cope with the grief.
“When they were younger and got upset about something – it could be totally random, a friendship or a failed exam – it didn’t really matter what the upset is about, it’s at that point they remembered the biggest upset of their life. That’s when they missed their dad. A certain degree of healing has happened as they’ve grown older – and they don’t get upset every time they think of him.”
In 2011, Lynne moved back to the UK with the children. Her own personal experience made her look at getting involved in counselling – and when she heard about Balloons in Exeter, she had no hesitation in volunteering for the charity.
Balloons receives funding from Comic Relief to help bereaved children and young people cope with their loss and move forward with their lives. Lynne became a voluntary grief support worker at the charity in autumn 2014 and uses her own experiences of the different ways that children react to grief to help the youngsters she works with to deal with their feelings.
“I became a grief support worker because I wanted to listen to children and let them know that what they are feeling is normal, understandable and acceptable. A child comes in and they don’t know how to talk about things. They don’t know where to begin. But gradually, as you work with them over a period of six to eight weeks, you see a change. Because you are able to explain to them why mummy has behaved in a certain way, or why daddy said that, or why the child feels like that, you explain how normal it is.”
Lynne says her own children – now aged between 15-22 – are “standing strong”.
“They are kind and they are strong and they don’t judge…. We’re very close as a family but at the same time, they are independent in their own thought.”
“They say with grief you never get over it, you just get better at it. I’ve got better at it. It’s a part of life, so it’s something that you have to accept. I don’t like it, but it’s what I have got.
Lynne continues to volunteer with Balloons and is soon to start an advanced counselling diploma – she plans to continue her work to help address the “tremendous need” for support.
- Red Nose Day is on Friday 24th March 2017
- By raising (or donating) cash this Red Nose Day, you’re helping to change lives. That’s because Comic Relief spends the money raised to help the people who really need it most, both here in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest communities.
- To get involved go to www.rednoseday.com
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