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00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 3
20 Plays1 year ago
Sharon shares the most beautiful stories of caring for her mum Joyce through the last stage of life and speaks openly about her challenges as a leader and business owner through this time.
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Transcript
Introduction and Early Life
00:00:00
Speaker
Thank you Sharon for carving out a little bit of time in a very hectic day to have a chat about your experience caring for your mum. Who was she? What was she like? Oh gosh Melissa, what a lovely opportunity. So Joyce Helen Williams, born Joyce Helen Smith. She was born in Scotland of a very young second wife, Constance Funnell, and a man who was a Kingsguard. So by all accounts he should have been of good standing. According to what I've heard, she was found in a cupboard when she was six,
00:00:38
Speaker
and put into care in a children's home. She'd been abused. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and therefore she was brought up in a children's home, born in Scotland, but transferred for some reason to a children's home in Coventry.
Marriage and Family Life
00:00:54
Speaker
So she was then fostered out by wealthy elderly parents when she was about 12. So I then got pictures of her in a big house riding a horse, but very elderly parents, Alice, Turner who I always called old granny. Not really very nice term now but back in the day it was acceptable. I think she was respected and safe but not necessarily did she feel any great love. After school she went back to be a nurse at the children's home she was brought up
00:01:25
Speaker
in so she was a ah mother of the children's home she was brought up in and the first weekend she went abroad to Spain she met my father and they married probably a year or so later having only spent 10 weekends together from Coventry to London. So interesting the setup of that start on the rest of her life and And then how she parented my sister and I and how she lived her life, but she was happy, complex, vivacious, intelligent. And when I look back, I can't really believe she was as ma amazing as she was having had that start. Did she share that with you as you were growing up?
Challenges of Parenthood
00:02:09
Speaker
Did she talk too you much about the childhood? A little. We got thrown small grabs and I never really
00:02:20
Speaker
knew whether they were imaginary or whether they were true. I never really got the whole picture and also I don't think as a child really wanted to know that picture. You don't want to know what your parents have been through that was unpleasant or maybe it was just the timing of when she said things that I didn't find easy. Granny died when I was about 16, 17 I think, maybe a bit older and she lived in an old people's home and I didn't see her more than maybe once a year because travel was so difficult, mum didn't drive
00:02:57
Speaker
Trains were expensive. Mum was a single mother. She and Dad divorced when I was six. So there wasn't much money. So yes, interesting times. Very interesting history. And you and your mum were really close, weren't you? I've seen some beautiful photos of you and your mum and your kids. And yeah, there there seems to be a lot of love. Yes, there was. And a lot of complexity, a lot of love, a lot of neediness, a lot of guilt, a lot of power, a lot of control, and then great freedom and emancipation. And like Mum always used to say, get the education you that that you need to have the choice to either
00:03:39
Speaker
um sweep roads or be a doctor.
Life as a Single Mother
00:03:42
Speaker
ah She said, I don't care what you decide. I want you to be happy, but I want you to get the education for either. Then there was someone that was going through a terrible divorce, had her own insecurities, was getting up every day doing a very big job. She was head of personnel always in factories. So Nestle, Lion's Maid, she ran recruitment agencies. So she had a powerful job in the day and then came home to my sister and I, barely able to pay bills. Evidently, my father very rarely paid maintenance, having lived in a big house with mum and dad. And then when the divorce came through, we went to this tiny little masonette. My children went back and looked at it and said they couldn't believe anybody actually lived there. So
00:04:27
Speaker
Appearances. Mum was always very glamorous. The reality was hard and tough. We didn't have, for example, a television. We didn't have a telephone for a long time. She didn't drive and hope different. That 70s 80s existence in London with a single mum and then dad used to pick us us up in his jacks and take us to his boat for the day. I think I don't think a lot of people understand now how solitary a woman was and and how When a woman had children, the children were very much hers, not the couples. As your mum got older, and and I'm thinking about the last couple of years of of her life, and I know you were both here in Australia, what were some of the things that were most important to her as she was getting older?
Joyce's Health Decline
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, mommy was complex. She had a little dog who she adored, who passed away, who became the focus and center of her life. She also loved me beyond anything and was hugely proud of me. That love showed itself in service, in her doing things for me, in her wanting to be with me. She did have a period of segregation from us over in misunderstanding. that was perpetuated by ah a friendship group that she had at the time and I think she was very sorry we just kept loving her through all that for those couple of years where she wasn't really in touch with us and we just kept loving her in the end she came back and then I think she probably realized what a nut she'd been and we made up for it. we but I basically then decided to do quarterly holidays
00:06:04
Speaker
every three months we'd go away and have a weekend. Rather than putting money into super, I put money into those and made sure that we probably did an awful lot of very spectacular things for about two years where my three children and their partners and I and mum would go away and just have time for that whole weekend. And so we did lots of lovely things with her. And I think that last five years of her life, she would up in heaven now, she'd say, yes, we did have a wonderful last five years. She was in pain, she had a lot of complicated health issues but she had the great power of being a children's home veteran and a single mum of being able to get people to do just what she wanted. People would fall in love with mum and go ah bend over backwards to help her and I'm not suggesting that she didn't have all the health issues but there were lots of people around helping her and that was quite hard as a daughter never knowing
00:06:59
Speaker
when she was really in trouble or whether I was needed, whether I was needed or whether I wasn't. We did do a lot for her, my children and I, and she had breast cancer in her last five years and got the all clear in that was what was so terrible in July 21. She got the all clear for breast cancer and Within six weeks, she looked a bit yellow and we started going to appointments and bone cancer was diagnosed, then liver cancer, and she died on October the 12th. So from July the 28th with the all clear of breast cancer to August the 28th when we got diagnosed with bone cancer, she was gone September, you know, eight weeks, 10 weeks later.
00:07:44
Speaker
and And she and I always knew we were on borrowed time, and I knew that we, that's why we were doing these fabulous weekends. So we knew we were on borrowed time, but that last ending was so fast. And I knew about the bone cancer before she did. The doctors rung me and said, do you want us to tell her or not? And I said, no, tell her, let her know. And she turned to the doctor and said, oh, oh gosh, okay. I picked her out of her little flat and took her to Manly. And she literally sat looking out at the sea. So we would get up at 6 a.m., watch the sunrise, and I could watch her face watching the ocean. And we'd have a cup of tea and a couple of donkey biscuits. And then we'd go on our day, Kara might turn up, people might come and visit, not many. She'd listen to me working
00:08:44
Speaker
She might wave at my clients on the Zoom calls. And then I put a post up, which was unusual and took a bit of thinking. I put a post up on my LinkedIn and Instagram that we were looking for rainbows. We'd had some bad news. And then what happened was because mum was at so many work things over the years and so proud of me. we had flowers turn up from all sorts of people every day that the flat became like a florist it was actually really beautiful because it became like a celebration that last 8 weeks of her life and she just got lots of love from people that she may even only have met once and that was lovely Melissa because the pictures I've got of her in your
00:09:29
Speaker
ah we've we've known each other quite a while now and you'll remember all the photos of her just she was surrounded by flowers and why would you send flowers at the wake in the funeral she had them all in those last last eight weeks and the vicar came people came her last meal was my friend Michael turning up with oysters, prawns, and her last mouthful was actually an oyster and a prawn and a tipple of champagne. I think probably the biggest blessing, and you'll feel this from your own experience, is that she was at home with me.
00:10:10
Speaker
I've heard threads of that story before, but I don't think I'd appreciated how fast that all happened for you and your mum and your family. how How did you manage to keep her at home? What did you have to talk about and plan for? And how was that for you as her daughter and her primary carer?
Caring Through the Final Days
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think for me, it was a privilege. For me, it was. not knowing what was going to happen. I had no idea I was going to lose her in eight weeks. I thought it might be months um or maybe even a year. So I was looking at a future. I wasn't looking at eight weeks. I was looking at the best care for her, making sure I was calling people, trying to understand what the doctors were saying, the conflicting advice, knowing that I would make different decisions to she was making decisions. She was on a lot of medication. I wouldn't have chosen that way. She had doctors that had been with her forever who knew her.
00:11:03
Speaker
who were almost like daughters and sons who were advising her. And I had to make sure that I didn't imprint my views on it and that I let her have the ending that she wanted, or not the ending, the treatment that she wanted. Had no idea I was gonna lose her in eight weeks and was thinking more of the fear of losing her to an old people's home. She actually ended up going into a palliative care 48 hours before she died, which is extraordinary. And I was with her in palliative care, lying next to her in that in that period. And there were people in there that had been in there waiting to die for six months.
00:11:45
Speaker
And I thought, oh my gosh, how lucky am I? yeah This is all so fast. You had all those weeks at home with all that love and all those flowers. That's a really beautiful outcome. I'm so happy that it worked out that way for all of you. Yes, Melissa, what a privilege, what a joy, what a tragedy. what a nightmare but she and I were together at the last minute and my daughters came in, my son chose not to respectively, but my daughters came in on that last Tuesday at about 10 o'clock, 9 o'clock in the morning and she died at 3 so they were beside her stroking her, the music was playing candles,
00:12:26
Speaker
So that was it was ah a very wonderful end for a woman who was ending with the only family she had alive were around her and on the Sunday She'd started, vo this is too much information, but she'd started vomiting on a Saturday night and Michael and I laughed. We said, oh my gosh, we've given her a bad prawn or an oyster. And one has to find humor in those moments. And in the morning I called my sister-in-law who's a nurse, my ex-sister-in-law, my beautiful friend Sue.
00:12:57
Speaker
And I said, what do I do? She said, call the ambulance. In the end, I called a whole load of numbers, palliative care, all the doctors. It was a Sunday morning and I got paramedics out. They basically stabilized her, put her on a drip and said, she probably needs to come into hospital now. And I said, I've actually got my children coming over for a barbecue and to see her altogether. Could we please still have that? And then I'll call you tonight and by some miracle, palliative care rang me and they happened to be working that day and a nurse came out and she sat and talked to mum. Mum wasn't able to eat.
00:13:33
Speaker
We were able to have those last cuddles and the palliative care nurse said, you're going to have to get used to the idea you're going to lose her to palliative care in the next two weeks. An hour later in the next week, half an hour later in the next few days, then it was Sharon, because she stayed with us for about four hours. You need to let her go now. She needs
Conversations on Grief
00:13:52
Speaker
to go to hospital now. So the paramedics came back at six, seven in the evening, picked her up and she went to hospital. So I packed bags thinking I was leaving my flat for weeks, months, I had charges, I had laptops, I had screens in the car, I packed everything up, I rang people to look after the plants and I thought that I would be with her in palliative care for months or or weeks and yet
00:14:19
Speaker
When I arrived there on Monday morning, she was a different person. She was in shutdown. She was absolutely in shutdown and could barely speak. She could smile. She could recognize me, but she was absolutely in shutdown. And she went in into shutdown from that Monday morning. to Tuesday afternoon. Exhausting to anyone listening. Exhausting. Emotionally exhausting. Practically exhausting and still happening very fast. Yeah and physically exhausting i and I remember I'd been with her in for four hours as she was dying and I remember thinking I can't eat, can't go to the toilet, I can't leave her. um When she died I know I'd lost
00:15:09
Speaker
about eight kilos in that eight weeks. So I had lost weight. um But I do think that it was beautiful.
00:15:27
Speaker
Thank you for talking about that with such gentleness and such detail, because you've really painted a picture there of a very precious set of weeks and months. I'm grateful for that. They're not easy things to talk about, are they? No, they're not. And I think that, like, I um i was thinking about this conversation this morning, Melissa, and I was thinking, to anybody out there, it was all violent. I got you too late because, of course, it was the post I put out about Mummy. It was. That you you connected you answered me. And how magical. I think that ended up being two and a half weeks before she died.
00:16:09
Speaker
And yet I feel like we were together for weeks before she died. And your lovely guide spoke to me and I probably only actually had three, four conversations in that time. And I don't know how they just knew what to ask, what to say. It seems so silly to be mourning or being upset about the death of your mother or father because nature's cycle is that you will lose your parents. You know, save the grief for when someone God forbid loses or loses a child. But I don't know that there is enough talk about grief.
00:16:44
Speaker
And I reckon I went into at least a three-year depression after that. There's the anticipatory grief as you're caring for someone and you can see their health declining. With all of the uncertainty that you talked about in terms of, I'm not sure how long this will be, this could be months, this could be years, but grief starts all through that process. But then it's a very so very different kind of grief and loss after the person has died, isn't it? Yeah, it is. The shock and the reality of that, even when it is someone who is more elderly and is reaching the end of of their life, they're key relationships and it doesn't make it any less difficult. So I would suggest to anyone going through it or is about to go through it or has been through it to reach out for help. I had no idea how to deal with death
00:17:34
Speaker
And interestingly, two and a half years later, I sat with my father as he died in London. And again, the universe, thank you. What's the chances of me living in Australia and him living in London that I was actually with him? And my half-brother, his eldest son, was next to him on the other side of his bed. So again, we had that beautiful opportunity to be with him. Now, I think that there's people listening that will go, what have you got to worry about? You were with them. that filled of with People listening that weren't with their parents and had to go through terrible pain of losing someone but that they weren't with at the time that they went.
00:18:15
Speaker
And the guilt associated with that and the heartache. So I do have yet that anyone listening, I did have the joy of being with my parents as they passed.
Societal Impacts of Grief
00:18:25
Speaker
But to those of you who haven't forgive yourselves, I do believe all of our loved ones are in a better place. And you say by luck, but it sounds to me like there was careful considered design too, which it's important to acknowledge in you, Sharon, in terms of how you went through that experience with your mum and your dad to be there for both of them. Don't think that is just luck. I think um and that's a measure of who you are and how you approached those situations. I think.
00:18:51
Speaker
that more needs to be done to help people cope with the grief. Because my managing director, Sam, who I absolutely adore, she said, I've seen you go through cancer. I've seen you go through traumatic times with your health. She said, and when you I was watching your mum and and you, she said, that's when you were not available. The downside of running my company, going through that, the downside of cap caring for my children, the downside of my own health. I absolutely had to go into counselling. I absolutely had to get some help. I actually had to find myself again without my mum. In the work that we're doing, we think a lot about the frequency of ah the death of a loved one and the grief and loss. This is happening between three and 4,000 times every week.
00:19:41
Speaker
just across this little country. and And I can't think of another life event that happens with that level of frequency that operates in such a void of support. We have incredibly sophisticated support systems and services for things that happen in life far less frequently than this one. yeah yeah i mean Look at childbirth, look at teenage, look at toddlerdom, look at marriage, look at divorce, look at menopause. But this is something that takes leaders and business people and it takes people who are in pivotal places in our society out. It just literally decimates. I had the terrible news last week that one of my very much loved clients whose son is at war and and right at the front line,
00:20:28
Speaker
has lost his other son to a bike accident at home and the other day I sat next to a man and a wife they'd lost their 18 year old son to a as skiing accident three years ago and she still can't get out of bed and then the next morning I was talking to one of my girlfriends who is a perionatal psychologist and she'd been in hospital that day when she'd heard the scream of one of her patients when the lady was told that a 35-week-old baby had died in utero. There was just 24 hours, not even 24 hours, of three stories of lives being changed and the ongoing productivity and hit to Australia and our economy and the wellbeing of our families and our loved ones. I cannot support Violet enough in its
00:21:18
Speaker
quest to have more help and understanding, even with knowing what to say to someone who's just experienced grief. There's so much evidence around the impact on people in these caregiving roles. Think about the lost income, the missed career opportunities, the out-of-pocket expenses as you're going through that journey of caring for someone and then the absenteeism, the presenteeism, the lost productivity when you're dealing with grief and loss. And that can be for an extended period of time after their death. Unfortunately, we've got a
00:21:52
Speaker
you know very meagre two days of compassionately within the current system. So ah that there's a lot of work to be done. And I'm thinking Sharon about everything you've you've talked about and the experience with your mum and also with your dad. We're facing an ageing population. there will be millions of baby boomers who are caring for elderly parents today or if they're not doing that today, they will be in the years ahead. And I just wondered if you had some words of wisdom. What what would you want those people to know that might have helped you a couple of years back? Have the conversations with your loved ones as to how they want their end to be. Get the finances sorted so that's easy because it's quite cruel
00:22:37
Speaker
of parents to leave their children with not with that sorted. My mum had very little, so there was very little sort out, but even what there was, it was just really hard. I, for example, have my children on every bill. They can ring the gas company, electricity company, and the gas electricity company will talk to them because they are on the the the holder. So my children's, one of my children's names is on everything. Yeah. So we call that SADMIN. It's that very sad and unavoidable administration that is so much a part of this.
00:23:13
Speaker
but Yes, so I've actually done that and I've told them all and they just miss me but they have no idea what it's going to be like when they get through to try and even to the banks and the banks won't talk to them until probate comes and probate is months and months and meanwhile they've got to pay bills and they can't access money. It's really difficult and difficult for the businesses too. and The good businesses that are doing this work of course want a better experience for people as well. They can see the level of despair and the complexity in their customers. I think we've got to think about this from both sides. but
00:23:47
Speaker
Absolutely. Conversations
Preparing for Loss
00:23:49
Speaker
and wishes, money, and then, yes, understand that however difficult your parents are, and I did have a good understanding of this, which I'm thankful for, is however challenging they are. When they're gone, all of that will be forgotten, and all you'll remember is the love and them ah the On the whole, when you lose someone dear to you, you remember the good times, not the bad, and you can't ever get that time back, so do slow down and make time for that and I know I did, I know I wanted to salute and respect mum however challenging she was and let's face it all parents are challenging and all children are challenging. And I'm sure as parents we are too in our unique and perplexing ways. Exactly goodness me nobody's perfect. Thank you for bringing warmth and light and such authenticity to a difficult topic
00:24:46
Speaker
I'm really grateful for everything you've shared. I hope it helps somebody else. I hope anyone listening will know that we've had a conversation that was heartfelt and and totally honest and open. And look, that's how raw it is. And if anyone out there can gain anything from our last 45 minutes, then isn't that what we're trying to do? Isn't that what this is about? Yeah, lovely. Thank you, Sharon.