Latest news with #grief
Washington Post
3 hours ago
- Washington Post
Asking Eric: Family pressures sister to ignore siblings' crimes
Dear Eric: My parents recently died a few months apart. While taking care of my mom's last wishes, my sister told me that she went to prison for human trafficking years ago. She wasn't sorry for it in any way and defended her actions. She may as well have told me she was a serial killer. I can't even look at her now.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Father-to-Be Pete Davidson Once Said He ‘Can't Wait to Have a Kid' After Losing Firefighter Dad in 9/11
Pete Davidson revealed that he always envisioned having a child of his own after the tragic death of his firefighter father, Scott Matthew Davidson, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Saturday Night Live star, 31, spoke about his dreams of parenthood during a candid interview with fellow comedian Kevin Hart — three years before announcing that he is expecting his first baby with girlfriend Elsie Hewitt. 'Since my dad died, I was like, 'Oh, I can't wait to have a kid,'' Davidson said during an appearance on Hart's Peacock series, Hart to Heart, back in 2022. 'I don't like saying corny s**t, the reasoning was like, I don't want a kid to ever feel like how I feel right now,' he continued. 'It wasn't his fault; he passed away. But just to be there so that someone doesn't have to feel like that.' 'I'm very excited to do that for someone and watch them have what I didn't,' Davidson added. The Riff Raff actor was only 7 years old when his father died while on duty and responding to the call after a second hijacked airliner struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Davidson previously told actor Jon Bernthal on an episode on the Real Ones podcast's Patreon that he didn't find out that his father died for nearly three days after the attack as search teams tried to confirm the fatalities. His mother, Amy, also revealed to The New York Times in 2015 that Davidson began acting out in school and later turned to stand-up comedy while overcoming his grief. While chatting with Hart, Davidson admitted that he always hoped to be a dad. 'My favorite thing ever, which I have yet to achieve, I wanna have a kid. That's like my dream. It's like, super corny,' said Davidson. Hart, 43, chimed in with support, adding, 'That's not super corny.' 'It would be so fun. Dress up the little dude,' Davidson added. 'That's kind of what I'm just preparing for now, is just trying to be as good as a dude, develop and get better so when that happens it's just easier.' News broke of Davidson's bundle of joy on the way on Wednesday, July 16. Hewitt, 29, took to her Instagram account with a series of photos and videos — including a sonogram. The King of Staten Island actor began dating Turnt actress Hewitt, 29, eight months after his split from Outer Banks star Madelyn Cline in 2024. The couple's relationship was confirmed in March after they were spotted out and about together. Davidson and Hewitt later made their red carpet debut at the Blossom Ball in May. Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
My mother gave me away to the cleaner's sister at six weeks old. She never wanted me - I cannot now grieve her death: After a loveless childhood SUSANNAH JOWITT admits the unthinkable
My mother gave me away to the cleaner's sister at six weeks old. She never wanted me - I cannot now grieve her death: After a loveless childhood SUSANNAH JOWITT admits the unthinkable For the past few weeks, I have been wearing a necklace that was a gift from my mother, Juliet, on my wedding day. She repurposed a brooch she herself had inherited into a pendant for me: a finely-wrought gold dragon holding a glowing red little ruby in its mouth. It's beautiful and I have felt strangely compelled to wear it day and night, despite the occasional prick from the brooch pin stabbing into my neck. Ironically, this sums up my relationship with my mother: small elements to treasure, offset by real moments of pain. My mother died four weeks ago, aged 84. It was a relief for her and for us. She was miserable, veering vertiginously between Alzheimer's and clarity, physically dizzy and wobbly, then bed-bound, increasingly dehydrated and, eventually, she went past the point of no return. For a week after her death, I felt strangely light and liberated, no longer bearing the guilt of her misery, the shocking expense of her 24-hour care and the terror of how long both would continue. And yet the relationship continues to prick and please. Not once have I felt a moment of pure grief, not even when I read the astonishingly kind letters people have written. All are lovely; all say what a shock it must have been and what a hole she will leave in my life – but those from the friends who knew me better also include a degree of nuance that changes the whole picture of conventional grief. Susannah Jowitt with her late mother, Juliet, who admitted five years before her death that she had given her daughter away for the first year of her life Juliet was not, you see, a conventional mother. She gave me away for the first year of my life – until Christmas Eve 1969 – not actually meeting me until I was a year old. None of us know how long she would have continued to avoid my existence, because all the witnesses to that time are dead; my brother and I only found out this tale five years ago, on the night of my father's funeral, when my mother had a few too many sherries and told me. She admitted quite openly that the only reason I came back when I did was because her mother had been coming to stay for Christmas. My grandmother didn't know she had outsourced me to our cleaning lady's sister at six weeks old. So Juliet had to quickly reclaim me before her own mother found out what she'd done. And, in reality, what had she done? There was no neglect, no abuse, no need for social services. My mother simply hadn't wanted me – and when she was pressured into having me because everyone said my brother couldn't be an only child, she was determined to do things her way. So, on the night of my father's funeral, as if she were recalling her life story to a professional biographer, she told me all about it. 'I just never wanted children,' she said, 'but in those days no one ever admitted that, so I toed the line and got pregnant – but on my terms, right from the moment the doctor told me I was expecting. 'I demanded, and got, a prescription of three Valium a day to keep me calm for the whole pregnancy.' She planned my birth, in the late 1960s, with the precision and, some might say, callousness of a First World War field marshal sending young boys over the top of the trenches: all theory, no empathy. 'I had a very strong epidural so that I couldn't feel a thing and you were born unseen by me because I was hiding behind a large book, deliberately chosen for its size. The midwives had been firmly instructed to take you away and look after you for the four days that I was in hospital, so I didn't actually meet you. Juliet with her children in 1978. Susannah's mother was unable to love her or her brother. She certainly couldn't bear physical contact with them. Both remember seeing other children being hugged by their parents and thinking: 'Ohhh, so that's what hugging is!' 'You were then taken straight to a maternity nurse where you spent the first six weeks of your life.' At that point, I was meant to come home but, when it came to it, Juliet still couldn't face seeing me. She was also clearly suffering from monstrous – and undiagnosed – post-natal depression. 'I couldn't bear it and your father was going on a business trip to South Africa for six weeks, so it was decided by everyone that I should go with him, feel better from the winter sun and recover my joie de vivre,' she told me. 'And I thought it was unfair burdening your brother's nanny with a five-year-old and a newborn, so we came up with the plan of parking you with Mrs Pybus's sister in the village.' Me being lodged with the sister of Mrs Pybus, our elderly cleaning lady, worked like a dream. Juliet came back feeling so much better, in fact, that she decided with my father it would be better for everyone if I just stayed where I was. 'You were apparently happy,' she told me, 'and I was happy. And if I was happy, your father was happy.' Throughout her tale, she refused to tell me the name of the woman who cared for me in this year. No doubt many of you will find the thought of this distressing. But even as my mother told me, I wasn't shocked by her revelation. In fact, many pennies dropped. So this was why my mother and I had never bonded, why we were civil strangers until the day she died. What was more unexpected was how settled I felt within myself when she told me. All my life, I had punished myself for never being enough for my mother. Nothing I did could ever please her. Nothing I ever achieved made her proud. She seemed so resentful of me that I became convinced I was adopted – once going through her files trying to find evidence. I read book after book about Greek demigods and princesses being swapped at birth and brought up in commoners' households. I was sure this was what had happened to me. In my 20s, my godmother, who must have known what happened (sadly she died before I knew myself), once tried to give me a hint about that missing first year, saying: 'You should never underestimate how little you and your mother ever bonded, so it's no surprise that you can't seem to get along now. But she loves you really.' This, though, I would contest. My mother couldn't love me or my brother. She certainly couldn't bear physical contact with us. Both of us remember seeing other children being hugged by their parents and thinking to ourselves: 'Ohhh, so that's what hugging is!' My first memory of her touch is when I was about five and I stepped off the pavement without looking. She grabbed my hand and wrenched me back as a lorry swept past. Much more than the relief at having been saved was the shock of the feel of her hand: her strong, capable, slightly rough fingers, so genetically like my own now. If I close my eyes, I can feel it still. But I think my mother's lack of love went deeper than a mere horror of tactility. She was always jealous of the love my father, Tommy, was able to show me (despite his own consistent failure to actually be there for us as a father) and my brother and I both think she only really ever loved him. In essence, I believe she was jealous of me, full stop, which in retrospect was shown most clearly when I had my own children and so manifestly, abundantly loved them from the moment they were both born, 24 and 22 years ago. 'They each have you wrapped around their little finger,' she would comment acidly and regularly. 'I know and I love it,' I would respond, to her fury. I would never want to exaggerate the lovelessness of my childhood. We kids were never neglected, were given birthday presents and parties, and although we were very rarely taken on holiday by our parents because they couldn't have been less interested in doing so, all the middle-class conventions of parenting were otherwise observed. But sometimes, despite the material comfort, this sheer lack of maternal feeling had unintended consequences. While I was fine – happy, I think, and flooded by cuddles and warmth with Mrs Pybus's sister – during that first missing year of my life, it was a different story for my brother. He called me a few weeks after the revelations of that night of my dad's funeral in 2020. 'I'm struggling, Zannah. I am just so angry. Especially with Daddy for letting it happen.' My brother was four and a half when I was born and had, unlike my mother, met me in the hospital when he and my father visited. He remembers looking down at the little bundle that was me, swaddled, and thinking that while I wasn't much cop yet as a playmate, that maybe I had potential. But then I didn't come home. And no one said anything about me. He thought perhaps I had died. He didn't know but the unspoken message he got was that somehow, if you weren't up to the mark, you'd be – as he said – 'disappeared'. This breaks my heart a little whenever I think about it. On one level, I received the same message; it would certainly explain why I was such a desperate show-pony throughout my childhood; always showing off for attention, for a tiny scrap of love, anxious to be brilliant enough not to be sent away again. 'Susannah was like an eager little puppy,' my father once told my husband. 'No matter how often you kicked her, she always came back, tail wagging, for more.' Susannah is relieved that her mother's death was peaceful In my 30s and 40s I learned to put a label on my mother. Juliet was, I was told by various friends who had similar mothers, a classic example of someone who had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, dominated by an obsession with her own importance, her place at the centre of every story, craving constant admiration and lacking in genuine empathy for others. A relationships expert later told me that my father was also clearly narcissistic, so my brother and I were doomed. When it came to family, my mother probably had the emotional intelligence of a five year old. She could be charming, able to win people over easily – until things didn't go her way, at which point she would literally stamp her foot with her arms in the air and have a tantrum. So when my father died in 2020 and I found out the truth about my start in life, I actually felt profoundly sorry for her; a feeling that has persisted right up to her death and beyond. She hadn't been capable of motherhood, therefore who was I to condemn her or even label her as a narcissist? It would be like beating a puppy for refusing to stop chewing things or, in the case of the famous fable, like condemning the scorpion for stinging the frog that is carrying it to safety: it was just in her nature. Then, when she got Alzheimer's, her infantilisation really took hold. She had missed my father desperately when he died at the age of 86. They'd been married for nearly 57 years. But, when she became ill, she stopped missing him as a husband and talked about him like a hero-worshipping child talked about their idol. He had been charming, though flawed, but she could no longer see that: in her child's mind he was perfect – a perfect, gentle knight. Next to such a paragon, her living children – never even in the same league as her husband –were sorry compensation. Indeed, whenever I called her she would take a long time to answer and, when she did, sounded weary and almost resentful. Sometimes she would press the wrong contact in her phone and, meaning to call her best friend Susie, would get me by mistake. She always sounded so disappointed by this and would soon ring off in favour of calling Susie for real. I realised this was not behaviour she reserved only for me. When I was once staying with her, the phone rang and up popped my brother's name on the screen. Having been perfectly lively with those of us in the room, she grimaced at the sight of his name, took a deep breath and composed her face into lines of bitter suffering. 'H-h-hello?' she quavered, as if she was already on her deathbed. It was a masterful performance and I realised it was one she gave every time her disappointing children rang. All in all, it's no wonder that both my brother and I have had a conflicting mix of emotions since she died, but no real grief. It's her funeral tomorrow and I suspect that while her friends – who all adored her for being the fiercely clever, witty, talented, purposeful and intensely strong-willed friend she was for them –will genuinely mourn her and even cry a little, my brother and I won't quite. One thing I am heartfelt about is my relief that her actual death was so peaceful. The day before she died, at the age of 84, I had been rehearsing for a performance of Fauré's Requiem with the City of London Choir at the Barbican. I knew this to be one of her very favourite pieces of music, so I recorded some snatches of our rehearsal that afternoon, including the final movement, In Paradisum, and FaceTimed her with them. Her last word to me was 'wonderful', with a tiny smile. She died at 6am the next day, having not really spoken again. She may not have been very wonderful to me in my 56 years but I'm glad, when we parted, that we were joined by that word and that smile.
The Sun
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Liam Payne's girlfriend Kate Cassidy in tears as she reveals her biggest fear on nine month anniversary of his death
KATE Cassidy has shared her biggest fear about growing old without boyfriend Liam Payne. In a heartbreaking video, Kate marked the nine-month anniversary of his death, breaking down in tears as she opened up about her grief and biggest fear. 4 4 4 She poured her heart out on TikTok and admitted she worried Liam wouldn't recognise her if they met again in the afterlife. 'Today marks nine months since Liam has left this world,' she said in the video. 'I don't know if this is just a message for myself, or for Liam, or for anybody that's navigating through grief that needs to hear this.' Fighting back sobs, Kate told followers she had recently cut her hair, got new tattoos, and pierced her ears She added: 'Liam's never seen me with hair this short. He's never seen me with all these tattoos. 'And then I start thinking deeper into it… I don't know how heaven works, but is Liam going to look the same way that he looked the last time I saw him?' Kate - who dated Liam for two years and lived with him - said one day, when she's old, Liam might not recognise her. 'When my time comes, will Liam recognise me? I'm going to have wrinkles, white hair, bony hands… how will he find me?' The heartbreaking thought left her in tears, but she recalled a comforting moment with a friend who reassured her: 'Of course he's going to recognise you… he's going to be so glad you lived.' Kate continued: 'He's going to want to sit there and hear all about it… It just reminded me to stay strong, and to carry on, and live my life to the fullest.' Kate Cassidy wipes away tears as she remembers Liam Payne on Lorraine Ending the emotional message, Kate added: 'Here's to another day of living life without the person that I love. I miss you so much. And I love you so much.' Kate's video has already touched thousands of viewers who praised her honesty. One said: 'Liam is with you darling, he would be so proud of you." Another shared: "He can see you." The One Direction star was tragically killed when he plunged from a third-storey balcony in Buenos Aires on October 16 last year. Liam, 31, took the cocaine before his fatal accident. Kate had been staying with Liam in Argentina but flew back to America before his fatal accident. 4
New York Times
17 hours ago
- General
- New York Times
A Father Braces for Life After a Plane Crash Took His ‘Everything'
Before dawn, in the solitude of his upstairs room, Anil Ambalal Patel prepared to say a last goodbye to the couple who had brought love back into his life. Lingering in his bed, the city around him still asleep, he stared at the two faces on his phone screen: his son, Harshit, and his daughter-in-law, Pooja. He stared and stared, and then moved the phone close to his lips, giving each forehead a kiss. They were gone now, and what little joy he had finally found after years of hardship was gone, too. On this day, he would be with them once more as he scattered their ashes in the Narmada River, at the junction where three streams meet. Twelve days earlier, Mr. Patel, a 60-year-old widower who works for a security company in Ahmedabad, India, had wished Harshit and Pooja safe travels after they spent two weeks with him on a surprise visit from Britain, where they had moved in search of a better life. And then suddenly they were taken from him, killed along with 239 others when Air India Flight 171 crashed soon after it took off on June 12 and burst into an inferno. 'They were my everything,' he said of the couple in an interview. 'They were my support.' In its vast sprawl, in its deep inequality, India can feel like a pit that swallows people like the Patels — the poor, the aspiring — and renders them nameless, numbers rounded off in a nation of 1.4 billion people. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
