I just found out that my father has stage four prostate cancer. Call it intuition, but i’ve had death on my mind recently and a pending sense of doom combined with an urge to spend more time with my mum. Turns out my gut was right but my heart naturally leant towards the person closest to me. Mumma.  In the famous words of Buddha himself, “The only thing certain in life is our death”. We all know that we are going to die one day and like many individuals in their late 30’s, I have parents in their seventies, and most of my friends are in the same boat. This means that death pops into my mind occasionally, and I can’t help but fear for the day that my partner and I lose our beloved parents. It’s inevitable, and I guess the only thing we can hope for is that they can pass in peace, relatively pain free and without a long battle. 

As parents, we hope that we will pass before our children.  If we are blessed enough to grow old and have our children hold our hands through the beautiful journey of ageing, then we can surely call our lives ‘complete’. My heart aches daily for my own mumma who sadly lost both her sons before she even turned 70. My oldest brother Samuel passed away when I was in year 12 at school. He was born quadriplegic spastic and had a trying life drooling from a wheelchair with many many health complications. He passed away when his head became wedged between the mattress of his bed and the safety rails. My other brother Henry was diagnosed with a brain tumour at 22. He went on to battle it for sixteen years, finally succumbing to it at 38 – the age I turn in exactly nineteen days. 

Finding out my dad has terminal cancer was certainly triggering given the way that my brother exited this world. Watching him go from a thriving thirty something, climbing mountains and exploring the world, to a drooling shell of a human in a wheelchair was the toughest thing our family has endured. It was also sadly familiar given my oldest brother Samuel’s existence. I wouldn’t wish this type of decline upon anyone- even my absent father.  The response in my body when my sister told me that my dad was unwell was nothing short of… well… nothing. My response was, “oh, ok. Are you ok?”. Quite frankly I was more concerned with how she had taken it given that her relationship with her father has been a lot more solid than mine. It took me a whole week to process my sister’s words. I kept waiting to feel something. After five full days of telling myself to pick up the damn phone and call him, I was able to call him and ask how he was. You see, my dad and I are not close and so this situation is complex. My emotions are complex. Parents got divorced. Blah Blah… the usual. However, our situation was a little different. My mum- she’s different. She made the divorce with my father the hardest thing in the world for him to endure- and inevitably it was probably unnecessarily hard on us kids too. She may tell herself that what she did was for the greater good and I will always respect my mumma, but now, with a daughter , who’s father is the love of my life, I know that her relationship with him will ultimately shape her. The role that ‘he’ – ‘father’  plays in her life will teach her how men ‘behave’, whether you can trust men, whether she is worthy and loveable and whether she values herself to her core or has to act as though she has something to prove to the world.

Sadly, I am the latter, The absence of my father due to restraining orders, nasty words about him being a sperm donor and being forced to stand up in court when I needed help paying for my uni fees and books may have taught me strength and resilience, but it did not teach me the important things in life. Self love, respect and trust. Sadly, I was taught to fob my dad off if he called me, to demand money for possessions that my mother could not afford to buy, but to not appropriately thank him and to live by the words ‘I do not have a father’.  Never mind the complicated relationships with men that I endured as young woman and the years of self work required to trust a man and let him ‘hold’ me. This is life.

Now in my thirties, I realised that I had a father at some stage, but he was forced away from me due to my mum’s own anger and inability to process the failed relationship between her and my father. I believe strongly as a mother myself now that my relationship with my husband does not determine my daughter’s relationship with her dad. Sure, I can work with my husband to demonstrate to my baby girl what a loving relationship looks like. I can encourage him to be a model to her, so that when she is old enough to love a man herself, she chooses her man wisely. However, I will never control their relationship. I will never restrict her father from seeing her, adoring her and trying to make an effort if our own relationship were to fail.

I hold a lot of resentment towards my mum for keeping my father from me. I also hold a lot of resentment towards him for not trying harder. I attempted numerous times in my late twenties and thirties (until now)  to give my dad the opportunity to be there- to make an effort. He did not pass with flying colours. There were small snippets of ‘fathering’, like maybe he remembered a birthday or two, but all in all, the damage is done. Earlier this year, I built up the courage to say some hard words to my dad and ask him to have a relationship with my daughter- his granddaughter, because I deeply wish to break the cycle. My relationship with my father should not determine his relationship with his granddaughter. And so when I found out that my father has terminal cancer, and eventually I felt some emotion, I was more pained for my baby girl potentially not knowing her grandfather, and for me – when I was a baby girl – for not having a father. I live from a place of compassion towards my mother and to my father because it wasn’t easy and I am sure they did their best. And as they approach their end years, whether that’s one, two, ten or a miraculous twenty years from now, I simply want peace and love. Death is hard enough as it is, even if it is the only thing in life that we are “sure about”, losing a loved one is no doubt the most difficult and complicated life event that each human has to endure in their life path. The multiple layers that come with estranged relationships makes the process more challenging still.

So my task for now? I am working on establishing peace with my father, given that I do not know how long he will be here. When he goes, I want to be able to tell my baby girl about the care and compassion i gave him. “Did I love him”, she will ask. That answer, I cannot be sure of, but I can certainly tell her that she was loved by him – and all the men in her life.

Until Next time…

xoxo H.V.G