Opinion: The death of one of your own hits hard

I received news the other day that one of my former youth club kids had died of a heart attack. He was 35 and had suffered from liver and heart problems for some time. They say the hardest thing for a parent to do is to bury their children, and for a few moments I experienced what I imagine is a similar set of feelings. Now that I am too old to die young, there was something poignant about hearing of Rob's death.

Not that it was the first one. As a youth worker, I dealt with the very early deaths of some of my youth club members from motorcycle accidents, solvent abuse and other things. But, 20 years on, news of Rob's death affected me surprisingly deeply, for I had not seen him for many years and I easily recalled his youthful persona. My most striking memory of him was as a 15-year-old, when he came to ask me if it was OK for him to take his pet ferret with him on a residential. It was the one and only time such a bizarre request had been made. I told him that I did not want the ferret coming along, which apparently he accepted. But when we stopped halfway along the journey, he disclosed that the ferret was in his pocket.