The One Piece Of Advice That Helped Me Move Forward After Major Loss

I have always told my family that I planned to live to 90, so when I turned 45, I declared that I was officially middle-aged. Then, life took me down a path I did not expect.

A few months after my birthday, COVID hit. Then in January 2021, my father, who had been sick with cancer for some time, took a turn for the worse. He ended up in the hospital and his medical team told us that he was palliative, and would not be coming home. Since I lived in Ottawa, and my parents lived in the Niagara region, I was not supposed to travel under the lockdown rules—nor would I be allowed into the hospital, anyways. When he became very weak, the hospital said it would allow me to visit, by myself, but I couldn’t touch him. I got time off work and prepared to leave the next morning.

My mom called at 11 p.m. that evening. My dad was not expected to make it through the night. I remember crying in my dark bedroom and willing him to please hold on, and wait for me to get there. He died early the next morning. COVID took away the chance for me to see him one last time. To hold him and kiss him. To tell him in person how much I loved him, and how thankful I was to be his daughter.

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I had an amazing group of friends and colleagues who rallied around me during this time, while the pandemic was still raging and we were waiting for a vaccine. One of my closest friends, Pam, who I also worked with—I’m a teacher—organized a surprise visit with colleagues to support me. She told me she was coming by to pick up a book, and when I answered the door, my friends and colleagues were outside, all standing two metres apart, to let me know they were there for me. They had filled my garden with cardboard hearts. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for me.

The following Christmas Eve, I got a call saying Pam had had a heart attack. She was in the hospital, and she wasn’t expected to make it. On Christmas Day, she was taken off life support. I was gutted. How had this happened? She was only 50 years old. We had just been together and were making travel plans for after the Christmas break. I had just laughed with her and hugged her a few days before.

The loss of my beautiful friend Pam—one of the kindest, most empathetic and gregarious people I knew—really affected me. I just couldn’t believe she was gone. I felt another huge hole in my heart. After she died, I raged, broke down and cried about the unfairness of it all many times. I started seeing a therapist regularly to help me try to process and accept the deaths of my dad and my friend.

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Then, in August, I went on a trip to New York City with my husband. Suddenly, my mom, who I usually texted and FaceTimed numerous times per day, stopped responding. I felt my anxiety rise. My mom had recently moved in with my sister, and they were currently living in a temporary rental while my sister’s home was being renovated.

I called my sister, who was away for the weekend, and she wasn’t able to reach our mom either. My sister and her husband immediately drove back to the rental, and found our mother on the floor of her room, unable to get up. She couldn’t remember when she fell, but she had been on the floor for hours. I flew back to Toronto and I went straight to my sister’s. We called an ambulance, and off I went with my mother to the ER.

The tests they ran first were focused on her head, because the doctors were worried about a concussion. Then they asked to do a colonoscopy. I had assumed, at 72, my mother had already had many colonoscopies, as she had watched her own father die of colon cancer years before. I was wrong to assume, however, as she had never had one. Three days after waiting for a bed, she was admitted to the ICU. We found out Saturday morning that she had advanced stage colon cancer, and it had already metastasized to her liver.

A few days later, my sister and I met the medical team who would be treating my mom. We were told that she potentially had two or three years of life left, but it would not be easy. She needed surgery to remove part of her colon, radiation and chemotherapy, but she said she was up for the difficult road ahead.

That afternoon, her blood pressure started to drop. Her ICU team had been doing everything they could to stabilize it before starting treatment. But nothing was working.

Eventually, her organs started shutting down and she could no longer talk to us. We were allowed to stay past visiting hours to be with her. We spent those precious hours kissing our mother, holding her, telling her how much we loved her. Just shortly after six the next morning, our wonderful mother passed away.

After my mom died, my ability to function quickly went downhill. I started questioning the point of life; the purpose of being here. I was still seeing my therapist, but I felt flat, discouraged and lost. The grief brought me to a depth I didn’t know I could reach. I stayed in bed for days. I started to wonder if I was depressed. I had suffered from anxiety before, so I knew what that felt like, but I wasn’t sure if the way I was feeling was grief, or depression. It was hard to know where one ended and the other began.

We had a celebration of life in the fall of 2022 for both of my parents. My sister and I were still in disbelief. How had we gotten here? It was unimaginable. After the gathering, I started ruminating again about what life was all about. What was the point of it all? My sister’s child, 14 and wise beyond their years, turned to me and said, “I think if you leave the world a bit better than you found it, then you have lived a meaningful life.” Their words really resonated with me.

In the next few weeks, as I continued therapy, I thought a lot about what my sister’s child had said. Their words provided me with a way to live with intention. Instead of waking up wondering what the point of it all was, I started thinking about what I could do to make the world a better place for someone today.

This new way of looking at life, along with my continued therapy and journaling, helped so much in my healing. I am fortunate I have the opportunity to make the world a bit of a better place everyday with my work as a teacher. Many of the students and the families I support at my school deal with difficulties that I can’t imagine—including choosing between putting food on the table, or paying rent. My job is challenging due to the current lack of education funding in Ontario. There is not enough mental health or academic support, especially after the difficult years of COVID. I try to look at every workday as a chance to make a difference. To try to make the world my students live in a bit of a better place for them and their families.

I also think of my mom, who lost her dad to colon cancer and her mom to brain cancer when my sister and I were teenagers. She continued for us. I think of my own wonderful husband, his family, my two girls, my sister and her family. I have so many friends and colleagues that reached out to me when I was at my worst. I had to continue on to be there for them in the ways they had been there for me.

I also think of Pam everyday. I think of what a privilege it is to get old, and how much she made our lives, and her students' lives, better. I strive to follow in her path in her memory, and my parents’ memories, who I miss so much and wish were with me still, every single day.

I have also found purpose in educating people about screening for colon cancer. I am vocal in my reminders to screen when you are young, and to screen as often as recommended. If my mom had done her screening regularly, she may still be with us today. I have my own first colonoscopy scheduled for this summer.

I still feel lost without my parents. I still often question why we are here for such a brief period of time and what it all means. But I hope that I can make a positive difference in peoples’ lives, however small, that will leave them a little bit better than yesterday. I also hope that at 48, I still have lots of time left to do that.