“For your friends, it will seem like just 10 minutes. For you, it will endure a lifetime.” Those words from my housemistress still echo in my mind, as she knelt beside me in her office, shielding me from those who wanted to offer comfort. I had just received the devastating news of my father’s passing on a frigid day amid the bustle of Liverpool Street Station. That day marked the saddest moment of my life and the onset of an entirely new chapter.
Now, after 15 years and various therapists (along with many therapy styles), I’m able to reflect on it more rationally: I wasn’t to blame, and there was nothing I could have done to change the outcome. Notably, Louis Tomlinson recently shared similar sentiments during an interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
“I was enveloped in guilt and felt utterly powerless,” he recounts when discussing the loss of his sister, Félicité, in 2019. “Losing her in such a way, notwithstanding that I recognized it was unfair to myself… I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed my sister and, in turn, my mum.”
Félicité tragically passed away due to an accidental overdose involving multiple drugs, with Tomlinson noting her emotional fragility leading up to the tragedy. His mother, Johannah Deakin, succumbed to acute leukaemia in 2016, and his bandmate Liam Payne faced a fatal accident in 2024 after falling from a hotel roof.
“In the moment of her death, I felt as if I had let her down,” Tomlinson reflects on Deakin, acknowledging, “I know she would reassure me by saying I hadn’t, but that doesn’t alter the emotions I experienced.”
