We collected our children from school, sat them down and told them there was no hope – their daddy was going to die

WHEN YOU HAVE TO SIT your three children down and tell them their daddy is going to die, it is at that moment that you know your life can never be the same again.

On February 11, 2009, Aidan, my husband, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He hadn’t been sick. No signs. No warning. Aged just 49, he was a fit, serving Army sergeant when ‘the big C’ burst into our lives like a hurricane and it raged for three and a half months, before taking him on the cusp of a warm breeze on the last day of May 2009.

‘Out of the blue’, ‘unexpected’, ‘this couldn’t be happening to us’. All those words flashed before my eyes. Three months compressed into a bubble where our life ‘before’ became non-existent and we lived in a world of hospitals, chemotherapy, cancer, illness, death.

It is impossible to know how you will react to the diagnosis of a terminal illness – not until the brutal truth is placed in front of you. We didn’t accept it. Denial was the initial overriding emotion, quickly followed by anger, then resilience. ‘We can beat this’. ‘We will carry on as before’. In all honesty, we hadn’t a clue what we were doing. Was it all just a dream?

Adrenaline forced us to put one foot in front of the other to keep going. We settled for a course of chemotherapy in the blind hope that it might slow down the cancer, when in reality it only made Aidan worse. Attending the oncology department for chemo soon dispelled any notion that this was a dream. It was the proverbial living nightmare.

In early May, the consultant urged us to get our affairs in order and tell our children the full extent of the illness. We had three teenagers, aged 13, 15 and 17. Our son was in his first year of secondary school and our two girls were due to sit their Junior and Leaving Cert exams in June.

We collected our children from school, sat them down and, casting off the shroud of denial, told them there was no hope. Their daddy was going to die. He wanted to die at home, if it was okay with them. We cried and hugged, and our little family closed in on itself.

When Aidan died on Sunday, May 31, 2009, it was 8.30 in the morning, the sun was blazing, and the birds were chirping away, obliviously, in the trees outside our bedroom window. The morphine had sent him into a coma on the Friday. He was a shell. He was reduced to bone. But he was still my husband. He was still our children’s daddy.

For days, I lay on our bed beside him, watching him, caring for him. Staring wide-eyed at this man whom I’d loved since I was 14. The man I had married on the day before my 21st birthday. The man who’d always been by my side. The man who had been the rock in our family. Our children’s daddy. Suddenly, he was no more. Death stole him from us far too soon. I couldn’t survive without him. Or could I?

In the eight years since Aidan died, life has gone on. The void left by his passing is immense. The space he once filled in our hearts and lives can only be replaced with memories. Time doesn’t dim those memories, it highlights them. But in the aftermath of his death, about six months later, I fell apart. I’d kept strong for as long as I could, for our children. The girls sat their exams and passed them. We went on a holiday. School restarted. I rampaged through the house, got a builder to knock out walls and insert unnecessary doors. Changed my car. Sold Aidan’s car. Spent money I didn’t have. Christmas arrived. I crumbled. My strong persona could no longer shoulder the weight of keeping grief at bay.

I shed my first tears since Aidan’s funeral. Depression rocked me so badly I had to give up working. Only the gift of my children helped me. Because I had to care for them, I still had a purpose. I couldn’t expect three teenagers to be looking after me, so I had to pick up my pieces from the floor, lock away the emptiness in my heart and allow my children fill it with their love. With therapy through art, painting and writing, I discovered my new self while searching for release from grief. A self without Aidan who had been by my side all of my adult life.

I still wait for the turn of his key in the lock. I still keep his uniform in the cupboard under the stairs. I still wait for the sound of his voice. I know he is all around me, even if I cannot see him. Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries are particularly hard because I’ve found, for me personally, that time doesn’t heal the pain of loss. The passing of time only allows you to live with that loss. And I can ask for no more.