By Bonnie Jack, whose mum died from cancer
Death can be unexpected and shocking and throw you into the eternally dark ether even if you’ve been waiting for it your entire life.
Having a terminally ill parent doesn’t mean that you will show them you love them as much as you should when they’re alive, and that’s okay. In the years before mum died I was a teenager: selfish and stroppy. You have to make peace with the fact that you didn’t cling onto their every word and spend every minute with them before they died.
There is a sense of relief, but only upon reflection. The first feeling is a snappy, burning kind of heart break.
You might not get that ‘goodbye’ with them that you’ve been thinking about and rehearsing over and over for months or maybe years. Mum ended up in hospital over Christmas so we did a sort of present opening in hospital with her. In the days after she got even sicker and couldn’t talk much. I don’t really remember the last things we said to each other. When we left the hospital she was sleeping, and we didn’t make it back before she died.
Having cancer did become a part of her identity and legacy in the way that she coped with it for so long with such enthusiasm and fierceness. When she had her mastectomies, when she lost her hair, when she walked the Race For Life even though her treatment at the time meant that her feet came up in blisters as big as her foot! I never knew her without it. Many people didn’t know her without it. And I think to try to remember her sans cancer would just be too strange. The disease didn’t define her, but it was absolutely one of the biggest parts of her and our lives for a very long time, and still continues to be.
About Bonnie Jack
Bonnie lost her mum on New Years Eve eight years ago after almost 17 years of battling breast cancer that then spread. Bonnie is an advocate for normalising the conversation around death and loss, bringing together people who have lost parents, siblings, friends and partners at ages that it doesn’t ‘usually happen’ and is a part of the team that runs The Grief Network.
@griefnetwork @bonnienanjack
