'We don't impact the loss of enough parental credit' - ABC Everyday
In the winter my father died of cancer, focusing on work became very difficult.
In the normal world of work, people are given mourning leave: a sign of two days to grieve and attend funerals. I need more than this to reflect and reassemble myself.
I took a few weeks to slow down, think, and follow the urge to get back to basics. I spring clean my house, go for bush walks, do my own health check, and take over the dining table with a thousand-piece puzzle. After school hours, I read stories with my kids — huddle together and immerse myself in a fantasy world full of magic and solvable problems — and take them out for chai lattés. (Kids of today.)
That time made me reflect a lot on my purpose, and how to spend the next part of my time on earth.
Loss of purpose for the long term
Ever since I started writing for a living many years ago, I’ve been very proud to earn from my words. It hardly matters what I write; I have written enough. It could be an important article on mental health that helps someone else, it could be a company blog article trying to find something new to say about work-life balance (spoiler: nothing new to say about work-life balance), that’s me and the words- I said support my family. How cool is that?
However, suddenly, I couldn’t bring myself to write one more word about things that meant nothing.
I lost my purpose, and asked myself a number of questions about it.
What can I do that will bring back that sense of accomplishment? How can I bring out more goodness into the world? And why does it all seem to mean nothing?
Three years later — despite, of course, returning to work a long time ago — I still don’t believe I’ve managed to find answers to the questions lost parents ask.
But I know this: we don’t have the effect of losing enough respect for parents.
Losing a parent can keep us adrift – but I didn’t think this would happen to me
I’ve seen the impact this has on some friends who have lost a parent. They will get a little off track, question everything and feel—very outwardly—as if they’ve somehow lost themselves. It seemed like more than just sadness, as if they were adrift and needed to find a new anchor.
I don’t think I will follow it. After all, I wasn’t someone who depended on his parents: I lived three hours away from the family home, they were on the road traveling in their caravan before Dad died, and I’d been living independently for a long time.
Also, it’s just a logical way: children tend to experience the death of their parents.
I knew beforehand that I would be sad when my parents died, but I didn’t believe it would create a ripple effect or a personal crisis.
So, that’s awkward. But I guess you never know until it happens to you.
I underestimated that I would seek Dad’s advice on this sudden career question I ran into. I would never follow his advice (I was never very good at doing what I was told), but I would ask his opinion.
I underestimated the little things that would hit me with such force of sadness. Memories of the last time I had Christmas with my father, when we ended up fighting; we were meant to have a happier Christmas together after that. That for the first time I walked into my parents’ house without hearing Dad’s voice calling, “Hi, Poppet!” will take my breath away.
I certainly didn’t expect that, a few winters later, I’d still be floating around and looking for a new anchor.
Megan Blandford is a freelance writer and author of I’m Fine (and other lies).
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