Analytical readers will by now be associating my reluctance at the start of my career to meet relatives with the death of my own mother so early in life. And at my subsequent willingness to engage with others’ grief they will say, ‘Aha! He couldn’t allow himself to experience the enormity of grief for his own loss! So, he experiences it again and again in manageable proportions through the grief of others. And, at the end of the meeting, he walks away from it!’ I accept that there is probably something in that theory.
