At the weekend I watched Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan. Like many people in the town who will have watched the actual programme, I’d seen the advance trailers, which seemed to suggest that the Prime Minister had wailed and sobbed on national television when speaking of the death of his daughter Jennifer.

In reality, this was far from being the case. I’m genuinely not being party political here I also for example think David Cameron has handled the death of his son Ivan with dignity. I think the Prime Minister was in obvious pain and grief when describing vividly the joy of his daughter’s birth and the smack of realisation that she wasn’t going to survive. The grief didn’t manifest itself in sobs and outright crying like the television adverts claimed he would, but with something arguably more painful and poignant: the Prime Minister’s red eyes and the memories etched across his face as he spoke about his daughter.

I’ve been very blessed. I have four wonderful and healthy children. We’ve had a few painful scares with illnesses for one or two of them, some of them very serious indeed. But thank goodness I have never had to endure the death of a baby or young child. I simply cannot think of anything worse. I’ve heard parents and grandparents over the years – particularly my late nana – saying that they would willingly sacrifice several years of their own life to ensure that their children and grandchildren would have happy, peaceful and healthy lives. As a dad, I fully understand that.

I think this country has come a long way in dealing more sensitively with the deaths of young children and in particular stillborn babies. It is not too long ago that the death of a premature child was seen as something you could brush off, almost without any thought. Grieving parents were provided little emotional support and it was thought best to try and move on almost as if nothing had happened and the child had never existed. A large number of parents have over the years lost a child in pregnancy, in child birth or in the early days of the child’s life; and the approach taken towards them was often astonishingly callous. It may have been meant well, but I think it in many cases it will have extended and intensified the grieving which the parents and close family experienced.

We have moved on. We have in Hartlepool the Baby Bereavement Support Group, set up by Val Lake about 15 years ago, which is run by bereaved parents for bereaved parents. The Group provides help, support and understanding for parents by people who have been through exactly the same emotions, emotions which can’t really be shared by anybody else. They are a wonderful group who can be contacted for anybody who needs help on 862362.

But of course grief can hit anybody at any time. The loss of a parent, grandparent or friend can be devastating, and take years to heal. Some people find it difficult to talk to somebody they know about what they are feeling. The Hartlepool Bereavement Service, run by bereavement officer Linda Parker, offers a listening ear. They can be contacted on 244689.

For any grief, whether it is the death of a child or the loss of a grandparent, grief can mean different things to different people, and will be handled in different ways. The important thing to remember in Hartlepool is that you don’t have to be on your own – help is out there.