So, if I repeat myself in this blog, too bad. I am just recording events as they occur and observing them. My father died shockingly on 16th June, 2024 on Father’s Day, in hospital under ghastly circumstances. My mother died shockingly on 1st April 2025, April Fool’s Day, in hospital under ghastly circumstances.
The lead up to my father’s death was 10 months of horrific, unmanageable illness and the lead up to my mother’s was a general failing of her body, which led to a massive, horrendous stroke. I was there for most of it and became a ghost of myself as I dealt with the knives that were being hurled in our direction. Are all deaths this grim? It is all I can think about. They were lucky enough to have me and my brother and when my time comes, I may have no one there as the Captain,my husband, is determined to go before me.
In the end, despite every attempt on my part, I was not there in the last hours of either parents’ death and I will forever feel dreadful about that because I would have wanted them to know that I was thinking of them and loving them every minute of their existence. I’m not sure they felt that way about their respective parents. Yet I feel as if my true north has gone in both of their absences.
I have managed to get my health back in check. My blood pressure had escalated and I was slightly underweight and not really eating or sleeping normally for the last two years. My husband felt he had lost me for that period and meanwhile my brother had just retired and discovered that he was going to have to have open heart surgery for a heavily leaky valve. My sister in law had a revisit of cancer at the same time, and so there seemed to be a relentless battery, aware that I needed to be there for everybody, whilst somehow emotionally trying to find a reason why life was actually worth living.
One of the difficulties, I reflected often on this, was that without children of my own, who might have played some part in supporting me through this, the meaning of it all became utterly void. There were moments where I felt as if I was trying to delay my parents deaths, because after their departure, mine was inevitable. What had been the point, therefore, in my being here in the first place, was my repeated question.
Readers of this blog will know that I could not have children due to two ectopic pregnancies, failed attempts at IVF , fibroids and an early hysterectomy at 45 years of age. The only thing that kept me going, apart from the love of my husband, was the hope that meaning could be brought to life in the form of being fulfilled with my vocation, acting. But, no, that did not work that way. Acting has never worked in a way that is convenient. On the contrary, it is a bad lover, who turns up at 3.00 a.m with flowers stolen from a graveyard and declares that it loves, nay, misses you and can’t live without you.
The Captain has been extraordinary in his valiant efforts to bring joy into my life and he has succeeded beyond expectations. He has managed our property which will work towards being our pension one day. He has created an entirely new profession for himself in film production to add to his very present skills in acting. He has taken me to Abu Dhabi, to Bologna, to Reims, and that’s just this year. I, since I am lucky, was also invited to Skiathos to join a dear friend, and some of my friends, to relax for a few days. It was bliss, but my sense of grief never left me.
My dilemma is how to stop being haunted by the pain of grief and loss. It catches me so harshly often at the weekends, when the prospect of not having either of my beautiful parents to confide in and laugh with ever again feels like, literally a massive kick into the stomach, so that I retire to bed early and weep for a few hours.
I saw my therapist all the way through this, but we both decided it was right to take a small break, as sometimes, you just have to go through the pain of grief, as it evolves. I continue to receive good massage therapy as well, but I believe the only way to brave this is to soldier through the storms and weather, as eventually some type of survival and joy will kick in, either in moments or for extended periods of time.
I have had a few castings for tv, and recently agreed to join a bunch of young talents to be part of their scratch evening at the Golden Goose, so don’t worry about me. I just needed to share where I am at right now.
I am half way through a film script that I am writing and quarter way through a second novel, so the grey matter continues to be nourished. Here’s hoping the pain I have experienced somehow feeds the artist in me in a productive way. Maybe I’ll use it in the self-tape that I am about to record. Watch this space.
Kate Terence's Letters from London 