Julie Jay: Losing a parent means membership to a club nobody wants to be in
Julie Jay: Since he has passed away, people I don’t know particularly well have come up to me and told me that they, too, have lost a parent and that they understand the pain I am going through. As one person said to me 'You’re in the club now. It’s not a club anyone wants to be in, but know that we’re in it with you'.
My dad died the week before Christmas, and it still doesn’t feel real.
He was a special person. I know everyone thinks that about their dad, but it was really true of mine. I still haven’t brought myself to read the online condolences, but many people have done so on my behalf, and all, without exception, have commented on the sheer volume of tributes. Make no mistake — the world is a much better place simply because my dad, Johnny Johnson, was in it.
He was hands-down the best storyteller and the funniest person I have ever met. Over these last few weeks, more than one person has reminded me that Dad was ‘the real comedian’ in the family, and rather than take offence, I couldn’t agree more.
His intelligence meant that, despite losing his mobility and being confined to a wheelchair these last few months, he remained engaged and busy with books and newspapers galore. He once told me there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to read all the good books in the world, a passing comment that exemplified his attitude to life. He made the best of things, whatever was thrown at him.
An avid follower of local and international politics, he took Donald Trump's re-election as a personal affront. In fact, even if he hadn’t died, the inauguration probably would have killed him, so much did Dad take exception to the man.
He hated injustice in any form and watched TV shows like purely to vent about what he felt was systemic racism in Australian airports. He earned the nickname Willy Wonka at his dialysis unit due to the amount of chocolates he gifted the staff. When he left Beaumont Hospital after a protracted stay, orderlies and tea ladies cried and hugged him, which tells you all you need to know about my dad’s big heart.
The night before his leg amputation in the summer, my mother told me that they had shared a lovely moment where my dad had told her: ‘We met each other, and that’s all that mattered.’ When I heard this the night before his reposal, I bawled. Even in these difficult moments, my dad always found the beauty in life.
Since he has passed away, people I don’t know particularly well have come up to me and told me that they, too, have lost a parent and that they understand the pain I am going through. As one person said to me, "You’re in the club now. It’s not a club anyone wants to be in, but know that we’re in it with you."
"Does it get any better?" I asked this person, desperate for her to assuage my fears that it doesn’t.
"No," she said. "But you learn to live with it."
The honesty momentarily stung, but I was grateful she wasn’t sugarcoating it.
My dad is gone, and a huge part of me has gone with him. My missing him is only compounded by my ever-growing litany of regrets concerning my father’s last few months: I didn’t call him enough, tell him I loved him enough, I didn’t get to take him for lunch the following weekend as I had promised him on the day before he got the catastrophic stroke.
Every moment of having failed him as a daughter replays in my head, but I know making him proud now means trying to be happy and plough forward because he was the opposite of a wallower. He didn’t dwell; he drove on, knowing that we all have but one shot at this beautiful, expansive life.
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been scanning my kids for a glimmer of him in a bid to convince myself that he will live on in some way, desperately trying to convince myself that my youngest’s sunny disposition and my eldest’s sense of humour are somehow reminders from the universe that nobody as wonderful as my dad can disappear into thin air. That somehow he will continue to be.
My dad was my favourite person in the world, and it is only since his death I have realised everything I have done in my life was for him. Every decision I made, and every leap of faith I took was motivated by a desire to make him proud of me because I was so incredibly proud of him.
People ask how I am doing, and I don’t know how to answer. On days like today, I am hit by the devastating realisation that rather than reading this column, which he did religiously, he is the subject.
Still, in these moments where the pain feels insurmountable, I think back to the text sent by a friend who has lost both of her parents in recent years, her words of comfort coming back to me when tidal waves of grief suddenly overwhelm me. 'Losing a parent changes your axis in the world’, her text read. ‘But I promise you’ll be OK.’
Nobody will ever love me the way my dad loved me, and though being OK seems impossible now, I know I will get there. Dad, how lucky was I to be your daughter. We met each other, and that’s all that mattered. There is never enough time.
