If birth is a reality of life, so is death. Why then, should they be treated so differently?

Sukanti Ghosh examines the inadequacies of corporate bereavement leave policies, reflecting on his own experience following the death of his wife, Soma, from cancer, and contrasts this with parental leave provisions.

When I read ‘Love Story’ to Soma 26-years ago today little did I know that our lives would in so many ways end up tracing the characters of the story. Perhaps I had read the wrong book to her. Perhaps, I chose the wrong day. The fact is that our lives played out as per its script, and we stayed true to our parts in as complete a manner as possible. After all, we had vowed to “…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part…”, less than a month after meeting each other.  

Soma passed onto the other side in December 2022 after a six-and half year long battle with cancer, 25-years after we decided to spend our lives together, leaving our daughter and I wondering as to what to do with our lives. The Big C had struck again. 

Turning back the clock, I remember as we were expecting our first – and only - child, I tried to get my head around the ‘maternity leave benefits’ offered by my then well-meaning employers.  

“Three months of paid leave for Soma, and several months of sleepless nights for me,” I remember telling myself, as Soma was simply too exhausted after a very difficult pregnancy to take care of our daughter through the night, when she decided to be in her elements as was often the case. 

Today, I am grateful that most young parents – biological or otherwise – have supportive employers in most countries around the world, who not only offer them generous maternal and paternity leave, but also a slew of benefits, including planned parenthood, gender neutral family leave, and carefully-crafted pathways to allow women, who had decided to take a break after childbirth or welcoming a child into their families, ease back into their careers and move back into the fast lane. 

In fact, I am both surprised and happy to see a growing number of compassionate employers happy to embrace ‘pet leave’ or leave that employees may take when they adopt a new pet, deal with an unwell pet, or deal with the unfortunate situation of a pet having just passed. 

You can therefore imagine my deep disappointment and astonishment at the fact that there are so few employers who take the time to think about providing their employees with adequate bereavement leave, particularly when trying to deal with the loss of a spouse or a close family member. 

In our case, for instance, if we were to go strictly by my then employment handbook, I was only eligible for a five-day bereavement leave break. That was despite our family having to change countries, jobs, multiple doctors and hospitals, and Soma having to go through six relapses and over 74 rounds of chemo. After living through the resultant six-and-a-half years of uncertainty, I was expected to flick a switch and get back to work as if nothing had happened in our lives!   

Even though the United States has visionary provisions under the Family Medical Leave Act, which protect and allow employees under Federal Law to take up to twelve work-weeks of leave in a 12-month period ‘to care for an employee’s spouse, child or parent who has a serious health condition’, they can be let go of immediately after this period with the employer citing no real or tangible reasons for cutting employees loose. And, very often, they are… 

In fact, Mita Mallik author of “Reimagine Inclusion”, a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller, notes in her article in the Harvard Business Review in October 2020 entitled, ‘It’s Time to Rethink Corporate Bereavement Policies’ that “according to research conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 88% of businesses offer paid bereavement leave. However, these periods typically extend from three days to the more generous five. There are no federal laws requiring employers to provide workers with paid or unpaid time off following the death of a loved one. In fact, Oregon is the only US State that requires it, thanks to legislation passed in 2014.” 

Mallik goes on to add, “Facebook set the bar in 2017 when it doubled its bereavement leave to 20 days following the loss of an immediate family member and up to 10 for an extended family member. Not coincidentally, COO Sheryl Sandberg lost her husband in 2015 and wrote a book, Option B, about the experience.”  

Now compare this with a list of aggregated maternal and paternal leave policies put together by dearbump – a company founded in 2018 that provides expecting mothers “everything they need to prepare for their new arrival”: Some FTSE 100 companies offer both parents up to 26 weeks full pay, a few up to 40 weeks leave at full pay, and some up to a year of enhanced paid leave!  

While as a parent I am delighted for all new parents being supported in this way, as a 50-something-year-old widow – yes, I am still struggling to come to terms with that new label in my life – I cannot help but wonder that if both birth and death are essential parts of our lives, do they really deserve to be treated so differently by the same set of so-called visionary employers?  

With some 10 million people dying of cancer each year, isn’t it about time that we advocated for a more equitable treatment of the two most important and undeniable truths of our existence, birth and death, and the support we receive from the establishments that we are a part of and spend so much of our lives with? 

Listen to the episode of 'Let's Talk Cancer' with Sukanti Ghosh
"Love and loss: how to support those with terminal cancer and their families?"