The Turning Point

I once believed that if you truly loved someone, your love would cocoon them with a protective shield that would always keep them from harm. How absurd!

I vowed I would not love like that anymore; never again allow myself to be so vulnerable.

Ironically this illusion came crashing down right at the pinnacle of my halcyon days

I had enjoyed a successful career; weathered some stormy seas in my marriage. And now come full circle with the expected arrival of our first child.

Life couldn’t have been better. And I thought I was invincible.

But then the earth-shattering news: my father had cancer and the prognosis was “6 months to a year at best”.

What a diabolical situation! Knowing that as one life was growing inside me another, equally precious was slipping away.

I felt utterly helpless.

I sat at my father’s bedside in agonized silence. I ached to put my arms around him but felt paralyzed. I could not speak the words I wanted to say because my fragile courage would have disintegrated completely. So I wrote him letters instead.

I bargained with God: “Let me share his burden of pain”. And found solace in the naive belief that my pain relieved his in some way.

Thankfully, when we thought the worst was yet to come, his pain subsided as he clutched tenaciously to life awaiting the arrival of his grandchild.

Candice was born on 24th August and Dad died 2 months later leaving us like a parched, dried up waterhole where once a river flowed.

So often I would dream about him and always I would ask about the pain. I was plagued and confused by his unwavering reply: “The pain goes on…..”

As time passed my grief turned to anger. I would raise a clenched fist to the heavens and mockingly demand “God of love? Where is your mercy now?!”

When autumn came I felt my spirit dropping leaf by leaf into the abyss. I remember thinking that physical pain would have been more tolerable.


My life was in a downward spiral: at odds with myself, and everyone around me; desperate for love, yet spurning it at every turn.

My husband was at his wit’s end but I didn’t have the energy to care.

Amidst my ranting, I’d fall to my knees pleading for respite.

When the turning point came it was unforeseen and unwelcome; and I only recognized it many months later.

It came in the guise of my husband mentioning in passing that an elderly friend (his more than mine) was ill with emphysema. “Perhaps you could stop by and see how Mr H. is doing?”

“Why should I?!” My inner voice screamed “Have I not seen enough suffering?!”

But some weeks later for reasons I cannot explain I found myself on Mr H’s doorstep.
I clearly recall thinking “This is madness! I should run back to my car and drive away.”

Too late…the door opened and I was ushered indoors by Mrs. H.

“How lovely to see you. I was just about to make some tea.”

It was uncanny. It seemed as though they’d been expecting me all along?

There were no awkward silences. The conversation flowed easily and cheerfully between sips of tea. I noticed some books at his bedside and inquired about his favorite authors.

At my departure I found myself offering to exchange their library books for them. And so my fortnightly visits began.

I looked forward to these times. I loved listening to their stories and paging through their photo albums. We laughed over the crazy things Keith (their son) and Vic (my husband) had got up to in their youth: the lame excuse they dreamed up for landing the car in the ditch.

Mr H at this stage was doing quite well aside from coughing spells which he simply dismissed with mild annoyance.

But in time an oxygen tank was brought in: its ominous presence a reminder that we were heading for heavy days.

Our talk began to turn to more serious matters.

At this point I found myself praying that I would not fail Mr H as I had my father.

We were going down this road together: hand in hand; and step by step.


I understood his questioning and fear of what was to come.

We talked at length and allowed feelings to flow freely. At times the three of us wept unashamedly.

And then for a while he slipped into the silence of his own space as Mrs H and I retreated to comfort each other.

I began to understand the words of the philosopher regarding timing.

About life being a journey: About learning to be sensitive to its flow.
A time to speak and a time to be quiet.....
A time to sow and a time to harvest.
About accepting life’s times of joy and times of sorrow.

I discovered the power of touch.
How in silence you could communicate so much.
How a squeeze of a hand could speak volumes.
And how much you could read from another's eyes.

I was with Mr H the day before he died. And I know he made his peace with God, for he had a glow and serenity about him: As if his very soul was shining through his pale, wasted form.

After his passing I felt a kind of numbness. For so long my feelings had been so entwined with Mr and Mrs H that I felt lost.

I missed him so. Yet it wasn’t grieving.

When spring came I recognized an inner shift. The heavy knot in the pit of my stomach, (that had dogged me for so long after my father’s death), had disappeared.

I felt a peace and a calm that was inexplicable and good.

To my joy I discovered that I was expecting once more, heralding a new time.

As I cast my mind back to that day on that doorstep, I marveled at the miracle of healing that had awaited me there. And the great lessons I was to learn.

One night I dreamed about my father for the first time in oh, so long….

Tentatively I asked the dreaded question “Dad, tell me about the pain.”

This time he smiled as he replied: “The pain has gone. I’m at peace.”

“Yes indeed.” I responded. And God is in His heaven and all’s well with the world!