In a few weeks’ time it would have been my dad’s 74th birthday. Sadly he is no longer with us, he died just over 17 years ago.
Although the pain has never left and I miss him just as much today as I did then, I’ve learnt to live with the big hole he has left in my life.
My dad was the bolt that held my family together. But when he died that bolt didn’t come undone, we somehow managed to keep it in there and our family is still as strong. Our lives have carried on through the births, marriages and divorces. But that doesn’t mean that the gap he left wasn’t keenly felt on all those occasions, like when my son was born, or my sister got married and had her first child.
My dad wasn’t perfect, he was stubborn, moody and quite often impatient. But he was also funny, incredibly hard working and extremely loving. There was never any doubt that he loved us all so very much. Everything he did was for us and I thank him (and my mum) for making me the person I am today. His values are something that I hold dear.
Death is a difficult thing to go through and deal with. It’s a selfish emotion — you’d do anything to have them back here with you. My dad was poorly though. He’d suffered from heart problems for many years, going through by-pass operations and suffering from a minor stroke. He’d had to give up work and in his later life he had had to give up driving and with it his independence, which for someone like my dad was a big deal.
The side effects of the drugs he was taking meant he suffered from diabetes and couldn’t be given a heart transplant until that was under control. Despite all of this he carried on in the best way he could, continuing to love and support his family. I know deep down that his death meant the end of the pain and suffering for him, but it was the start for me.
His death threw me into extremes of emotions. Breaking down crying one minute and then the next making decisions about his funeral or sorting my parent’s finances, making sure my mum would be OK.
We never talked about dying and what would happen after he was gone. We should have done.
We all knew how poorly he was, but in the old British way we never talked about it. We just brushed it under the carpet and carried on with our lives. Maybe we thought that by not talking about it, it would never happen. Or maybe we were just all too frightened of the reality of the situation to face the fact that he wasn’t going to be with us forever.
We are all going to die one day, some sadly sooner than others whilst some of us will live to old age. And when it does come we are all consumed in our own grief, sadness or even anger that it takes us a long time to recover and think rationally about what has happened. Or at least that’s the way it was for me when I lost my dad.
He was the first person I’ve lost that I’ve been extremely close too. I know that as devastating as his death was, I have in other ways been lucky to have only lost him.
However, I now face the realisation that some of my other family members are getting older. My mum is now in her seventies and yet I still haven’t had a conversation with her about dying. I mean it’s hardly the easiest conversation to have ‘mum you’re getting on a bit now let’s talk about your death…’
But we need to. Not only because I need to know what her wishes are for her funeral, but also because we don’t know what kind of death she is going to have and it’s important to have those conversations whilst you are both able to.
Is she going to become poorly herself. Maybe she’ll suffer from dementia like her mum did. Maybe she’ll have a stroke and the recovery might be difficult. What would she want? Does she want to be cared for in her own home if she can? How would she feel about going into a home? What about treatment? If her condition is really bad does she want to be pumped full of drugs to keep her alive? What does she want to happen to her things once she’s no longer with us? Has she made a will?
As morbid and sad as this all sounds, these are things we need to know and it’s important we have those conversations whilst we still can.
Death doesn’t and shouldn’t be a subject that’s taboo to talk about. It’s a fact of life. It’s something that will eventually happen to every one of us. And I want to ensure that when the time comes I am able to carry out her wishes fully. And it’s not only her, at some point I know I need to have that conversation with my kids too — they need to know that we can talk about death and dying. That I’m okay with it.
Only by talking about dying can we shake the taboo that comes with it, and ensure that when the worst happens we can focus better on the emotional side of things better because we’ve already processed the practical side of things as much as we can before it happens.
