As a fellow widower, Rio Ferdinand’s cry for help is heart-breaking Ahead of Rio Ferdinand documentary Being Mum And Dad, Ben Brooks-Dutton, author of the blog ‘Life as a Widower’, talks […]

Ahead of Rio Ferdinand documentary Being Mum And Dad, Ben Brooks-Dutton, author of the blog ‘Life as a Widower’, talks about the never-ending grieving process.

Three little words tore into me as I watched a pre-broadcast preview of Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum and Dad.

“I need help.”

After grieving the death of his wife, Rebecca, for just over a year at that point, the former England captain and widowed father of three was finally facing up to the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to get through it alone.

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It’s the harsh reality that many young widowed parents find themselves confronting when the initial shock of their spouse’s death gradually begins to fade.

Along with several other widowed fathers I met Ferdinand as part of his documentary, to discuss the grieving process.

And assure him he is not alone.

People want you to be ‘amazing’ because it makes them feel better

When my wife was killed by a speeding 82-year-old driver whose car mounted the pavement and struck her right in front of our two-year-old son and me, it was shock and adrenaline that helped me keep it together.

I meticulously organised her funeral and gave a 15-minute eulogy without shedding a tear.

I trained in the gym, ran most days, cared for my son and grieved when I had chance to be alone – usually at the cost of sleep.

Four and a half years on, I sometimes wonder whether the plight of a modern widowed parent may actually lie in the pressure to be a hero.

People want you to be ‘amazing’ or ‘unbelievable’, perhaps because it makes them feel better.

It makes it easier for friends and family to get back to something like normal more quickly if the bereaved person seems to be managing without their help.

It’s different behind the scenes

It’s all show though, really.

You only have to look back over Rio Ferdinand’s Instagram feed to see the stark contrast between the persona that this grieving man put out into the world versus what was really going on behind the scenes.

In the public gaze of social media he didn’t appear to be a man who needed anyone’s assistance in getting him through the worst time of his life.

Filmed in the relative privacy of his own home, however, he was literally crying for help.

These intimate scenes gave me shivers, not just for Rio but for every other widowed parent I’ve come into contact with since my wife’s death.

A couple of months after she died, I started a blog called Life As A Widower with the sole intention of finding other widowed dads who could relate to my situation.

One became ten, then ten became twenty, and before too long there would be about a hundred and fifty of us connected through adversity.

We were all looking for the same thing: help, support and empathy.

Sympathy didn’t hold any real value to us anymore – it was often frustratingly unavoidable, in fact.

There’s a scene in Being Mum And Dad where Rio joins me and some of the men from this group for lunch.

Before joining us all that day, Rio had never been in contact with any other young widowed fathers before.

While the rest of us are all united remotely through social media, it became clear that this wouldn’t ever be an option for anyone of real profile.

How could a person whose private life has a value to the media ever really trust anyone they don’t know with their deepest feelings?

This is where I think someone in the public eye may find they suffer the most after the death of a partner. Money might not be an issue – but ongoing emotional support might be.

Being bereaved is about to get a whole lot more difficult

It’s hard enough for the average widowed parent to find support. And the sad truth is that after April 6th this year, it’ll get even harder.

Under the current system, widowed parents receive financial support from the Government for up to twenty years after their spouse’s death.

From next month, however, payments – based on the deceased parent’s National Insurance contributions – will only be given for eighteen months.

Currently, the Government funds no national emotional bereavement support such as counselling either.

The official statements say that these changes are about ‘modernising’ a longstanding but outdated system.

One Tory MP, Richard Harrington, even went so far as to say that the bereavement benefit cut would “help people readjust to single-parent life”.

Grief never ends

What Rio, and other widowed parents of young children, will find over time is that this implication that grief is a linear process – that it’s better after a year or two – is simply not true.

Grief is chaotic; the need for support can come after a week, a year, a decade. And it’s even less predictable in children.

My son is six now, which is around the age when children start to understand the irreversible nature of death.

He didn’t need help so much back when his mother died because, frankly, he didn’t even understand that she wasn’t coming back.

It was four years on before he really needed specialist emotional support. So, who knows what he’ll need ten years from now?

When I heard Rio Ferdinand say “I need help”, I shivered not just because I saw a man opening up about what he needed in that moment.

I shivered because I suspected that he, like others, might need that help for many more years to come.

Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum And Dad is on tomorrow, Tuesday March 28 at 9pm on BBC One. You can read Ben’s blog at lifeasawidower.com