I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY
Nick Clarke's widow, Barbara Want, examines how society deals with bereavement

Barbara Want was widowed in 2006. Her grief was overwhelming and during her recovery she really benefitted from the help of one of our Cruse volunteers.

In this programme, I Don’t Know What to Say, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 just over a year after her husband Nick’s death, she tells her story and investigates the way we as a society deal – or fail to deal - with bereavement. 

Please click here to listen to the broadcast.

When Nick Clarke died, leading politicians and journalists paid tribute and the BBC Radio 4 website hosted some 3,000 pages of acknowledgment, accolade and condolence - a public outpouring. But Barbara’s personal experience was a marked contrast. In the programme Barbara tries to understand what lies behind a common experience: that our society is unable openly to talk about death. She tells her story of how those around her, both close and more distant, have found it almost impossible to address her loss. When words are spoken they are nearly always the same: ‘I don’t know what to say…’

Neighbours have crossed the street in avoidance; friends have been unable to say Nick’s name; people who worshipped alongside her at church have melted away, and parents at her children’s school have expressed awkwardness in finding words. 

During the programme she challenges people in her local community about her feelings of isolation since Nick’s death and mirrors her journey with an investigation into the British psyche, trying to find out what it is about our culture that makes us so uncomfortable with bereavement when other cultures have specialised rituals to support and allow the pain, sorrow and sometimes madness of grief, and to discuss mortality.

(The programme was a Loftus production for BBC Radio 4)

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