‘The bittersweet side of appreciating life’s most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing’ Marc Parent

Supporting my dad at the end of his life is just that bittersweet. It’s full of anxiety, frustration and exhaustion as his pain levels increase, and his medical and surgical options reduce due to his fragility and chronic disease. It is a tightrope of stress, yet there are these moments of being incredibly aware of time, how exquisitely precious it is.

Will this be the last time I visit?

In his vulnerability, my dad has unlocked this softer side, where he cries and says the things he never said before. He apologises for being an arsehole at times, for being an absent parent, for choosing to focus on business over family, all the decisions he made, when he had his health and arrogance. Now he is a more stooped version, with all the time in the world, craving any scrap of attention his children can give him in their own busy lives. He asks about my health, my kids, my partner and shows a genuine interest in our lives.

Dr Nicole LePera, aka the holistic psychologist, a writer and instagram phenomenon, in researching her latest book discussed the premise that an emotionally available and healthy father is one of the most underrated forms of healthcare. Children can learn to regulate emotions and be comfortable with conflict resolution given steady role models. The data is striking in that present fathers reduce the risk of addiction, crime, mental health conditions, low self worth and domestic violence. In short, if men are able to develop emotionally (with the knock on effect to the next generation), our society could look very different and be much more functional.

My own father lost his father at 6 years old. Without any discussion around mental health or grief processing, the family got on with things the best they knew how, with a stiff upper lip and a protestant work ethic necessary when you are a farming family. This is not an isolated story, both my grandfather and great- grandfather died in tragic farming accidents. My grandfather died in a plane crash and the other was decapitated standing next to a logging truck. An ever present risk of living on the land.

Maybe this why I feel drawn to emotional expression and my line of work, supporting people through grief and mental health challenges. Seeing what can happen when there is inadequate support and insufficient ways to deal with grief; limited conversations about death generally and a fear of being vulnerable or in need of help overlaid by a culture of numbing, suppressing and bloody well getting on with it.

Thankfully men are stepping up and claiming a much more active parenting role. There is hope that this trajectory will continue and as I spy my sons being attentive and caring towards their friends and able to talk about their emotions, I sigh with relief. The changes can be night and day, comparing how our fathers were raised to be ‘men’ to not cry or show emotion and they had to basically shut down in order to cope, versus how children are raised in more emotionally attuned and supportive environments today.

Yet as a society we have a way to go considering the rates of violence against women and the general malaise of our society. Approximately 75% of completed suicides are men. What can we do? Build communities where we actively reach out for support and normalise asking for help, ideally men supporting men.

People can change. Age has a way of doing that in the way life has a way of kicking our butts, humbling us and forcing growth. As I talk with my dad, he frets about the imminent cyclone affecting his family, and I see how much he cares. There is talk of him moving into care in my hometown. He is excited by the idea of being close to us, seeing his grandsons. Understanding that on some level, it is still all about him, that in his fragility, he needs me especially as my sister steps back due to having her own family and being somewhat burnt out caring for him.

It is bittersweet in the sense of all those years of missed opportunities where my dad was too busy, for example when at age 7, he put me on a plane back from Disneyland alone, with a layover at his friends, people I’d never met, because he wanted to stay in LA after he met a lady. WTF. My hard-won sense of self worth that came from having an absent father. Yet, the anger or hurt is no longer there, instead after processing it (took years), I’m left with a sense of acceptance of how things played out. That a series of events led me to forgiveness on my own terms, a process that cannot be moralised or half-arsed, rather an inner journey that developed my character in unexpected ways. And for that, with hindsight I’m grateful.

Life is unpredictable, sometimes cut short, without the space for resolution. With the time we have left together, I realise life is about healing, in the way that my dad is now able to give to me what he himself lost too soon, and within his limited capacity, he can be a loving and present father.