Healing Grief: Interview with Susanne About the Death of Her Father

“I’ve also changed as a person because I wouldn’t be a writer unless my father died in that terrible way.”

The grief that accompanies the death of someone you love can smash you like a tonne of bricks and take away your ability to remember how to breathe. And regardless of who you are, it is undoubtedly something that you will most likely experience throughout your life.

It can be challenging to navigate, and it is important to remember you are not alone. In this ongoing series, we connect with our readers and discuss their experiences with loss, grief, and healing. For this issue, I got to hang out with Susanne Julia Gervay, author of the I AM JACK children’s series and many other published works. We talked about her father’s death and how it shaped her as a writer.

Kim: Susanne, you lost your father. Is it okay to share that experience with us?

Susanne: My father was a refugee from Europe, and made a life here in Australia. He died from a brain tumour a long time ago. But when you have a very special relationship with a parent, they stay with you forever. He was incredibly hard working, but above all he always had time for his children. He was a wonderful human being. Then when he died, he died a horrible death. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. A brain tumour takes away your voice, your ability to work, walk, everything.

When my father died, I remember leaning against the wall and never knowing such pain. I became incredibly depressed. So I began to write stories of him and as I wrote those stories, he settled inside my heart.

For me, the stories enabled him to live beyond his physical death and to not only inspire me, but I was able to share it with others. So his death really was a process of grieving and then finding a way out that was positive.

Kim: I love how you speak to using your writing to bridge that gap between losing your father and as a pathway to healing through your grief. When you first lost him, what was that time like for you personally?

Susanne: It was incapacitating. I had children and a mother who was not coping, and I had to help the people I loved. I dealt with them but everything was a struggle. It required enormous courage for me to put one step in front of the other, and not to share that internal grief. I couldn’t. Firstly it was so painful, and I didn’t have the ability to talk about the loss. But more than that, I had a responsibility as a daughter and as a parent to be there as a support. So my loss was internal and debilitating for me, but others
may not have seen it.

Kim: Do you feel that writing about your father’s passing gave you a way to express your grief?

Susanne: Yes. You know, people don’t really understand the journey for each individual. It’s very unique and people don’t know how to handle it. They give you clichés like “You’ll recover, he loved you, you loved him”, blah blah blah. And these clichés were actually like a stab in my heart because I didn’t want to hear them. But people are put in difficult positions because they do care. But they only care for a short time because they have their journeys to go on, and their own griefs. So it is a very limited form of comfort. And in the end, you can’t really speak about it because there are other things that go on. So writing was my personal way to deal with it on a daily basis. It was not boring to me and not repetitive. It was endless research into my mind and my emotions.

Writing is such an incredible way to process something that is defining in your life.

Kim: Did your writing take you through all the stages of grief?

Susanne: Yes. My early writing was angry and I was quite homicidal, really [laughter]. A lot of my early work is published in literary journals, and all I’m saying is thank god no one really reads literary journals. Because it was pretty out there! But writing enabled me to go through that process of anger, and eventually my writing changed just as grief changes. It changed into acceptance and humour, and started to focus on the more positive aspects. The great joy of being a writer is how you can translate that into something positive for others who may not be writers.

Kim: I think it shows us that there can be something in our lives that can help to process pain. Whether it is art, writing, sports, dancing or whatever. You were resourceful, Susanne, and used what you had on hand and what your strength was to help process your father’s passing.

Susanne: A lot of people seek grief counsellors and they do help and give you guidelines. But ultimately you have to fall back on your own resources; you can’t get stuck. If you get stuck, then it’s like you’ve died as well.

Kim: When you review those years between when you lost your father and now, how has grief affected who you are as a woman?

Susanne: It’s impacted on me very significantly. It’s given me enormous wisdom in discovering the gifts that my father gave me. I’ve also changed as a person, because I wouldn’t be a writer unless my father died in that terrible way. He gave me a gift, and the gift was to write the stories of him and our lives. And that means everything to me.

Kim: I’ve got such a strong belief that all the life experiences we have contribute to our purpose and how we choose to show up in the world. Your personal story speaks very strongly to that. Susanne, do you have any advice for our readers who are struggling through their own experience of grief?

Susanne: Well, I believe you need to find something positive that enables you to focus on success in some way. You don’t have to be a writer. It could be you’re a good soccer coach and you start to coach your local team. And that each day, training that local little team will start to validate you as a person. By starting with the small successes you eventually get to the big success of translating that grief into something of value to yourself and to the community.