“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”
~ Havelock Ellis
Have you even been so intent on avoiding a collision with something up the road that you run into something right in front of you?
Three weeks ago I set about clearing my calendar so I could spend about ten days doing yoga, writing and detoxing. I always try to do this prior to the holidays but this year I also needed to clear my mind prior to a big anniversary this weekend. Get my head straight. Be present.
Saturday December 9, 2023, is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of my first husband, Terry. Even as I write this I shake my head. It’s ludicrous. He should have had more life. I am driven to do everything I want to do partly because I want to live enough for both of us, if that was at all possible.
I had my eyes firmly on that date, today’s date as I write this, when I headed out to visit my mum at the beginning of my ‘free week’. I would stop in and visit his memorial on the way home.
‘Don’t come to the house, Mum is in the hospital,’ Dad emailed to us all. ‘They just want to work out why she is in so much pain.’
Back in October, Mum had had her second hip replacement. She had really been looking forward to the surgery, relishing the idea that she would be pain free for Christmas and able to get around minus the wheely-walker she hated. The other hip was done last year and she was thrilled with the result.
The October surgery had been successful and she and dad headed off on holiday at the seaside, her favourite place to be, but had to come home early as Mum was in terrible pain.
On the way to Ipswich, I stopped to buy her some flowers and get petrol. I felt sick. I wanted to get there as soon as possible. The traffic was nightmarish. I forced myself to breathe and drive to the conditions. I was heading back to the place I hate most in the world. The place my first husband died.
I found a park easily enough. When I’d visited her there in October the streets were crawling with cops. There must have been an escaped criminal or something. It was eerie. This day was far less dramatic.
When I got to the room she was shaking with pain.
‘I want to die,’ she said. I recalled my father-in-law saying he had thought this early in his treatment for the leukemia that eventually took him. ‘Les had another four years after he felt that way, Mum.’ I was reassuring her.
A lovely young doctor came to see her and told her about the tests they would do. She and Dad are au fait with the whole hospital thing so I sat back and listened. The doc asked whether Mum would want to be resuscitated if something went awry during the procedures and I nearly lost my cool when she said, ‘No, I am DNR.’
Nothing prepares you for that. You can talk about it until you’re blue in the face but when your mum says it right before it could happen, it’s a shock.
She went off for her tests and Dad and I chatted quietly and read our books. Within a couple of hours she was back and the lovely young doctor had returned to tell Dad they would do everything they could to make sure she was comfortable.
You fucking what, mate? my addled brain screamed but all I could get out was, ‘What about treatment? Don’t you want to try, even for twenty-four hours?’
She didn’t want to. She was in so much pain.
She said, ‘I’m prepared to go but I don’t want to go.’
I guess all the years of her talking about her faith in an afterlife had prepared me for this to some extent and I’m proud to say my years of meditation kicked in. As much as my stomach was in knots and I felt like my heart would implode, I trusted my mother in that moment. She and Dad had everything in place and though she was in awful pain, she was mind-blowingly clear about her decision.
As the seventh of eight children I never thought I would be in this position. I thought one of the others (five brothers and a sister, all older and far more sensible than I) would be on hand, making phone calls and supporting Dad. But it was me. Dad was amazing, though. I was glad I was there for him, but He and Mum had drilled this. After nearly 70 years of loving each other, they knew what the other would choose in this situation. As she said, she was prepared to go but didn’t want to.
I wasn’t prepared one bit for this.
My strong, sensitive mother waited for all her children to arrive and had an incredible period of lucidity when they had her pain under control the next day. She entertained us in her halting, small voice with tales of her life as a young mother to six kids under eleven. We younger two came along later. I have a couple of voice recordings but haven’t had the courage to listen to them yet.
She managed to leave us in a week that included no birthdays of any of her children or their spouses, 17 grandchildren or 17 great-grandchildren. No mean feat that. We buried her the day before my sister-in-law’s birthday. The church was packed with people who wanted to show their respect and love for the woman who unbelievably considered herself to have been blessed with no special gifts.
Mark Twain once said that “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”
The last nearly two weeks have felt like an out-of-body experience. I am in shock. Mum’s passing so close to this anniversary has made it so much harder to deal with. I have compartmentalised and intellectualised my grief for Terry for so long. To be honest, I don’t think I have ever truly reconciled his death. He went to work and never came home. It’s too unbelievable that a man so full of life could die.
This year I couldn’t think my way out of the sadness. It’s right here, sitting on my chest.
Some people may not understand how I can write about this but writing is how I understand things and I’m publishing this in the hope it might help someone who is going through grief alone to know that they’re not truly on their own. It’s a universal experience. If you love someone, you could lose them. Simple as that. As my kind, sweet friend reminded me this morning, grief is the price we pay for love.
In reading this, too, perhaps someone might be inspired to reach out to mend any damaged relationships, if that’s appropriate. I am not telling you to reach out to fucked up people who’re hell-bent on making your life a misery. Life’s definitely too short for that.
I consider myself lucky to have had the last five years with my parents. Don’t get me wrong, they are decent, caring people – but we had our differences. As a non-Christian, I was a constant source of dismay for my God-fearing mother but I’m happy to say my own version of spiritual growth helped me to stop expecting her to be a certain way and just love both of them where they were. I stopped telling Mum I couldn’t go to church with her in case I burst into flames. I didn’t go to church, I just stopped feeling I had to get my views across to her.
I would like to encourage readers to talk to their loved ones about their own wishes. Do you know what your significant other wants to do in the case of death? Do they know what you want?
Sometimes you don’t get the time my parents had to workshop it all.
I have a file on my computer called ‘my funeral’ in the case of my death because my husband will be completely at a loss. On the way home from Mum’s funeral we all talked about our wishes. My ashes will go to Paris. Hubby wants a New Orleans style send off with a band and a walk through winding streets to the graveyard. Our son’s somewhat confronting plans involved a trebuchet and a batterie of archers with flaming arrows. I wouldn’t wish on my son the pain of losing a parent but the alternative is unthinkable. I truly hope, in every way I am not around to organise the construction of an ancient instrument of war.
Lifeline—phone 13 11 14 for free counselling and support (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Lifeline also provides information about other grief counselling services. http://www.qld.gov.au – Grief counselling and support | Health and wellbeing
