"Grief Is A Wave" | Kerry Milligan: One Year After Emmie | Club Sandwich
Grief doesn't run to the timetable you were handed. A year after her mum Emmie died, Kerry Milligan thought she was managing well. Then she went back to Tasmania with a small plastic container of her mother's ashes, and found out that year one isn't a finish line.
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In this episode:
The Conversation: Sarah and Kerry go back to Tasmania: where Kerry was born, where her ancestors are buried, and where she took one of the three small portions of her mother's ashes she'd kept. Kerry describes being followed around Battery Point by the voices of her dead ancestors, letting Emmie go into the Derwent from the back of the MONA ferry, and the panic that caught up with her underground at MONA soon after. From there: grief as a wave rather than a staircase, the triggers nobody warns you about, and how a kidney stone at 6:45 on a Sunday morning turned a conversation about her mother's death into a conversation about her own.
This Week's Hack: Your advance care directive is no use in a drawer. Lodge a copy with your GP so it's on your medical record, and make sure the person who'd actually drive you to emergency has one too — because when it happens, you'll leave the house barely dressed.
Listener Letter: Send this to the friend who's somewhere past the first anniversary and has quietly decided they should be over it by now. You don't need to write anything. Just send it.
Topics covered in this episode:
- What the one-year mark after a parent's death actually feels like
- Grief as a wave: why it doesn't leave, it just changes shape
- Scattering a parent's ashes, and choosing where and when
- Grief triggers, and why the body seems to remember anniversaries
- Advance care directives, and who speaks for you in an emergency
- Facing your own mortality once your parent is gone
- Sorting through a parent's belongings — and the things you still can't touch
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.
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.
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.
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
This podcast is recorded on Wurundjeri land. We recognise elders, past and present, and pay our respects. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. 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. Hello, welcome to Club Sandwich. Now, this is the podcast for you. If you are juggling lots of jobs and you're also probably juggling lots of emotions like grief, like gratitude, like loss, is that an emotion or is that just a phenomenon? Well, it is one that is part of the Sandwich generation and we're gonna talk about that today on the podcast. And especially the long tail that is grief. My name is Sarah McDonald and Carey Milligan is back in the club now. You will know her from Gogglebox where she and her mum Emmy and her daughter Izzy would review tv. Emmy died a year ago and, well, things have changed a lot because grief isn't just a linear thing and it doesn't follow the formula that it's meant to with all those stages. So Kerry's here to take us through it. Hello, Kerry.
Hi, Sarah.
So let's talk about one year on from Emmy's death. We went to Tasmania for Club Sandwich when it was about the one year anniversary and this was particularly poignant for you with your mum. So why is Tasmania such a special place?
Well, I was born in Tasmania and Mum lived there from about the age of nine and met my father there in Hobart. So Tasmania has always been a special place for us in our family and we've still got lots of relatives over there, of course, Tasmania being what it is. So it was very special for me to go with you to Tassie to Hobart. And I decided that it was a rather poignant journey for me to take some of Mum's ashes over there and I had a plan that I would scatter them next to the house that we had in Lindisfarne where I was basically born. I wasn't born in the house, but you know, where I went as a baby. So I had it in a little plastic container in my luggage and. And I had this plan, you know, and it was all very logical and, you know, very clinical.
And did your mum had she recommended or suggested to you? That's where she wanted to be scattered?
No, she. She said she wanted to be scattered at Sorrento back beach. So that's where we scattered the bulk of the ashes.
But you kept a bit.
I kept three little bits. I kept a bit for me to put in a little shrine on the side table in my lounge room with a candle. And I light the candle every day, every night for Mum. And I kept another little bit for my grandchildren, so they've got it at their house. And I kept a bit to take to Tassie.
Well, we'll talk about what happened, but when you first arrived in Hobart, we were giving you a bit of space because you were kind of dealing with ghosts, weren't you? What happened when you kind of went for a walk in Hobart?
When I arrived, I was really excited to be in Tassie again. Cause, you know, flying in, you see everything, the Derwent and you see Hobart, and it just brought back all these lovely memories of when I taken Mum over there and when. When I landed with you at the Airbnb in Battery Point, it was a beautiful day. I remember it was 24 degrees. It was quite amazing. And I said to you, I'm just going to go for a walk. I'm going to explore. So off I went around Battery Point, and it is such a lovely spot. But I. What. What started to happen to me was this really weird thing where every corner I turned, I would hear the voice of. Of my mother or my father or my grandparents. And they would say. The voice would be saying things like, oh, this is where I used to play cricket, or this was where I had my first alcoholic drink, or this was where I preached, you know, in the Methodist church. And that was my grandfather. He was a minister. And it was like every corner I turned, I kept hearing these voices. And I thought, God, it's like I'm being haunted by all these dead people.
Had this ever happened to you before?
Never before. It was really. I mean, it wasn't a haunting, as in like a spiritual experience. Sure. It was just my memory was being triggered by all these geographical landmarks, really. And of course, I could look across the Derwent at the bridge, and under the bridge is Lindisfarnen. The house was over there. So it was all connecting. Everything was connecting. And then I went for a walk down this park, through this park called St. David's Park. And I hadn't been there before, and I didn't know what it was actually. It just looked like a park to me. And I'm walking down the path and there are these sandstone walls around the path. And on the sandstone walls were all these tombstones. I found out later it was the first cemetery in Hobart. And on the tombstones are all these names of ancestors of mine. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, they're everywhere. These ghosts are everywhere. And I came across this memorial to the first fleeters who were evacuated from Norfolk island to Hobart. And again, this list of all the names of all my ancestors.
Oh, they were. That's them.
Yeah.
They went from Norfolk Island.
Oh, God, it was so weird.
And you just stumbled across that?
I just. I didn't.
Because I didn't see that.
No. I didn't know it was there. My cousins told me later that this was the first cemetery, that they were all buried there and then moved later on and it was turned into a park.
It's a bit of a haunted place. Hobart, I think.
But for you, so haunted. Yeah.
And so interesting that that was a year on from Emmy dying, because I think something happens to the body. It kind of remembers things. And a year seems to me a time when you're getting over something really significant, a trauma or a great grief, something sort of shifts within us, I think. So I just wonder if your body was kind of, you know, hearing things, remembering things, searching for things that were kind of. That one year on thing was part of.
I think the mind, the brain is. Is an organ that we really don't know much about. I mean, I worked in psychiatry for 25 years, and I used to hear psychiatrists say things like, we only use 10% of our brain's capacity, and we really don't understand how the rest of it works. Visual things can trigger, obviously, visual, and also smells can trigger. And music, of course, can trigger memory. And I think that's what happened to me. I think I just had all these stories that I'd been told as a child, you know, by my grandparents, by my parents, by my relatives in Tassie, just were triggered when I was there because I was getting all the stimulus. Yeah, of course I was getting the visual, you know, I was getting it all.
Had you been putting off going to Tasmania after Emmy's death?
No, not really.
You knew it was something you wanted to do?
Well, it was something I thought would be really good to do. And that's why I kept that little bit. I thought, one day I'll go, and when I go, I'll scatter Mum's ashes.
Yeah. So then what happened when you got on the ferry and you went out to Mona, the Museum of Old New art, which is this fabulous building.
Go.
If you haven't been. And you go to. Well, maybe after this story, you might not want to. No, you will, but it's cool. You can go out on this ferry. You can ride a sheep's back. You can see this fantastic place with all this erotic and wild and unusual and fabulous modern and old art. And it's underground, a lot of it. So what happened there that you think was really related to the space you're in?
Well, my cousin did offer to drive me to the house in Lindisfarne so I could scatter the ashes down on the beach, just down at the end of the street. And I said to her, I can't go back to the house. It's just going to be too emotional for me. I just don't want to go to the house. It'll just bring back all the pain that my mother had living there, losing the twins before I was born and all that stuff. And I just thought, no, I can't go to the house. I'll go out to Mona and I'll discreetly just sort of scatter the ashes into the river when we go past Lindisfarne Bay. That seemed to me to be the right spot. So there I am at the back of the ferry and I'm trying to make sure that there's nobody around. And I opened the little plastic container and just sort of, you know, spilt it into the water, shed a few tears, and off it went to the little jetty at Mona. So when you arrive at the jetty, there's an announcement that David. David Walsh, I think. Is it Walsh? David Walsh recommends that you climb the 120 steps up to the entrance of Mona to get the full atmosphere.
And I thought, sense of arrival.
I thought, well, he can get fucked. I'm not gonna walk up 120 steps. And then they tell you that, well, the disabled, the elderly and the disabled can go up in the lift. And I thought, well, I'm 73. I qualify. So the doors of the lift open and I walk out and I'm carrying all of this. I'm carrying the ghosts of Hobart. I'm carrying the fact that I just scattered my mother's ashes.
Which you're not carrying anymore. But you've let them go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And. And I get into this underground. It's really a cave. It's amazing.
It's incredible. Yeah.
And it's hot and it's crowded and it's dark. And I'm wondering. And there seems to Be no real kind of way of getting around there. I got hot, I got sweaty, my head is throbbing and I'm thinking, oh fuck, I feel like I'm gonna have a panic attack. I've only ever had one before. This is not good. I need to get out of here. And I'm asking people, how do you get out of here? How can I get out? I found out later that the person you're supposed to ask is the security guard. Cause they have an emergency out straight away. But I didn't know that.
Right.
So I'm really starting to feel very scared. And I eventually found the lift that takes you up to the surface. And I got out into the air and I did some breathing, deep breathing, called my fancy man. He calmed me down and, and that was it. But I, it was very. I was out of control and I'm sure it was the, the impact of the grief and the fact that it. I thought I was over it. Not over it completely, but I thought I was managing really well.
Right.
And then it just hit me hard.
So that's the thing. One year on, you think you're managing well, you've, you know, you're missing your mum, you're having chats to her all the time, you're lighting a candle to her and then all of a sudden it just knocks you sideways.
I actually realised when I was walking along the beach one day recently that grief is like a wave, that some days on the beach they're just little, little things, little rivulets of water that makes a really lovely tinkling sound. Other days it's really heavy. And that's what I think grief is like. It never really leaves you, it just presents itself in different forms.
And then when it's rough, it can really drag you under, it can dump you on the shore, it can leave you gasping. Like you literally were gasping when you were having that panic attack.
Yep.
And one year on, I think the body, as I was saying, I think the body remembers one year on. I think there's something about a completion of a year. And in some religions they do mark a year after death. I think in Judaism they do that because it is something about the body. Do you think there was also a bit of ancestral memory going on for your mum and for her mum on her relatives, like, I mean, I don't want to get super woo woo, but I reckon there's something about that.
Well, there definitely is. When you think, when I think about how, how profound Tasmania must have been for my ancestors, for my mother's what would it have been? I mean, I'm seventh generation, first fleeter, so it was. It's a lot.
Yeah.
But Tasmania would have been like this amazing place where my mother's great, great, great, great grandmother actually had freedom to set up her own life and be who she wanted to be, but in
a very brutal place.
Brutal, brutal place. I mean, the. It's like for me that the. The earth in Tasmania is steeped in blood, sweat and tears. It really is. It's not just convicts, it's indigenous people as well. Of course.
Of course. What happened to the indigenous people? I mean, horrific, Terrible. Yeah. So it's a place of great loss. I mean, I love Hobart, I love Tasmania. I love it so much. But we need to kind of. I think we can feed off a place and I think you were feeding off it in a very different way than I was at that time, because the ancestors were there and, you know, a lot of people, when they die, they say, oh, the ancestors were kind of calling me, or they'll see them around the bed.
Or they hear their voices.
They hear their voices.
Yes, it's true.
So that was kind of interesting, wasn't it, that you would. I wonder if your mum did and you. I mean, who knows what was going on?
Oh, I don't believe in any of that. Spiritual.
You don't believe in any of that, but you believe something about ancestral memory and the power of that within you.
I do. And I think it's about the stories that we tell too. You know, when we're little and we hear the stories our families tell about their lives, then they stay in you and you don't ever forget them. But something might trigger it, that memory, and it comes up. But also, Sarah, I'm a believer in science, so when I think about the fact that, for example, that I carried the eggs that created my daughter, and when she was a fetus in my belly, she carried the eggs that created her children. So, yeah, we have them at birth.
We have eggs.
Yeah. And that's amazing when you think about. That's the DNA that's in us that gets carried. So in a way, we never really die because our DNA is carried through the following generations.
So you think that sort of. That connection is more than. Yeah, it's not so much ghostly or spiritual for you. It's literally physical.
I mean, your mother carried you inside her body for nine months and then delivered you from her body with her blood, her flesh. It's pretty profound stuff.
Yeah. So when that mother's no longer there, that is a remarkable kind of loss and a disconnection to your source, to where you came from, to your being, to your creation, to your self, I guess.
But in a way, she's still with you. She's still with me because I'm her. I'm part of her.
You're part of her. You've got half her genetic lottery.
Yeah.
There's a season that every family eventually hits when a parent dies. And on top of the grief, someone has to be the executor, read the will, value the estate, chase the paperwork, settle it all. And it always seems to land on the person with the least room to carry it. You don't have to do that part alone. New South Wales Trustee and Guardian can guide you through being an executor or take the administration off your hands entirely. Search New South Wales Trustee and Guardian or call 1300-10-2030. Everything that we talk about on Club Sandwich, the acronyms, the assessment, the weighting, the emotion, the pain, the grief, it's all genuinely hard to navigate alone. And that's exactly what Australian Unity's home health and care team is designed for. They have a neighbourhood care model, a local team that gets to know your parents, builds a care plan around them and adapts as things change. It's not a call centre, it's not a one size fits all service. Real people in your parents community moving at their pace. If you're trying to figure out where to start, their team can help you. Visit australianunity.com auclubsandwich do you still chat to her when you're doing things around the house? How has that started to shift a year on?
Oh, it's weird. It's weird. Like the other morning in Melbourne, it was particularly cold and my heating's been broken for two months and I woke up and I thought, oh, I don't want to get out of bed, it's too cold. And then I thought, I hope you're warm, Mum. Why did that. Why did that pop into my head? I hope you're warm because you still
think about it because you cared for her and you loved her and you did so much together. And so you still think about them like they're alive still. And then you get that. Do you get that after?
I don't think about her like she's alive.
Right. You just that, you know, she's.
I just think about her. Yeah.
I know she's died, but you still think about her as a person. Of course, yeah.
Because she was so much part of my life. For so long, you know, forever, really. When I caught the taxi from home to go to the airport for us to go to Hobart, the taxi driver is a regular that I use, and he's a Sikh guy and he's just lovely, lovely, lovely man. And I told him that I had Mum's ashes with me and I was going to scatter them in Hobart. And he said, that's a very important thing to do, Kerry. You must scatter them in moving water. He said, our belief is that you scatter the ashes in flowing water because they have to do. Continue their journey. And I thought, that is such a lovely thought.
Yeah.
So it was very appropriate that I scattered them in the Derwent river. Flowing off to Antarctica.
Yeah, that's right. She's flying. She's still probably flowing around with some krill at the moment in Antarctica. Well, that's right. Like life is. And death is like this stream of water. It's also a cleanliness thing, because you wouldn't want it in stable water. Like, it does make sense. But grief is, like, you mentioned the waves, and so we're back to water. It kind of is this thing that doesn't stagnate. It keeps moving, too, and it keeps shifting. So what have you learned about it? You know, it's now more than a year, because Hobart was a few months ago. Like, what have you learned about. How can you predict those waves? Are they different as the. As time goes on?
I don't think you can predict them.
You can't predict.
No. You can't predict it.
No.
You think you can be aware that
certain things will trigger grief, like the ceremony of scattering ashes. That is an honouring. That is a ceremony. That is something quite profound to do. So you're aware that it may wash you over.
I know that there are definite triggers. And for me, the ones that. The one. The major one for me is seeing an old lady with a walker straight away just start crying. Can't help it. Because it just reminds me of Mum, of Mum, you know, walking with her little walker. I just can't. Just can't do it. And there's a lot of old people in this suburb where I live.
Yeah, that's right. With the aging population, there's a lot of people with walkers. So if you see. If you live in Melbourne, you see Kerry crying at someone with a walker. Yeah, that's why. Because you're remembering your mum.
Yeah. And also things on tv, you know, I can't watch. Well, I've never been a watcher of violence. Anyway, but I can't. I can't watch anything where somebody or something is in pain, is suffering. I just can't.
Because it reminds you of her suffering.
It reminds me of my mother suffering. And mum did have a pretty tragic life from Go to Woe, really. And I just can't bear the idea of her suffering.
But she's not suffering anymore.
I know.
Yeah, but. Yeah, so. Well, also, perhaps, Carrie, that's. That when your parent dies, you are so much more vulnerable. It's like your armor has gone your raw. That doesn't just go away in a year. I mean, also, I find as I get older, I'm getting much more emotional. I always cry on this podcast. We know that we're on it, but that's a beautiful thing too, because those barriers between us and the world have been stripped back. And that's okay, but you're just much more vulnerable about everything, do you find?
Well, I wonder if that's got to do with the inevitability of our own mortality. Well, there's that too, because that's what mum dying has brought up for me.
Has it? And also, you haven't been super well. And grief does SAP your. But grief saps your immune system too, hasn't it?
Does it cause kidney stones, Sarah?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I'm. You're the daughter of a doctor, Hashtag,
not a doctor, but it does when you're distressed and upset, it's a taxing on your body.
Yeah.
I mean, I think doctors, doctors say this to me like, you know, when I haven't been well, after major stresses, they've gone, the stress releases on the body.
Right.
So, yeah, you got kidney stones. So you were feeling very vulnerable about that. And this is after we'd done the. Put the Kettle on the episode where you're like, my perfect days, you know,
not getting a kidney stone.
Not getting a kidney stone, but going for a walk with the dog, having a swim, you know, talking about your fancy man. You've talked about your lovely grandson and time you spend with him, but I think you felt more vulnerable because of your own illness as well as the grief of your mum.
And it was a shock. You know, I think I take very good care of myself.
You do.
I don't mean that in a, you know, sort of beauty sense. I mean.
No, no, we're talking about you whole body and face and life.
Yeah. And so getting a kidney stone at quarter to seven on a Sunday morning was a bit of a shock. And I thought, oh, shit, I'm on my own. What do I do? I could die. No, I didn't think I could die, but I knew I was in deep trouble. That was really scary.
Yeah, well, that strips away all your barriers too, and your confidence, your sense
of self, your sense of capability. You know that in the sandwich generation, we are the most capable people in the sandwich. And suddenly you're vulnerable and it's a real shock.
Yeah.
And really, seriously, I mean, in a way, I'm lucky that Mum isn't here anymore, but if that had happened to me and mum was still living with me, she couldn't have done anything to help me.
Oh, I know the people in Samwich generation with their own health problems, which I think is often can be exacerbated by being in a sandwich generation of stress. That's why I said to my family, I said, something happens to me, you're all in deep shit.
Deep shit.
And then I broke my ankle. So don't say it. Cause things can't happen. But sometimes, yeah, the wheels can fall off if we get unwell. And people are so scared about being unwell, they can often wait. I think their body waits till they can release. And often that can be after a parent dies. And they'll find themselves, get it, really unwell. So maybe that's what happened for you.
Possibly. Anyway, I'm not drinking so much alcohol anymore. Right.
So you're looking after yourself, drinking a
lot of water and going to the toilet every five minutes. Great.
Okay. Well, we better finish soon then. But just before we do. So this is really being unwell? Your mother dying has made you think now more about your own mortality, has it?
And it's not nice.
Scary.
It's very scary. What have I got? Maybe if I'm lucky, 10 good years left, maybe.
You were so optimistic about this when we did the put the episode.
I know, but now I've been faced with my own mortality in two ways. My mother's now dead. I'm the next generation, and I had a very serious illness and I was extremely vulnerable and I didn't like it.
You didn't like that feeling at all because you've been such a mistress of your destiny.
And everybody was wonderful. The CWA ladies came over with food parcels. People were fabulous. You know, Isabelle was over every day wanting to do things for me. And actually all I wanted was just to be left alone. Why? You felt like I was so. So unwell. Yeah, that I just want to curl into my. I just wanted to curl up and sleep under the doona.
But isn't that lovely that Isabel could be there for you like you were for Emmy?
Yeah. But now that was. That must have been a shock for her, because now she's thinking, oh, my God, my mother, who's so capable, is now vulnerable and I have to look after. Not have to, but I need to look after her now. That must have been a big shock for her. Yeah.
Yeah. Because you help her with. With her kids and. And you look after each other. Probably. We do a lot, but this is the kind of. And isn't it funny? We talk about this on Club Sandwich all the time. That this is going to happen. You need to be ready for it. You need to get ready. This is plan ahead. And yet it's still shocking when it actually happens. You're like, what, I don't get sick?
Not me. This can't happen to me.
I'm not gonna get older.
No.
Everyone else is. So it's easy to talk about it, but then you're like, holy heck, this stuff's actually real.
Well, the reality really hits you. When Isabel drove me to emergency and I get admitted, and the first thing they ask me is, have you. Did you bring your advance care directive? Shit, no, of course I didn't.
They asked you that.
I was in terrible pain.
And you hadn't brought it.
Well, of course I hadn't brought it. I was barely dressed. It was a neighborhood system.
Was. Were you angry that they asked or you think the system's working?
I think it's protocol. Right. And I said, no, I didn't bring it. And they said, that's okay. Your daughter's here. She knows.
Yeah, well, that's right. So all the systems you've set up with her.
Yeah, well, she knows. She helped me draft it. She knows exactly. And it's not so much of what I want because I've actually said to her, you do whatever you think needs to happen, Isabel.
Right. But you've also got some parameters of what you don't want, which is really important.
Yeah, yeah, she knows that.
She knows that really well. But you do need you it written down, because what if she's away?
Exactly.
Those backstops.
But when it was an emergency, I didn't even think about bringing. But I think what's supposed to happen at the front door, isn't it? You're supposed to give it to your gp. Your gp, so that they would contact the gp.
You could say, could this be on my medical record? I think in aged care, they've got my mum's on file. Things like that. That's sort of simpler when. Yes, when. When you're much older. So what are you going to do about this newfound fear of what am
I going to do? Well, I'm very lucky that I live in an apartment building and I've got fabulous neighbors because when I knew I was in trouble, I just texted them and said, bring the endone cause I'm in trouble. And that came straight away.
See, the system worked. Kerry, you have set this up really well. You have actually been a good planner, so you could rely on that. That must have caused you some comfort.
And the fact that Isabelle only lives two minutes away from me, so she was there in flight.
The system worked. But I guess it's the emotional embracing
of some vulnerability that's not a comfort, Sarah.
But why not? You helped your mum.
I know, but. But as I said in that initial podcast we did on aging, I don't consider myself to be elderly.
I'm not saying you are.
No, I know, but it's trying to take that on board that I'm now 73 and my opinion is in your 70s, that's when things start to go wrong. And despite all the dance classes and the swimming and the socializing that I do, there's something that I in here that I'm actually. I can't control. And that's scary shit.
It is really scary shift. And this is why we go to the kind of denial that we've talked about before, the constant surprise when it actually happens, this magical thinking. And, you know, some people say this is part of our own internalized aging system, that we do this and our fear of death. But it's the biggest work we can do on ourselves to make things much easier for everybody else around us as well as ourself.
Well, Mum had macular degeneration, so I've got an appointment with an eye specialist this week to get the tests to see. And also I'm going to get a dementia assessment as well, which is going to be a bit scary because what happens if I've got it?
I don't think you've got dementia. I mean, I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but. But it's good to get a baseline too.
Well, I just want to. I want to start the process, you know, I don't want it to catch me by surprise.
Yeah, great. Okay. So it's been a bit of a wake up call for you. And meanwhile, just because a year and then another few months have passed in the grief over Emmy, there's Still, you know, it's still active. It's still washing over you sometimes. Is there anything shifted from that time of scattering her. Of going through that terrible time in Tasmania about. I don't know. Moving on's not the word. I don't know what it is.
No, I know what you mean in
how you deal with it.
Up until now I haven't been. Been able to manage any of her things. So I haven't. I initially contacted my cousin not long after Mum died and said, will you come and help me go through Mum's things? And she said, yeah, what time suits you? Very happy to help. And then I got cold feet and I thought, I can't do it, actually, I'm not ready yet. I can't do it. And I could. I could probably do the clothes now. Maybe I could do the clothes.
Well, the clothes is the one you couldn't do for a long time.
No, the one that I couldn't do is the makeup and jewelry, the most intimate things. Yes, is the makeup and the jewelry. The things that you can just see, you know, in front of the mirror. She's putting on her lipstick and, you know, that sort of thing. That was the. It was the really close connection that I couldn't do.
But you think you can do her clothes now?
I think I could probably do the clothes.
You're going to keep something of hers that you keep a couple of things?
I think so, yeah.
That you love her in or that fit you or.
I actually wore something the other day, actually, now that I remember. Isabelle put on a. Like a pre bridal thing for a friend of hers who's Indian. And everybody was going to dress in Indian clothes. And I remembered that I took Mum to Little India a few years ago to get her an outfit. You know, the lovely pants and the long top and the beautiful scarf. And it was a gorgeous, gorgeous outfit that she loved wearing. So I wore Mum's outfit to the bridal thing, which was nice.
How did that feel?
It was a little bit tight.
Damn it.
Mum was tiny.
Yeah, we're getting bigger every generation.
But the makeup and the jewellery, I'm not sure. Not sure about that.
Well, look, there's no timetable.
No, I know.
You do it when it's right for you, I guess.
But if I don't do it, then Isabelle's only got my stuff to clean up when I die and Mums, that's not fair.
Okay, well. Kerry, I know, but your kidney stones have been treated. Yes, you're doing really well. If it's. If You've got to the point now where you can do the clothes. Maybe in a year or two you'll be ready to do the makeup.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what was her lipstick color?
Orange.
Yeah,
she loved wearing orange. It was the 60s and she loved, you know, how some women never change their haircut or their lipstick? Yeah, Mum never changed her lipstick colour. It was orange.
God lover.
Yeah.
You'll never look at orange lipstick again. You maybe keep the orange lipstick. Yeah, It's a lot, Kerry, and thank you so much for talking about this. I think it really helps people when they are going through grief. We know the sandwich generation. It ends in grief. You can be caring for one parent while you're mourning another. And so that's another load that you carry. And that kind of those waves wash within you and they can pull you under. So sometimes gotta be very gentle with ourselves.
We do. We have to be very patient and very gentle. And I think also it's important to talk to people about how you're feeling, you know, to tell your girlfriends to tell, you know, anybody who's possibly going through that experience themselves too. They could be well ahead of you or they could be slightly behind you. But to share those experiences is really important.
Yeah. And I want to do an episode on pre grieving as well. Now we've talked about post grieving.
That's hard.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Do send this episode to a friend or a family member if you know that they are grieving the death of a parent because it is quite a long road and you will carry that grief within you forever. But there are definitely different things that bring up different phases of it. Email us@hellolubsandwich.com if you have a episode idea you would like us to do. Give us a rating on the podcast stream. You are looking at us. And remember, you are doing a great job. And while you have got them, 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 getting 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 auclubsandwich.
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