7 Heads for 7 Grand

A few years ago, on the 30th of May 2018, I shaved my head, and together, with the help of you, my incredible community raised £7000 for Penhaligons Friends, a local charity who look after bereaved children. That money funded their teenage programme FOR A YEAR, which was totally incredible, but that money has run out, my hair has grown, and it’s time to do it again!

Times are tough and money is tight, so this time I have upped the stakes by asking 6 friends to join me in a major head-shaving event; SEVEN HEADS FOR SEVEN GRAND! (I know, it sounds more like a western directed by Quentin Tarantino than a fundraiser but stick with me…)

Here’s my quite personal account of why this whole thing is so very important:

I was nine years old when my dad died, 27 years ago, on 30th May 1995. It was my 10th birthday a few days later, and me and my brother Simon were in the half-term break from St Just Primary School. I knew dad was ‘very ill’ (that’s what all the grown-ups had told me). I knew he was in a specialist heart and lung hospital up in London, but I didn’t understand that he might die. I didn’t actually know what that would mean. I didn’t understand that he would just disappear completely the way that he did.

He had been away a lot, working and staying with his brother up in Swindon. He had been down for the Easter holidays and we had all had a horrible cough and cold. His cough had persisted and he had gone to the doctors for a check-up and an x ray which showed that he had a collapsed lung, so they kept him in for an operation.

On the Thursday evening doctors called my mum, When they couldn’t put a stent tube down his throat they realised that he had a considerable tumour, and they thought he would have a heart attack from the coughing. They transferred him to Harefield Hospital in London. This was the first she heard about his illness, and they told her if she wanted to see him again she should get up there, quickly.

Early Friday morning mum went up on the train, we went up the terrace to our neighbours, Mary Ann and Grahams, while my Granny Sue came down on another train from Exeter to look after us. It was all rather exciting!

On the Sunday we had a phone call from my mum and dad from the hospital. I don’t think they had both been away without us before. It felt like they were on some school camp, like the one Simon had been on.

Mum told us that dad was very weak and we wouldn’t have long to talk to him. Simon spoke to him first, then it was my turn. I remember being excited to tell him what me and my best friend Duffy, had been building in the garden, or possibly what me and Granny had been baking that morning. I remember my agonizing impatience for Simon to give me the receiver, but when I finally got the phone there was just constant rasping breaths on the line, a few tiny grunts. Then mum was there to tell me time was up and for me to give the phone to granny. I was really confused, I thought I was going to talk to my daddy, hear his jolly voice telling me something funny and stupid, but that noise sounded like an animal. I believe this was the first time I felt that sinking weight inside of me, realising that something serious was happening that I didn’t understand.

On Monday, me and my brother were on the train to London with my Granny Sue. I was so excited to see my dad; and that he would have no hair, look funny, and would be surrounded by noisy hospital apparatus. I hoped he would have a colostomy bag, like my brother said he would, and that we could all laugh at seeing his pee. I had heard that the clothes that they make you wear in hospital haven’t got a back to them and people just walk around with their bums out. I couldn’t wait to see that! I was looking forward to meeting all the other people in his ward, all the hospital staff, doctors, nurses, my mum, and totally most of all my big, warm, soft dad, his giant, dry, builders hands holding me and stroking my face.

We were two hours away when he died.

I remember the strange feeling as soon as we got to the hospital and mum met us at the door, a stressful unease, a heightened sense I’d never felt before, something was very wrong, then the razor sharp feeling when mum told us. It filled my head. It filled the room. I remember the feeling of my hollow body walking through the hospital. I remember seeing his hollow body, totally unrecognisable, and the way my brother couldn’t look at him. I shouted at him. I poked him. It wasn’t him and yet it was, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Nothing prepares you, as a child, to see a dead body. I tried to open his eyes with my fingers to wake him up, that had always worked before…

This was the event in my life that made me. I truly believe the extreme guilt, grief, loss, and stresses related to the death of a parent are totally unfathomable in a child’s mind. Being so young you have no life experience or preparation for the deep and weird pit you fall into, and no understanding of what you are going through from any one around you, and all this before you know much else about the world- it is a raw awakening. I literally felt like no one understood, no grown up, not even my mother. I had changed, but no one else had. My friends only saw importance in toys, play and TV shows. I felt horribly awake to a weird real life, and terribly alone.

I didn’t get any professional help when it happened. My strong mother tried to put our lives back to normal. I had a birthday cake the Thursday after dad died. Me and my brother went back to school on the Monday. I sat on the steps of the elliotts with my best friend and when she asked me how my holiday had been I told her that my dad had died… I remember not wanting to make her sad… I felt a strong guilt that stopped me sharing my feelings and I suppose I just faced the idea of healing my own way.

We were offered help from Penhaligons Friends, a brand new charity in Redruth who help bereaved children and their families, but they didn’t have the funding to come down to St Just to see us, and we just didn’t have the energy to get up to see them. Penhaligons Friends are still going. They are bigger now. They can visit families and help other little, hurt, confused guys, like my brother and me. The work they do is so incredibly important, to kit children out with the skills they need to work through these intense and extreme feelings, and I want to help them so that they can carry on visiting these families, and helping children who are lost in the depths of their feelings, as I was.

Over the years I have learnt to understand grief. It isn’t a thing you get over, or a pit you climb out of, it’s a new way of living and understanding, it grows and changes with you, and it is up to you to find, build and create your life alongside it. It can even be a positive thing, given time.

I miss my Dad so much. I grieve for him, who I will never know, and for the person I have become that he will never meet. I wish I could have a beer with him. I wish I could show him the skills I have and the things I love, but I can’t, and that's ok.

I have my own version of him in my subconscious, it guides me, in a weird way, and I try to make him proud as much as possible. This is the most positive legacy of them all.

So, here is the plan!

Today is Fathers Day and the day I declare the start of our SEVEN HEADS FOR SEVEN GRAND mission. Over the next few days I will introduce you to the other 6 people who will be shaving their heads. When we get to our goal of £7000 we will have an event where we will get as many of us together as possible (the timing of this depends on when we hit £7000) and shave our heads. All the money we raise will go to Penhaligons Friends, so please be as generous as you can afford to be. Anything you can give will help. If you would normally buy me a pint for my birthday in the pub, please put the money in the kitty instead.

Added extras:

• My hair is once again long enough now to be made into wigs for children who have lost their hair due to cancer treatment (a separate charity).

• If you want to join us in a head shave, PLEASE DO! The more the merrier! Send me a message.

• If you have a business and want to sponsor us, or match fund anything that we make, please get in touch!

Let’s raise a load for the little guys! Let's, together, raise a load for the little guys.

Daisy x