Caring in Crisis: How An Expert On Ageing Got Toasted | Gohar Yazdabadi | Club Sandwich
She found out she was a carer from a line buried in her dad's hospital discharge papers, not from anyone asking her. This week's guest lived the exact crisis she'd spent her career trying to fix.
Content note: this episode discusses the deaths of both of the guest's parents within six months of each other, terminal illness, carer burnout, grief, and systemic failures in aged care support. For support: Carer Gateway 1800 422 737. Griefline 1300 845 745. Lifeline 13 11 14, 24/7.
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In this episode:
The Conversation: Gohar Yazdabadi, CEO of Council on the Ageing (COTA) NSW, joins Sarah Macdonald to talk about losing both her parents within six months of each other this year, her father to a brain tumour and stroke, her mother to ovarian cancer and leukaemia, while raising two young daughters and running a full-time advocacy organisation. She didn't realise she was a carer until a hospital discharge note said "daughter is experiencing extreme carer stress." Covers the year-long wait for an approved home-care package that meant her dad couldn't be safely discharged from hospital, being refused compassionate-grounds after-school care, and the administrative burden, estates, probate, emptying a 35-year family home, that continued after both deaths.
This Week's Hack: If a system, a form or a person finally names what you're carrying, whether it's "carer stress" or something else, let that be the moment you ask for help, even if it feels too late or too small. The acknowledgement doesn't change anything on its own, but it's permission to stop pretending you're fine.
Send this to: anyone juggling two ageing parents at once, or anyone who's ever had their caring role questioned or dismissed by a system that's meant to help.
A moment that stays: "No part or period of a relationship makes that relationship or defines that relationship," Gohar says. The hardest twelve months of caring for her parents wasn't what defined her whole relationship with them, and she's consciously working to remember the joy, not just the crisis.
Meet the regular Clubbers:
Melissa Reader — CEO of Vera and expert on Australia's ageing crisis.
Jo Lamble — Clinical psychologist specialising in guilt and family dynamics.
Dr Ginni Mansberg — GP and women's health advocate.
Dr Stephanie Ward — Geriatrician helping you understand the ageing brain.
Kerry Milligan — Gogglebox star bringing humour and honesty.
About Gohar Yazdabadi: CEO, Council on the Ageing (COTA) NSW, the peak advocacy body for older people in NSW. Also this week: Gohar features in an ABC Compass special on the sandwich generation, presented by Sarah Macdonald, airing this weekend 8-9 Aug 2026 (on iView after).
Put The Kettle On, Vera's free conversation guide: the five questions worth asking your ageing mum or dad, at putthekettleon.com.au.
Our FACES campaign: Last year, 4,812 older Australians died waiting for the aged care they'd already been approved for, about 13 a day. Vera started FACES to count the people waiting, and count the ones we lose, every quarter, published. If you're sitting in that wait with your mum or dad right now, add your name at vera.guide/faces.
This episode was supported by Australian Unity, home health and care services: australianunity.com.au/clubsandwich.
With thanks to NSW Trustee and Guardian. Search NSW Trustee and Guardian, or call 1300 10 20 30.
Vera is your candid companion as you care for an ageing parent. Have a look at https://vera.guide.
Credits:
Sarah Macdonald – Host + Executive Producer
Melissa Reader – Commissioning Editor, Executive Producer + Clubber
Justin McArthur – Executive Producer + Editor, for P. Zinner Podcasts (https://pzinner.com.au)
Thanks and kudos to Sean Wayland for our theme music Club Sandwich — hear more at https://seanwayland.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Club Sandwich is recorded on Gadigal Land, home of the EORA nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Always was, always will be.
Club Sandwich is brought to you by Australian Unity Home Health and Care, helping Australian families keep their parents well, independent and at home for longer. Visit australianunity.com auclubsandwich. Club Sandwich is brought to you by New South Wales Trustee and Guardian. Helping families across New South Wales make a will, plan ahead and protect the people they love. Search New South Wales Trustee and Guardian or call 1300-10-2030. Welcome to Club Sandwich. Now, this is a podcast for you. If you feel when life is going well, you need to really, really enjoy it because you don't know when the next cris is around the corner. My name is Sarah McDonald. My current crisis is my dog Shaggy, who now has full blown dementia. And we've had a couple of falls in the family of mothers this week as well. This week on the podcast, you are going to meet somebody who has lived this from a work point of view, but also from a life point of view. Goha Yazbadi is the CEO of the New South Wales Council of the Aging. And recently her entire family family life developed into a crisis and a lot of grief and a lot of clash that is the Sandwich generation. And we're talking to Koha, especially this week because on Compass on ABC tv, there's going to be a special episode that I'm presenting about the sandwich generation and you will see her as part of that episode. Now, if you're listening to this, after the 8th or 9th of August, it will be up on Iview and you can check it out there. But today, a little bit more of the experience for Goha and we're going to dive a bit deeper into what happened with her and what she's learned from the experience to take into her job. Hello, welcome to Club Sandwich.
Thanks so much for having me.
Sarah, I've wanted to have you on for a while, but life's been a bit intense, hasn't it?
Just a little.
And this is what happens in the sandwich generation.
You go along and then that's exactly it. Yeah.
So let's start with telling us about your family. You have two young girls.
That's right, Sophia and Hannah, three and five. Hannah is in daycare and Sophia just started her first year of school this year, which has been wonderful.
Yeah. They're divine creatures at a beautiful time of life.
Absolutely. They're a lot of joy. There's a lot of joy. Yeah.
And tell us about your parents.
So my mother and father both passed away this year. My father passed away in February and then my mother passed away in April before that. My dad had some complications from a brain tumor that he had and he had a stroke and my mother had. And he's had this brain tumor for I think about seven or eight years now. My mother had ovarian cancer for nine years and towards the end of her life, probably the last six months, she developed acute leukemia as a result of the treatment for the ovarian cancer.
So they both had periods of ill health.
Yes.
And then was there a slow and steady decline or was it just all came off a kind of crisis?
It all turned into a crisis. So probably for both of them, that crisis was about six months before they passed away. Prior to that, they were actually the primary caregiver for my oldest daughter Sophia. Sophia live full time. She, they, they were her primary caregivers pretty much from. She came home from hospital to that house.
Really?
Yes. So it was during COVID She came home from hospital to my parents house. We were living, my husband and I were living there because we were building our house. Covid hit, things got delayed and then when it was time to move, Sophia didn't really want to come along.
She was like, I'm staying with my. What did she call them?
She called them Ladan and Ahmed. She called them by their first name.
Okay, I'm staying here. How old was she then?
She was by that time about one and a half. And she just wasn't having a bar of coming home with us? No, she was, she was staying with grandma and grandpa and that's it.
And you were like, okay, it worked well. It worked well for you.
Right.
I can understand. Right. That grandparent grandchild relationship is beautiful. I'm looking at my watch half the time. They're not. There's ice creams galore. There's plenty of time. Yeah, it's a beautiful way to grow up.
Wow. Yeah. So she was living with them and how did that work with the family? Like when would you all, would you all be together often or would she come to you sometimes?
Or Fridays to Sundays? She'd come to us. But by Sunday evening she was ready to go back to my parents. But then again by Friday she was ready to come back to us as well. So I think there was a nice balance there of what was best for Sophia.
Yeah. And how did that work with her sister and her?
Look, I think it worked well because they've got a two year age difference. I think it gave Sophia the space that she needed while she still had a sibling. So still got that one on one attention during the week, but at the same time on the weekends when we were all together, that time for the two of them to bond as well.
That's just lovely. And I think a lot of people would think, well, that's strange. But that was that, I mean, was that cultural for you or.
It was. It's not unusual, but it's not usual either. So it would still. For my mother's friends, it would still, you know, they'd still be a bit surprised think that it was for so long, but yeah.
Oh, how beautiful though. Like it is lovely. And it meant you have this very demanding job.
Yes.
Did it help with you in the workplace?
It's the way that I was able to, to do the work that I was able to do with two young children with an age gap that, that small one after another, without their help, my husband and I would not be able to have advanced our careers. That just would not have happened.
Yeah, yeah. And I want to come back to your. Well, no, tell us about what your job entails because this is all one big messy sandwich, isn't it, really?
It is, it is. So about two years ago I started with Council on the Aging New South Wales and we're the peak body in New South Wales representing people over the age of 50. We're a membership based organization and we are really what, what we essentially do is advocate for those rights of people over the age of 50. We make sure government is listening to us and through us, the voice of the older person when they're making public policy or making decisions that are going to affect older people.
And, and part of that role is making sure they have agency and are still valued members of society. Which your parents were as they were caring for your daughter.
Absolutely. My dad was still, still working one day a week and I think mum and dad's unpaid carers role, and really to some degree unrecognized as well, was the very reason and is the very backbone in which so many people in my generation are able to have the advantages that they do.
Yeah. The grandparent care, it's. It's like the sandwich generation. It's holding up an entire workplace economy.
Let me tell you, Sarah, the government is getting a very, very good deal out of grandparent carers.
It is, yeah. Yeah. And they were not just, you know, a couple of hours a day, more than a couple of days a week. So they both became very unwell at the same Time really a decline in both their conditions.
Absolutely. So we had moved to be closer to them about two years ago and then about a year ago I moved in with them with Hannah as well as things had started to decline. So it turned into a very multi generational household and a very full household very quickly. So I kind of feel the care ratio was 1 to 4. Slowly getting into that, into that sort of land of me being the primary carer for four people in the one house.
Yeah. So it kind of flipped very quickly.
Very quickly.
So you were caring for your mum, your dad and both your daughters in a small house together as they were becoming increasingly unwell.
That's right.
While you had this demanding job.
Exactly.
And let's talk about the hospital system at that stage because they were going in and out of hospital and treatment. So what did that mean for you in terms of them having to go and have appointments at hospital? Your mum was needing blood transfusions.
Mum needed blood transfusions every two weeks. There were for both of them, oncologists, involved, haematologists, geriatricians, that's, you know, their GP visits and that's multiple doctors for each parent and multiple appointments for each parent. So, you know, at some point you kind of feel like your life is this taxiing around of people at different times to make sure you're picking up the right person, dropping them off, dropping a kid off to daycare, picking up someone from school. Oh, I'm still in the middle of a blood transfusion. Am I going to make it? Where am I going to be in the next five minutes? It's just a schedule of, I guess you don't feel it at the time, but looking back onto was a jam packed week of going from one place to another to make sure everybody's immediate needs. And these aren't, you know, long, like non immediate. These are all immediate things that need to happen. All of those needs are being met.
Yeah, we're not talking about spiritual needs or getting the reader done from no school. We're talking about basic needs.
Exactly right.
And you said you couldn't think about it at the time. Can you think about now how you were feeling at that time? Like how was the cortisol level churning through your body at that time?
It was wildly out of control, widely out of control because there's so many things on top of it. It's the stress of the immediate. Is everybody okay? It's the stress of thinking about the future. Will everybody be okay? It's then on top of that the lack of sleep because you're trying to fit so much into every single day that you have into every waking moment. And those waking moments become longer and longer and the sleep becomes less and less. So you're on this cortisol drive, you're fueled by cortisol.
And then you can't sleep anyway because that's still churning through your system as what you have to do tomorrow. And you just kind of in that absolutely front part of your brain where you just can't deal with the rest.
No. And what did I forget today?
Yep. And then sitting bolt upright and making a note of it to do the next morning.
Exactly.
And one of the doctors recognized this with the care of your parents, didn't they?
Yeah. Dad was in hospital and he was being discharged from hospital. And I remember getting home and opening up the discharge papers as you do and sort of sitting down and starting to read it. And in the second or third line, there was a line there that said, daughter is experiencing extreme carer stress. And it really hit me then because I hadn't realised at that time that I was a carer. It's very bizarre thing to think.
What do you mean? How can you not realize you're okay?
It just doesn't. It just creep, it almost creeps in so slowly but so quickly that you don't have time to sit down and think, well, what is my actual role in all of this? I'm not, I'm not. I don't have, you know, a form that I filled out that tells me I'm a carer. I don't have, you know, a full time job that tells me that I'm like, there is nothing that actually signals to you in, in our interactions with anyone that you are actually a carer. So.
And yet you've got a mum with cancer, a dad with a brain tumor, two very young children and a full time job. Yes, but you didn't think you're a carer.
Did not think about it in that way at all. At all.
Because it's just what we do.
Exactly. And you see, you see that. Not just, I think especially, you know, you bump into other people who are doing the same thing. So you think there is nothing special about what I'm doing because there are so many other people doing this as well and carrying this along and making it happen. But then you kind of realize they're all making it happen because they have to. I think once you're out of it, you realize that this is, this is what so many people are doing. And it's so unfortunate that it is almost the expectation. And it is the expectation on women, and it is the expectation on not a certain part of women, but generally across the board. It doesn't matter what your background might be, doesn't matter if you're working full time, if you're not working full time. Doesn't. These things don't play a factor into it. You just find yourself one day waking up and realizing you're a carer.
And so what when you read that? Carer under extreme stress. Couple of pennies dropped for you?
Absolutely. I just burst into tears. I just burst into tears because it was the first time that there had been any acknowledgement of it. But then I was left with, okay, and now what? And I realized that just because it was written down on a piece of paper, there was going to be no change from having read it to not having read it from someone having typed it on the computer or not have typed it on the computer. The system was exactly the same whether or not that was acknowledged or not acknowledged. There was no change and there wouldn't be a change.
So you're crying to be seen. You're crying with frustration because it didn't matter that you were finally seen and you're crying that it was acknowledged that you're under extreme stress and.
And it was wild that There is an actual term that the medical profession uses for this carer stress. There is a term for it.
Oh, good, we get a diagnosis.
Exactly.
Thank you.
Exactly. Exactly. So it's.
But there's no pill for it. No.
So it's not as though this isn't known. It's not as though it's not talked about. It's not as though it's not observed. All of those things happen. It's just the next part of it isn't there?
And was there any. You need help or here's how to get some help, or did you think about getting help?
I didn't have time to think about getting hurt. It's such a struggle to get help for everyone around you and without getting help for everybody around you, there is no space for help for you. There's no space for that.
Did you have an aged care assessment or anything? Any help for your parents in the home at all?
So they had all of the assessments done, but packages take a year. So when, by the time things turned really awful for dad and assessments and things like that were happening a year on a waiting list before you could get anything. A year from when the government says to you or this assessor says to you, yes, you are in need. You should have helped you then wait a year. There is nothing else like it in our systems where we say you need assistance. That it. That assistance is dire, actually.
You can't put the brain tumor on hold for a year to get the help.
No.
Or your mum's blood cancer.
No.
And even. And he was in hospital and you kind of. You were part of that whole crisis. I mean, what you're experiencing is sort of all these policy blocks writ large, isn't it?
Absolutely.
Because your dad couldn't get a bed out of hospital and he couldn't go home.
He couldn't go home. There was no support at home, Paki. There was. There was nothing there to be able to make sure that if dad came out of hospital that he would be safe. And that was really tricky. That was really, really, really tricky because you just feel in that moment that your family situation is just a burden on everyone in every sense of it. You know, you are a burden on the system is how you feel, but you also feel betrayed by that system. Really betrayed. There's a social contract that we enter into where we say, when we're younger, and this is the rhetoric you hear from so many people, I pay my tax, taxes now to be looked after when I'm older. But that social contract has now, it does not exist anymore on the other end of it.
It's not just frayed and broken, it's gone.
It's gone. We talk about crisis. Our aged care system is in crisis. Our system of aging is in crisis. It is. I don't think it could get any worse than it is at the moment.
Oh, yeah, it's going to get worse because the population's aging and no one wants to know about it.
You're absolutely right.
Are we being gaslit on a major level right now? Like, we have no idea what's coming, do we?
You're completely right. Actually, it will get worse. 10,000 beds a year is what we need at the moment.
Yeah.
800 is what we're getting.
Yeah. We had that in our episode about aged care. We need 10,000 new beds a year. We're building 800. Do the maths, people. But behind those figures are stories like your father. Stories like you completely so stressed out that even a doctor could write it down but not have any suggestions for you because the system is such a mess.
Absolutely.
Goha has lost both her parents six months apart. And she told us something we don't say out loud enough, that when a parent Dies. The caring doesn't even stop. It turns into paperwork, estates, wills, emptying out a house of 35 years living, all while you're still grieving. New South Wales Trustee and Guardian help families exactly get through this period, so you're not doing probate and grief at the same time alone. Search New South Wales Trustee and Guardian or call 1300-10-2030. That story from Goha is still sitting with me. Her dad discharged from hospital with nowhere safe to go because the home care package now known as support at home he'd already been approved for was still a year away. A year if you are the one juggling appointments, school pickups and a full time job like Goha was. Australian Unity's home health and care is built exactly for that gap. A local team who can actually be there while you're waiting on the system, not after it's too late. Visit australianunity.com auclubsandwich 13 older Australians will
die today waiting for the aged care funding they need, they deserve. And they were already approved for 13 every day. That's almost 5,000 last year. It's three and a half times the national road toll and no one counts them. That number only came out because a senator happened to ask the right question in the right room. And behind every one of those people stands hundreds and thousands still waiting. Funding approved but never released. So we have started Faces. It's a campaign for families to ask the government for one honest count published every quarter for everyone to see. Because you can't fix what you can't measure. Join us, add your name to the campaign at Vera Guide Faces and put your face to the wait.
And then in the middle of this, you did try and reach out to get help for after school care for your daughter, didn't you?
Absolutely.
So at the other end of the system you were like, maybe I could get some help after school, possibly then
I wouldn't have to rush home for every appointment. Wouldn't have to rush home in the middle of a blood transfusion. And I did. And it's very. The thing that I have to say, Sarah, is that when you're in that situation it is extraordinarily difficult to ask for help. It's not an easy thing to do. It takes you really that frog in the boiling water and you're at that point where you just have to ask for help. And I did. I asked the after school care provider, which was a community parent run daycare provider for after school care provider for help. And I was asked, asked for evidence I produced all of the evidence that they wanted. Then I was brought into a meeting and I think there was five people to the meeting and I had to take Sophia and Hannah along with me because it was at 7 o' clock at night. But I went along and then I was told, well, why didn't, why did you enrol your child here? We have a two year waiting period for daycare. Why did you do that? And then they said, well, why don't you take your child to another daycare after school care? And I said, well there's a school up the road that has daycare. And mind you, this was two weeks into Sophia having started kindy. It was, you know, when I look back on it, it was a series of questions of why I was inadequate, why had I allowed this to happen.
How could you have allowed your parents to get both get major health decline at the same time without knowing this was coming and asking for childcare?
And I got a letter back from them saying we're not going to give you compassionate grounds for a place in daycare. And they said, they said the reason that you had, that I had applied for compassionate grounds was because I wanted consistent care for Sophia. So they ignored the entire basis of everything I had written to them, everything that I had said to them, which was that I was a carer. They erased that aspect of me. And you know, it's really hard being
a carer because you don't just recognize you're a carer and then it got arise.
Exactly. And you're so invisible. You're so invisible in, in so many aspects and then to become invisible again is very difficult.
And then what happened? Both of your parents died very close
to each other, very close to one another. So dad died in February and then mum passed away in April. That was very, very difficult time and still is a very difficult time, Sarah, because it was reaching that inevitable end of caring, which is a very awful place I think for everybody on a caring journey. I think that looming over your shoulder in all of this is that it's all going to end one day and it doesn't end with joy, it ends with grief and loss. That's very difficult.
It's so difficult because it also means you feel you can't ask for help when you're in the thick of it because this is what you have to do because you know it's going to end in grief and loss and how can you be so ungrateful to this parent that loved you and looked after you? So it's all Tied up with this emotional kind of power, isn't it? That is so hard. And there you were. And then. And to lose them both so quickly is just so.
It's very awful, traumatic. To lose a parent at any time is really difficult. To lose them one after another so quickly is heartbreaking. It's very heartbreaking. And it's so much change in your life so quickly and it suddenly. It's very funny because I was caring for them at the end of it, but when I lost my parents, I felt I lost my safety net.
Even though you were their safety net?
Even though I was there, you're still their daughter, they're still your parents. And somehow still in all of that and with losing them, you still feel that that protection and that safety net goes along with them. And life for Sofia and Hannah and Sophia, especially losing her primary caregiver, it's a very difficult thing to navigate as a family. Yeah.
So you're very aware of her loss and the big ructions in their life. Losing their grandparents that they were so close to. And you're grieving for them. Have you had time to grieve for yourself? You're probably still really in the thick of it.
Still in the thick of it because you still have. It's funny, funny thing, post death is not an easy experience in Australia. Past the loss, past the grief, dealing with estates, dealing with your own, you know, situation that you've created around your caring situation, unpacking all of that, you almost feel like you're restarting things all over again. The administrative burden doesn't end. It continues on and continues on in a big way. And that's all very confronting. Emptying out your parents house of 35 years.
Oh my God, you're doing all that already too. All of that because you're moving out and you're going to move back into your house and are you doing that so then you can kind of restart like.
I'm planning on taking a couple of weeks off.
A couple of weeks?
A couple of weeks off.
You need six months, I think so,
but we'll start with a couple of weeks.
Sarah, after you move again.
After I move.
Huge ructions in your life, death of your parents, the trauma of them dying, all of that care, doing it on your own. Your husband, meanwhile, was trying to work and earn some income and you were still trying to do your job to the best of your abilities, which you have been doing.
Thank you.
Sarah, how has it changed how you've done your job as the CEO of the council of the Ageing for New South Wales. What new lens do you look at that work through now?
It has been an incredibly eye opening experience because I think you can always think that you understand a situation but you don't really until you're in the thick of that situation. And what it has really told me is I always knew that older people weren't the forefront or priority for government or for our systems. But what it's shown me is that by not putting older people, older people primarily a priority, what it means is that the sandwich generational ones who pick that up and it's just as much them that we need to support if we want to have good outcomes for older people, it is utterly and totally key to that. So what it's made me do is really step back and look at the ecosystem more thoroughly when we're talking about a piece of policy. It's an. It's the older person but what supports the older person, what's there to keep them going. And very much a lot of the time it's the sandwich generation and it's
their care, not just caring, but it's also their childcare.
Absolutely.
Their healthcare.
That's right.
So it's all of these systems within. Yes, isn't it?
It is.
And if we're holding the whole system up and those systems within aren't helping us, then the system with looking after our elders fails as well.
It's a clear chain reaction and it is a no brainer brainer when it comes to public policy. It is a no brainer to make carers lives just that little bit easier, to give them just that little bit more space to be able to do what they're really great at.
But there's just so much pain out there. Do you think in policy and politics that is seen because you'll meet a politician, they'll go, oh yeah, I'm caring after. I'm looking after my parent too. And I'm really stressed as well. But how can it translate into policy? Like if you've got kind of ideas of what we can do here to help just a little bit.
Look, I think that there needs to be a formal recognition of unpaid carers in a very formal way and I think that that needs to then translate to other systems as well. We need to have care systems that recognise the unpaid carer in the same way that it looks across the board, so. Exactly. In that childcare and after school hours situation, if there was a really simple public policy that said, you know, in public schools, people with caring responsibilities outside of Children get a priority. They're not difficult, they're not costly, they're simple solutions. But unless we look at everything through the caring lens, the unpaid caring system is going to collapse. It's not sustainable.
And you can get counselling through carers Australia and things such as that, but I think we're in crisis mode. We can't even think about that.
We can't.
We just can't even go there. There isn't actually time to sit down and get counselling sometimes. But it's a useful thing to get afterwards.
Absolutely.
Because as you said, it all ends in grief, it ends in loss.
At some point, carers need to look after themselves and it's just unfortunate that it's often after.
I know, yeah. And we do try and help people on the bottom, you know, we've talked about exercise and all of those sort of things.
But you know what?
For the last two weeks, haven't done anything. Haven't done anything because. Just been so busy. But you just gotta not be hard on yourself. And we do ask people often on this podcast, like, what have you done for yourself this week? And I've even forgotten to ask it in the last few episodes. So now, like, what have you done for yourself this week? Are you trying to put yourself a little bit to the front of your life now?
I am. I'm definitely trying to do that much more now. So even if it's a quiet coffee with my husband while I'm working at home during lunch break, I think even that is a step in the right direction. And I think that's the thing. I think sometimes when we talk about what have you done for yourself, we think that we need to do something really big. We need to plan a holiday or something like that. But the smallest steps are the right ones.
Yeah. Big's too big to even contemplate often, isn't it?
Way too big.
I can't believe now you're going to move on top of all this.
Yes.
Peace be with you. Because that's hell hard right on top of it all. I feel you're piling it all up, but you've been flooded with stress. You've understood, I think now viscerally, the strain that people are under. Yes, but you must miss your parents so greatly.
I miss everything about my parents. I miss calling my mum and telling her. I went on a flight to Orange the other day and it was one of those little airplanes and I got off and I wanted to call my mum and tell her all about it, but there wasn't going to be anyone on the other side. I took my car to the mechanic, which my dad used to do for me, and suddenly I was there by myself at the mechanic, without my dad being there. And it's those small reminders in everyday moments that make it really difficult. It's also sharing milestones. My birthday's coming up and the thought of first birthday without mum and dad is a very difficult thing to think about.
Yeah, there's those moments and then their birthdays and their anniversaries of when they died and it all comes back. But it never leaves anyway.
Right?
It never leaves anyway. And it's just something you're going to live with. But, you know, you did. You did the right thing by them. You cared for them as hell hard that must have been. You did.
Thank you, Sarah, because that's really.
You did a great job.
I think a lot of carers are always thinking about the what ifs and the buts and I could have done more and I should have done more and I left something unturned and things like that. I think they're conversations that are often repeated in people's minds. You know, I think that's part of why the counseling is so important as well. It's not just the grief and loss, but it's the trauma and unpacking that.
Do you have those questions? I could have. Should have.
All the time. All the time. There was, you know, there's a moment that you think I should have slowed down in that moment. I should have taken a bit more time. I should have.
I shouldn't have been so stressed in that moment. I think that with my dad. But you were stressed because it was hell.
Exactly. Exactly.
You can't. You can't wish you were someone else in that moment. You were stressed because you loved them and there was so much going on and you were doing all that for them.
There's one thing I've. I think I've really learned in this time is that no part or period of a relationship makes that relationship or defines that relationship. The last 12 months of what was this very stressful time wasn't what defined my relationship with my. It was part of it for sure, but it didn't. It doesn't make up what it was for the entire time. And I think now something that I've consciously been doing is to remember the good times because it's very easy to forget that they even existed because you're still so caught up in that time when you were caring for them, when everything was so stressful. But there was so much joy in our relationship, there was so much joy in our family, there was so much love and excitement and all of those things. It wasn't just the last year that defines that.
Yeah, you need to look back at those photos of those times and remember them in that stage and age and period. And I think you need to take more than a few weeks off myself. But anyway, I'm not your counsellor, but I do think that if people want to see more about this story, there's so many in this situation. You see it from such a unique perspective on so many ways, but there's so much we all have in common. So thank you so much for talking to us.
Thanks so much for having me.
Sarah so Goha's episode of Club Sandwich is a great one to share with a friend of yours, or perhaps a family member who has gone through a crisis where it all came together in such a terrible way. Or perhaps for someone who's at a calm point where they can listen to it to get ready for these moments, even though you can't really be ready for them, I don't think so. Do send it to a friend or a family member and check out Compass on iview on ABC TV. If you're listening to this before the weekend of the 8th and 9th August, because it will be on ABC TV on the Sunday evening, check it out on iview. Do messages at Club Sandwich, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, check us out on YouTube. We love to hear from you about suggestions for episodes. And remember, you are not in this alone. You have got them and we have got you. Today's episode was supported by New South Wales Trustee and Guardian Wills, power of attorney and enduring guardianship sorted properly so the people you love aren't left guessing. Search New South Wales Trustee and Guardian or call 1300-10-2030. Today's episode was supported by Australian Unity Home Health and Care Proactive local care that helps your parents stay independent and living well at home. Visit australianunity.com.
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