Last night I watched a movie where the father (who was also a grandfather), died. It wasn’t the focal point of the movie, but it was a significant part of the story.

It made me think about my own parents, and cry buckets of tears.

The man in the movie had his family rallying around him in the end, even his son who hadn’t seen him for many, many years showed up for his last dying moments.

I was not there for, or even aware of, my dad’s passing, and I likely won’t know of my mom’s either until after it happens.

This thought breaks my heart into a million pieces from the perspective of parent to child. I can’t imagine being a parent and not having my children joyfully in my life right up until the last moments of it.

When my dad died in 2007, or maybe it was 2008, I was in Canada on an extended vacation, renting a room in a house in the town I now call home. I’d arrived at this rental a few months earlier and was spending my days walking in nature and writing my memoirs (or one of the many works in progress).

At the time I didn’t know that many people in town, barely any actually, and I had only occasional contact with my family of friends dotted around the world. I wasn’t off the grid per se, but I was definitely not on it either.

I was up in my rented room on my computer when the doorbell rang. I was not expecting anyone, and the guy that I’d rented the room from was away so it couldn’t have been for him – he drove trucks for a living and was away almost the entire time I was there.

Opening the door to see an RCMP officer in full uniform standing well over 6′ tall in the doorway, set my heart beating a little faster.

“Are you… Ali Jayne?” He asked me.

Internally I wondered if I had overstayed my welcome in the country, I knew I had six months as a tourist but maybe I’d forgotten to fill in one of the forms or something and he was going to ask me to pack up and leave. I hesitated, wondering if I should say, “She’s out, can I take a message?”

Unable to lie, I said, “Yes. What is this about?”

“May I come in?” He asked me.

Was I allowed to say no? I didn’t know the answer so I opened the door for him to step inside. I remember him being so tall that he had to duck his head through the doorway.

My heart was beating so fast and both fear and mental organisation kicked in. I started running through the list of things I would be able to pack quickly, and the people I could contact for help if needed.

He asked me to sit down.

I sat.

He sat beside me. His overly tall frame looking uncomfortable on the small dining chair at the small dining table that was in the rented house; it almost gave me the giggles as by this time my adrenaline was ramped and I was feeling certain he was going to tell me I had to leave the country.

Instead, the words he spoke were, “I’m sorry to bring you this news, but your dad has passed away.”

You know that feeling where something is terribly wrong and you feel it in your spine, and up the back of your neck deep into your head? That feeling that makes you a little wobbly, almost like you’re either in an earthquake, about to faint, or you are in a slasher film and your time is up.

That’s the feeling I had. The room spun sideways for a moment before I recovered. It was then that the fear dissipated and I saw the sorrow and genuine concern in his eyes. Something I had missed during our initial interaction.

“Oh.” I said. I really didn’t know what else to say.

He went on to tell me the details that he knew. He passed away quietly, and was not in any pain, etc., etc.

I’m sure it is what they say to everyone.

“How did you find me?” I asked, unsure how to deal with the matter at hand, uncertain how I felt in that moment… and honestly curious how he knew to find me here.

He explained that when you go through customs, the address you put down is how they track you, along with credit card transactions, or something like that. He said it had taken them just over a week to track me down. Someone called the embassy from Australia, who called customs, who called the RCMP…

Just over a week.

My dad died over a week ago and I didn’t know.

He asked me if there was someone I could call right now to come over so I wasn’t alone.

Alone. 

The word reverberated through my body rattling my bones.

My dad was alone when he died. I tried not to think of this in that moment. I tried to be brave and not show how his news had sucker-punched me in the heart.

I told him that it was odd that my dad’s wife hadn’t called me to let me know, I’d sent her letters and updates on my travels for the past year. He looked uncomfortable. He told me she had died a year earlier.

Wow.

When he told me this, it was like a second blow, like falling off the playground and having the wind knocked out of you for what feels like hours but is only a few terrifying seconds.

I remember feeling initially more devastated by that news than the news of my dad passing, which was slower to hit me. He’d lived with MS all of my life, and when I’d seen him last he was almost completely crippled and unable to speak more than a few words at a time. I knew his passing was a good thing for him, sad for those left behind, but truly a good thing for him. His wife though was a vibrant, bouncy, tornado of energy – I couldn’t imagine her dying ever, let alone before my dad.

She died and no one had told me – I guess she never really was my step mom because I was grown and not even in contact with my dad when they married. But still, we had a relationship later on, and it would have been nice to know of her passing too.

The news that he didn’t even have her by his side when he died was hard to accept. She looked after him for more than 10 years, spending all of her days in the hospice where he lived. She loved him and she was always there for him keeping his spirits up. That he’d spent an entire year in that cold, clinical place to die without her there… so sad.

I put on a smile and told the RCMP officer that I would call someone immediately and that I would be fine. I tried to make light of the situation as though it wasn’t a big deal for me. I’m not sure that he was buying it.

He seemed so nice, and so genuine, like he didn’t want to leave me alone. I remember he offered to get me a glass of water, and maybe even a pamphlet about grief and counselling. He offered to call in on me again the next day to see if I was OK. I declined and tried my best to reassure him I’d be fine and would call someone right away.

He looked like he needed a hug actually, or perhaps he was mirroring how I looked to him.

What a hard part of the job, to knock on someone’s door and tell them that their father has died on the other side of the world.

My heart broke a little for him.

And then for my dad.

And then for his wife.

And then for myself.

I didn’t call anyone right away, I didn’t know if I had the right to grieve actually, because I had left Australia to seek a new home on the other side of the world. Other than a few letters now and then I hadn’t given my dad much thought over the past year.

Alone I grieved that night, and then the next day I did call a friend and emailed others.

Sometimes when I put myself in my parent’s shoes my heart breaks for them and the life that they created. I feel sad that they didn’t get to know their daughter and have a relationship with her. I’m pretty sure if they’d stuck it out and tried they would have really liked her…me. Maybe even loved me as a person, and not just as a daughter. If that makes sense.

I feel sad that as their daughter I didn’t get to know them or have a relationship with them either. And on the occasions where I put myself in their shoes, I feel guilty that I didn’t try harder, or didn’t forgive more, or didn’t stick around longer, or any other number of “what if’s” that I can never go back and ‘re-do’.

I’m not yet a parent, but I can’t imagine being a parent and not loving my children right to the end – even if, like in the case of my own parents, I didn’t have a relationship with my children. I can’t imagine the heartbreak of knowing that I was dying and the child I had raised was not there beside me. To not be able to say all the things that I felt in my heart to say as I lay in reflection of my life in those last days or hours.

And I, as that child, feel both sorry and relieved that I wasn’t there, and that I won’t be there.

Maybe it can be chalked up to attachment issues, but I’m not very good with goodbyes… period.

I also feel uncomfortable around frail older people in helpless situations.

I remember seeing my grandmother in her last weeks as a physical human. I remember the moment of going into the hospital room with my aunt and mom and maybe my sisters and brother too. She was in the hospital bed seemingly unaware of what was happening around her or who was in the room. She’d lost the function of her body and had just had an accident when I walked in. She’d put her hand down to work out what the sensation was behind her and was horrified to find excrement in her bed, and then on her own hands, and she started to cry. Seeing my grandmother so helpless and confused tore me apart inside and scared me in a deeply scarring way.

We hadn’t been close in the previous 10 years or so since my mom had married my step-dad and had distanced herself from her birth family, but seeing her that way made me remember the loving, kind woman who had rocked me and held me and loved me during my childhood, who had made special pudding with coins in it for Christmas, and who had told me wonderful stories of gum nut babies that lived in the trees, and showed me how to plant things in the garden. Seeing her in that hospital bed made me wish I’d tried harder to stay connected to her in those years – though I was only a tween at the time – it also made me want to run so fast from that room, somehow scrub my brain of the image, and never, ever, look back. Sadly, that image still resides within me.

Did I create the distance between myself and my parents so I wouldn’t have to experience that kind of situation again? Maybe. I have to take some responsibility for our relationship, even if only once I became an adult.

Many of my friends have shared stories of their own upbringing not being as wonderful as a weekly TV sitcom, but as adults – and especially when they became parents themselves – they found the way to forgive their childhoods and move on into a relationship with their parents… now. Often those relationships are ONLY viable because the children continue to forgive and restart over and over. I admire their courage and their tenacity.

Should I have done more?

My mom will likely die alone too, and one day there may be another RCMP officer at my door to ask me to sit down as he tells me of her passing.

Is she aware enough to know what she’s missing? A part of me, perhaps the part that wants to release myself of the guilty feelings associated with my parents dying alone, hopes that she is in her own little fantasy bubble where she believes she is talking with me every day – and every nurse in her attendance becomes a version of the daughter she had. So that she doesn’t feel that she’s alone, or that she’s been abandoned by the person to whom she gave life.

I made peace with the relationship I had with my dad before I left Australia, and with the relationship I have with my mom – mostly…that one was a lot longer and trickier. So it’s still a little bit of a work in progress but the work required is much less now. Unless I think of her alone and the guilt pops up.

The truth is I am not responsible for the life they have chosen, nor can I ever know what anyone else is feeling or thinking. I have to trust that if either one of them had wanted to connect with me they would have. I have written to my mom several times over the past few years and had no response. My number hasn’t changed for nearly 10 years, so that is no excuse either, whereas I’m not even certain where she is living.

I’ve worked hard to massage away the emotional scarring of my relationship with my parents (all three of them actually). And I’ve worked hard to build myself up to be strong and courageous in the living of my life, as well as to be open and loving as I possibly can be with the family of friends I have chosen.

Not being responsible, does not stop those feelings from cropping up on occasion though – like when I watch a movie (!) – the sadness and guilt that arises only presents when I imagine that I am the parent, alone, at the end of my days, and my children are no longer involved in my life. It would be shattering. Imagine how that would feel.

And perhaps that is a good thing that I am aware that I do not want to end up that way. They say that awareness is the first step to recovery, maybe even the hardest one. No one can force you to see; only you can be open to being aware and open to change.

Nurturing a loving relationship with my children and eventually a husband, when the right man comes along, is so important to me. Working on those relationships to ensure that we keep the lines of communication open, and to ensure there is always forgiveness (because we’re human!), understanding, connection, and love.

However, as a prospective adoptive parent, I wonder whether even if I create the loving family that I’ve always wanted to be a part of with my children and future husband, will my children still feel the way I feel when they are my age and their birth parents are nearing the end of their lives?

Will anyone seek them out to let them know? Will they get a knock on the door to tell them that the person who gave them life has passed? Will they feel the guilt of not being there?

Honestly, I’m not sure how this works in adoption.

My hope is to be matched with children who have some relationship or connection with their birth family. I am completely open to an open adoption.

But if it’s closed, and they don’t know… will that haunt them into their adulthood?

My parents didn’t try to get to know me all that well. My dad only really knew me until I was five or so and then again as an adult for a few years, all in all he had about seven years of my life.

My mom was around for much more of the time, but she didn’t really know how to connect for very long even when she was present. And perhaps that is my fault too. I didn’t know how to connect with her either for more than an hour or so before things started to crumble.

So now here I am disconnected, uncertain of even where she is living, and wondering if an officer will one day knock on my door and tell me of her passing.

As I watched this movie, my heart broke a little imagining both of my parents moving from this world to the next…alone.

The important parts of life for me are those connections with others. Learning about me so that I can open up to deeper connection and love with others, and also form a deeper love and understanding of myself.

My hope is that my sadness around this topic will help me to consciously choose not to recreate the family I have lived, and instead will create the family I’ve always dreamed of – with an open heart and an abundance of humility and love.

For all that was missing for me growing up, I love you Mom and Dad for building the foundation for my desire to be more open and more loving with my family of friends, myself, and my future children. Perhaps because of you I will never take them (or me) for granted, and will ensure I always find something about them to cherish, to keep us connected.

Maybe I will be able to imagine that you are both smiling and crying with pride for the person I have become, even though you didn’t get to know me in life.

Warm smiles and Love,

….and with gratitude and humility…

Ali Jayne 🙂

Ps: the movie was called, “Wish I was Here” – not a comedy.