The cruellest role reversal
Robyn assumed her parents would always be there for her. Then, at just 25, she found herself back in her childhood bedroom caring for them ...
I suppose not letting myself think too much about the huge step I was taking helped it feel less daunting.
On my last night in London, I went out with friends, which meant I headed out of Paddington train station the next morning with a shocking hangover.
The fact that my head was banging from dehydration — rather than dread of what lay ahead — shows just how unprepared I was for the reality of the situation.
Mum opened the front door to me, a large holdall containing clothes and my favourite possessions at my feet. She looked utterly exhausted. She sat down, while I put the kettle on.
My hangover instantly cured by how drawn she looked, I told her not to worry and that I’d cook that night.
Dad was pottering in his shed, but came in and immediately asked how university was going.
He had no grasp that nearly five years had passed since I’d graduated. It struck me then just how profoundly everything had changed.
There would be no more putting my feet up, no parents spoiling me with snacks and treats and letting me take control of the telly schedule. In the parallel universe in which I suddenly found myself, it was my turn to look after them.
The facts surrounding Mum’s illness remain hazy, because she kept them from me until the doctors said there was nothing more they could do.
That’s when my brother, Gareth, five years older than me, moved back, too.
He was working as a hotel manager — also single, he was able to arrange a career break and was soon sleeping in his own childhood bed, now far too small for his 6 ft 3 in frame. We felt like the odd family: two parents depending on two children. Mum and Dad had raised us to be independent; now, devastatingly early, they’d been forced to depend on us instead.
On the face of it, we all looked the same. But here I was administering medication, cooking meals, cleaning toilets and tying shoelaces.
As Mum got worse, Dad did, too: sticking knives in toasters; trying to order Chinese for breakfast; wearing Mum’s jumpers to go to the shops; putting mobile phones in the freezer.
After Mum passed away aged 63 — thankfully peacefully in her sleep at home — Gareth and I had to tell Dad she’d gone. Watching him weep for the woman he’d loved so deeply was a moment of lucidity I wish he could have been spared.
It soon passed, but then came the torment of him repeatedly asking when she’d be coming home.
After her funeral, he thought her wake was his birthday party. He kept looking for his cake and asking people to get up and dance with him.
I suspect the old me would have been mortified. But the woman I’d been forced to become knew better than to care what anyone else might think.
That’s one of many unexpected gifts that came from this otherwise wretched experience.
ASMy daily life increasingly became focused entirely around keeping Dad alive and as calm as possible, I found solace in small pleasures: walking in the park on a crisp day; watching Dad laugh uncontrollably at a much-viewed episode of Only Fools And Horses; sharing memories of happier times with my brother.
No longer being able to put my own needs first was the ultimate salutary experience. I grew up in a way most people don’t until they become parents themselves.
I began to look back at the old me with fond disbelief.
Dad died just three months after Mum; by then, he’d become so confused that he was prone to violent outbursts.
We simply couldn’t keep him safe at home and so he went into a specialist facility for the final weeks of his life.
When I returned to London an orphan, albeit an adult one, I realised just how profoundly my experience had changed me.
Hearing girlfriends complain about their single life, or their frustration at not being able to afford a new pair of designer shoes, was too much.
I’d walk out of rooms because I couldn’t trust myself not to snap or urge them to get a grip.
In the years that followed, I went back to work, fell in love and got married, and now, 12 years after Dad passed away, I’m pregnant with my first baby, a boy.
All of this has happened without my parents to share in any of it — that’s always hurt, but never more so than when I think about how they’ve been deprived of meeting their grandson.
As motherhood approaches, I feel their loss so keenly. I’ll never be able to ask them whether my child looks like me as a baby, or call Mum when he won’t sleep to ask: ‘What should I do?’
But I have faith that I will cope better than I would have if I hadn’t lost her and Dad the way I did.
Looking after them taught me a precious lesson — that I have it in me to put my needs last and not resent a moment of it.
I know that will help me through the trials of being a mum just as much as the support I wish they were still alive to give me, and I take comfort from that.