CIRCLE LIFE of
Becoming a parent at the same time as losing one was a rollercoaster of emotions
It’s etched into my mind – the way my dad’s sunken face lit up as we walked into the hospital room. His tiny frame trembled as he struggled to slide himself to the edge of his bed. In a tangle of cords, he held out his arms and drew my newborn daughter to his chest, heaving from the effort. It was the most crushing blow of mixed emotion. There was such a sense of relief that the two of the most important people in my life had been able to meet in the midst of a global pandemic and after months of my pregnancy spent feeling suffocating anxiety about hard border closures.
But this precious, priceless moment was pierced by a crippling pain so excruciating I could feel it radiate throughout me. I was losing a parent at the same time I was becoming one.
This frail body was not the father I knew – Peter was lion of heart and of spirit.
But cancer had stripped him bare – slowly, then suddenly, such that it reduced even his big, gruff army mates to tears, their faces crumpling as they laid eyes on him when they came to say their goodbyes over the ensuing days.
I can still see the dark purple blotches that bloomed on the paper-thin skin of his hands as he cradled my daughter Everly and kissed her forehead. I can still feel the way his T-shirt hung off his bones as we embraced with her between us. I can still hear him struggle for breath as his body rocked with the emotion of meeting his granddaughter for the first time and knowing he would never see her grow up.
He would never hear her giggle nor speak her first words, see her take her first steps nor celebrate her first Christmas.
That hurt him, he said. He wished he had more time. “She won’t remember me and I was really looking forward to cuddles and playing and her running up to me and saying ‘grandad’,” he confessed to me late one night when he started to lose sense of time and sleep evaded him.
The desperation I felt in that moment still haunts me. The pain of knowing I was about to lose my hero and best friend in the blur of new motherhood – and after losing so much precious time separated by border closures and uncertainty – was physical.
Just 24 hours earlier I had been at home in Brisbane celebrating my husband Naz’s birthday when my stepmum Kirsten called from an oncology ward in Western Australia.
Her voice broke with emotion as she explained doctors thought Dad’s cancer had “taken hold” and he would have just weeks left to live. I was still recovering from giving birth on April 13, my belly still swollen and my C-section scar still tender. I instinctively ran my hand over it and stood quietly, staring out of my bedroom window and letting tears fall down my face as I prepared to call my little sister with the news.
She was at work with no idea I was about to turn her world upside down.
In 2015 Dad had been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma after feeling a small lump in his throat while enjoying a day at the drag car racing.
Scans then revealed he had a separate, unrelated cancer – a neuroendocrine tumour – in his pancreas. Since the throat cancer had already
metastasised to his lymph nodes, doctors focused on that threat first. Unfortunately, in a cruel twist, the tumour in his pancreas – usually a more slowly progressing disease – spread aggressively in that time.
It would be what eventually killed him six years later. After that call, we had just 11 days with dad before he passed on June 16 this year, having caught the first available flight from Brisbane to Perth. Dad was only lucid for about half of those days. We were lucky to make it, knowing a single Covid case could have plunged us into lockdown before the flight or forced us into isolation from the moment we arrived.
I cried tears of joy when I held the positive
pregnancy test in my hands and again when I surprised my Dad and stepmum with the news via video call a few weeks later.
I cherished watching my bump grow, feeling my baby kick and imagining who this little miracle inside me would be.
But, as I counted down the days until I would finally meet her, the weight of wondering whether my Dad would still be there when I did, was crushing. From the moment WA’S hard border slammed shut to the rest of the country in April 2020, with the spread of Covid-19, I was haunted by the thought that I may never see my father again.
Would borders be open when something happened? How quickly could I turn around a compassionate exemption request and would it even be approved? Would I ever share another cup of tea at his kitchen table with him? Sing old rock songs in the car together? Spot dolphins on our morning walks around the Swan River?
After so much success with his treatments (despite a terminal prognosis), his scan results took a turn for the worst last year.
After finding out I was expecting, the gravity of what was at stake became too much and – armed with a detailed quarantine plan and desperate letters from dad and his doctor – I began applying for an exemption to return home on compassionate grounds.
I was one of the lucky ones. After a couple of goes, I was approved. And – even better – as things began to stabilise in Australia, the WA hard border came down just before I was due to fly out. The news was joyous and world-altering – I would get to hug my Dad again. I would get to spend extra time by his side rather than holed up in isolation. And, if he didn’t make it to when I gave birth, he’d at least get to see my growing belly and the happiness it brought me. He’d be at peace knowing the son-in-law he adored and I were getting the family we wanted and that I’d be OK.
I flew home in November last year, after almost nine months since we had seen each other. I’ll never forget the moment my Dad took me in his arms at the airport and sobbed uncontrollably: “I was worried I’d never see you again.”
We spent every day for two weeks together creating precious memories – he even put the lights and tree up weeks early to throw me a faux-christmas so I didn’t miss out on what would end up being his last. Though there were outbreaks and temporary border closures, mercifully, I was able to get back to see him again in February this year. But Dad’s quality of life had diminished considerably since my last visit and seeing him so thin and so frail shocked me to my core.
The man who once piggybacked me around the lounge room, raced me to the top of hills (“last one up is a loser!”), left me in the dust each time we rode around Rottnest Island, who ran fun runs and marathons to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the Cancer Council after his diagnosis, was now struggling to get out of bed.
The day I flew back to Brisbane I broke down in his kitchen, convinced it would be the last time I saw him. I knew if anything happened, I would now be too far along in my pregnancy to fly.
But Dad was a fighter to his core. Some cancer patients don’t like the phrase “battle”. But Dad did. He spent time in the army reserves and, for him, it described his approach to the insidious disease perfectly.
Dad was, in his own words, a “fan of living” and he always told his brilliant oncologist “I’ll try anything” for more time with the family.
Even when that horrible disease and the exhaustive treatments left him sick and struggling, he never stopped trying for us.
He kept a bucket list of milestones he was determined to make – my brother’s 21st birthday, his own 60th, watching the West Coast Eagles play in a Grand Final and walking me down the aisle at my wedding. As he ticked each one off he would add more. One of the last goals he set was to meet his granddaughter.
Dad was a lot of things – a joker with a wicked sense of humour, a social butterfly who couldn’t go to the shops without running into at least three people he knew, a man whose idea of the happiest place on earth was Bunnings, a serial renovator and a mad AFL fan. But, above all else, he was a proud family man, who loved us fiercely.
He planned to stay with us in Brisbane when
the baby was born and was so excited to help ease us into parenthood by giving us an extra pair of hands and spending a few weeks just soaking up being “grandad”.
He was devastated when he became too sick to fly in the weeks leading up to her birth. He told me how he would daydream about walking with us around Brisbane “proudly pushing the pram”.
But Dad’s time with Everly was fleeting and limited to a hospital bed. There were cuddles but he very quickly became too weak to hold her. His final days were some of the hardest and most conflicting of my life as he slipped from laughing and crying with us to sleeping and, eventually, struggling to breathe. I wanted to spend every second of those long days at the hospital never leaving his bedside but I had a newborn, who was relying on me to feed her, to rock her to sleep and walk her around the hospital grounds when she was crying so Dad and the other cancer patients weren’t disturbed by the noise.
I felt like a failure on every front. Each time I had to step away to tend to my baby it was like there was a countdown clock and I was watching precious minutes with Dad tick away in my mind.
Each time I couldn’t be fully present with my daughter because I was hurting, crying or having last words with him, I was racked with guilt – I wanted to bask in the little love bubble of her newborn days like other mums.
My Dad was my anchor – a grounding force in my life. As a kid, I was his little shadow, following him around the house and garden, talking his ear off as he worked and spending weekends with him at the drags or the footy.
He was my first best friend. Our close relationship didn’t change as I grew older – we loved going to concerts, out to eat and adventuring, hiking and sightseeing around Perth whenever I was home from Brisbane.
Even with an entire country between us, the special bond we shared never faltered.
He was the person I called when I was happy or sad, when I needed advice or just wanted to chat. We spoke every day about everything – big or small.
The enormous gulf he left in my life could never be filled. I lost the man I learnt so much about parenting from as I grappled with trying to be the best mum I could to my new daughter. To have one of the worst and one of the best moments in life coincide, meant there was no space exclusively for my grief.
Mourning Dad was confined to crying in the shower or during Everly’s naps to protect her from these big emotions. Laying in bed all day and looking at photos, listening to voicemails or just being alone with my memories was never an option. And the mum guilt is relentless.
I feel it because the first few months of her life are such a blur of loss. I feel it whenever she does something new and my excitement is quickly met with sadness and having to hold back tears because I wish Dad was here to see it.
I feel it because I want to give her all the very best of me at all times but I’m not my best me without my best mate. I can’t pick up the phone and ask Dad what to do or send him pictures of her first smile, first tooth or her covered in her first foods. I know that despite the guilt, without Everly, I would not have coped at all.
In those moments of feeling utterly lost and helpless, she gave me purpose. And my husband Naz was a rock of unwavering support.
And that I can, and do, try to honour him every day by striving to be for Everly what he was for me – a source of unconditional love and support, a safe space and always a lot of fun.
Dad died on a cool Wednesday night in June. He was 62. He left behind six kids: my older sister Brooke, and younger siblings Kelly, Ryan, Lee and Amy, two grandkids Everly and Seth, as well as two brothers Kim and Mark and sister Shelley. The loss our family feels is immeasurable but I’m grateful for our close bond. We will get through it by sticking together, just as he would have wanted.
Dad always said he didn’t want his kids to watch him die and so he slipped away a few minutes after my siblings and I left for the day. He took his last breath as I fed Everly in the hospital carpark. After my stepmum called and said through tears: “He’s gone,” I put her back in her pram and raced back to his room to give him one more hug.
I was one of the lucky ones. I know countless others haven’t been so lucky during this pandemic – separated from loved ones by borders or restrictions, Covid robbed them of their final goodbyes or relegated them to taking place over screens. An outbreak delayed dad’s funeral, but we were allowed a decent crowd to farewell him, despite capacity limits and restrictions meant some family and friends couldn’t come to pay their respects.
I had my chance to say goodbye.
I was able to see him with my daughter, to hold his hand and hear him say “Love ya, kid” one last time.
He would daydream about walking with us around Brisbane ‘proudly pushing the pram’