Common Sense Health: Losing a father is a bundle of hurt

By Diana Gifford-Jones on July 11, 2025.

I was six years old when I first calculated how many years I could expect to have with my father. He was 44 when I was born; and therefore 50 when I turned six. I decided I would be lucky if I got to 35 and still had him. That would be 79 for him, and I felt that was an old age.

Can you imagine how lucky I feel to have had him until 101? I’m grateful beyond words.

Now, I am taking up the responsibility of writing the Gifford-Jones column – not as a doctor, but as a communicator. The immediate necessity is to say something helpful, something important, about an experience many of us will have during our lives: losing a father.

I investigated the research. No two ways about it, we take a physical and psychological hit. From cellular level aging brought on by the physical impacts of grieving (sustained stress, disrupted sleep, poor diet) to the cognitive effects of loss (depressed mood and outlook, more substance abuse behaviours, anxiety), the death of one’s father is a bundled package of hurt.

What would my father say about it? This is a question I will be asking myself every week going forward.

I know what he did when I was hurt as a child – the kind of hurt that had me crying, a bad scrape on the knee or the sting of a bee. He’d touch me in the affected spot and let his touch linger. “Now,” he said, after a time, “doesn’t that feel better?” I got his point. Readers will hear echoes of his constant mantra. “Don’t be a wimp. Don’t take pills when there is an effective, natural alternative.” He practiced what he preached.

When my father turned 90, I started to prepare for the day he would slow down. But he didn’t. He was launching another phase of his crusades. And what for? To fight big pharma. To demand better pain management and end-of-life care. To advocate for natural health. And most of all, to call on all humanity to improve our increasingly lousy lifestyle.

You may recall, he wanted to throw rotten eggs at the Parliament buildings! And he had a few choice words for the newspaper editors who ceased publishing his column.

For the past six years, it’s been an extraordinary collaboration writing this column with my father. He told me, “Don’t be a journalist if you are going to sit on the fence.” On some issues, we had some heated discussions!

But the interviews we did together, the visits to natural health food stores, and the talks in communities increasingly closer to home, these are the occasions I enjoyed the most.

Going forward, I plan a few crusades, too. I will have my own opinions, and they may not always line up with his. I have a Harvard degree like my father, but even better, I have one from Wellesley.

I’ve worked alongside global health experts at the World Bank and in the most impoverished places you can imagine. I am an advisor to the presidents of universities. I know where to find the research and who to talk to.

You can count on me to simplify the complexities, identify what’s important, and cut out any baloney. And yes, the advice will be sharp – because some things, thankfully, are hereditary.

For now, like many of you, I am grieving the loss of my father. But I take comfort in knowing how lucky we are to have had him in our lives. Thank you for all your messages, tributes, and personal stories that are pouring in.