Losing a Parent in Adult Life

Recently at a panel on ‘Modern Families’ in HubSpot, one of my colleagues broke down when speaking about the loss of her mother the previous year and it reminded me about the experience of losing my own father and the importance of talking about and acknowledging grief, especially at work. 10 years ago I didn’t have that support or understanding from my employer and it would have made all the difference to me at work.

During St. Patrick’s Weekend of 2009 I traveled to Sligo in the northwest of Ireland to help my parents move into the brand new home they had built together. 12 months earlier they had sold our childhood home and set their hearts on designing and constructing their dream house. It was all that and more. It overlooked the ocean and was surrounded by green fields. My father was so excited, after much research he had geothermal heating built into the house as well as a number of other eco-friendly elements. My mum was getting her dream kitchen and walk-in wardrobe in the deal. Life was good.

My father who was a Garda (a policeman) and my mother who was a nurse were not retired yet. My mum was 52 at the time, but they were getting ready to retire and they were excited to retire and start living out their ‘golden years’.

The weekend of the move wasn’t planned and so my siblings were off celebrating the weekend in various corners of Ireland. It was also my mothers birthday on Paddy’s day but it was always a weekend we celebrated after the fact because of the weekend it fell on. At the time I was an army reservist and so marched in the St Patrick’s day parade in Sligo every year much to the amusement of my friends. As I was the one at home, my job was to help them unpack their lives and generally arrange the house. I had not been in favor of the move as the area was isolated. It was the kind of place that the grass grew in the middle of the road. I joked with my dad that an ambulance would have trouble getting down the road. Little did I know.

The same weekend, on St. Patrick’s Day my father was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. He was 60 at the time. Here’s how on a day of national celebration, life changed for everyone.

All day Saturday my dad had been quiet I put it down to the stress of the move. On Sunday he said he had a headache and was going to stay in bed, but again he got headaches so I thought nothing of it. At 8 pm my dad came to the kitchen and asked me to take him to the hospital. I knew something was terribly wrong. My father was not one for drama.

10 years previously my father had lost a kidney and almost his life to kidney cancer. He had been sick for 5 months through my leaving cert exams. Even then he had found humor in the situation blaming my average exam results on the distraction. After the experience, we had all appreciated him a little more. My parents planned trips and it was then that they decided to build their dream home. We celebrated our close call of losing him but we were sure bad luck was behind us and life was for living.

I gently went to my mother and told her about the situation. She was worried but the nurse in her was confident everything would be fine. Even traveling to the hospital I reassured myself it would be fine. When we got there they did tests and took blood. Again I thought it was just a bad headache. But that all changed, the doctor came in and sat next to me and my mother. My mother knew the doctor from her days working at the hospital. The results were in and his face said it all. He explained that my father had a huge brain tumor. I was shocked, how could this be happening?

My mother asked me not to share the information with my three siblings until we knew more. This suited me as I know when faced with the worst of situations, I like to know the facts good or bad before I can react. I think knowing what’s coming makes it easier for me to deal with in my own way. At the time we had no internet in the new house so I went to a local video rental shop and paid for an hour of the internet so that I could research the tumor. I keyed in “Glioblastomas” and straight away the information jumped off the page. Every symptom was there and so was the timeline, patients only lasted 3-9 months. The stages of the tumor and the patient's treatment was laid out before me. My mind was racing. Even now I’m surprised how early I accepted he was going to die. I still have no idea why I didn’t have hope, it wasn’t about being depressing but it was a realistic expectation of the outcome and my way of coping.

The nine months that followed were hard. The hardest of my life. My mum left work to care for my father at home full time. A gift we can never repay her. Every Friday I would drive the three hours to Sligo to help my mum and every Sunday I would leave her to go back to work with crushing guilt. My younger sister in Waterford was too far away to make trips every weekend we all agreed, and my brother had a pregnant fiancé to care for but he did his best. Things fell to myself and my oldest sister to let my mum out and get rest on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Caring for a dying parent is hard to do but I believe having seen my family do it, it is also the greatest expression of love. In those nine months, we would feed dad, wash him and bring him to the toilet. There were days that you wanted to remind him you were his little girl and days you’d hope he would not remember who you were to save his dignity. There were days when he joked and smiled at you and others when he shouted and punched you. The thing they don’t talk about is how brain tumors slowly break through our barriers and so violence and aggression started to break through. My father a gentle man that never swore or raised a hand became someone that did.

In the latter days of his life, I was called many times to say come home ‘it's time’ but as many people who have been through the experience will know there are many false starts. On the 8th of November, I traveled home. It was my 29th birthday, no one remembered and I didn’t care, my dad was nearing his end. At about 6 pm my mum suddenly remembered and was so upset. She pulled a cake together and got my dad out of bed into a chair and although no one was in the mood they sang happy birthday and I blew out the candles. That was the last day my dad got out of bed. 11 days later he passed away.

The day before I had been in Dublin working on a pitch. My mum called and told me that it was time. I strangely told her I would come home right after the pitch. This was in part coping no doubt, but mostly because my employer at the time demanded to know if I was in or out, the team needed to know. There was no support or understanding for this moment in my life. My life outside of work didn't matter to my boss. In hindsight, I know now he wasn’t the best boss. When the pitch was over I went home. Driving three hours thinking this won’t be it. I arrived at 10 pm and my father passed away with me holding his hand at 8 am. I felt blessed that I got to say goodbye but also the pain in my heart and a lump in my throat was blinding. But there were other feelings too like relief that it was over, guilt that I felt relief, anger with everyone that told me he was gone to a better place. I thought where is better than here with us?

In the days that followed I thanked God for the traditions of the area I come from, what followed was a three-day wake. If you are unfamiliar with an Irish wake you’d probably be horrified. For three days we sat around dad’s body talking to him, talking about him, remembering him, singing, drinking and eating in the house. There is great healing in that time. People tell you stories you never knew about the person. You cry, you laugh and you say goodbye and it was a great time for me. On the day of the funeral, I gave the eulogy. Trying to squeeze as much of the man into it as possible. His humor, his wisdom and his hopes for his children. There’s never enough time.

When the funeral was over life went on, even though you feel at the time it shouldn’t. My employer text me two days after the funeral asking when I was coming back to work. From the moment he text I felt there was a stopwatch on my grief, an expectation I would get over it and get back to work. It still to this day annoys me that I couldn’t stay to support my mum more in those earlier days. After only three months in HubSpot, I'm 100% sure my experience would have been different.

We got back to our lives and could at least pretend he was still alive when we were away from home but my mother had a difficult journey. She had lost her partner and her future. She lived in a house now with only sad memories. A house the ambulance did have to come down as well as a hearse. The years that followed where hard. Every phone call ended with a lament and every trip home ended with her tearfully waving us off. She was unhappy. Christmas, birthdays and holidays were hard because we were trying to fit this new family dynamic into old family traditions so as a family we realized we had to make new ones.

My mother with our encouragement started to go social dancing a practice I don’t even get if I’m being honest and slowly she re-emerged from her grief. 10 years later she has moved closer to us. Selling the house that made her so unhappy and finding new purpose in her five, almost six grandchildren. She even took the rather unusual step of exhuming my father last summer and reburying him across the road from her new home.

As the years have gone by there has been college degrees, new jobs, first houses, marriages, and children and he’s missed it all. He even missed the satisfactory moment I handed in my notice to that employer. My faith in him and the company ended the day he couldn’t support me and my family during our grief. Never underestimate the impact of empathy, or the lack of it.

Every one of these events makes me feel like we’ve lost him only last month and I guess that’s the point of my story. No matter the time since someone loses their parent every day forward in your life is a day away from the last time you saw them or heard their voice or felt their presence. So if someone says their parent died 30, 20, 10 years ago or 2 months ago stop for a moment and say I’m sorry- have some empathy. Not because it just happened but because it’s good to recognize someone important is gone from their life. You won’t upset anyone by bringing it up. They will be glad you acknowledged they ever lived at all.