Autobiography
Going Airplane Mode
Looking after yourself while you look after others
At the end of July, my ex-husband went into hospice care. When hearing about the news, people felt compelled to get in touch with me and my daughter, Jaime. While responding to happy news comes easily for most people, responding to sad news is not the same.
Some of Jaime’s friends couldn’t understand why her dad being in hospice is such a bad thing for her. “It’s only your dad,” a couple of her friends said to her. I took this as a reflection of their own relationship with their parents; or — if I were in a kind state of mind — their lack of understanding what hospice care means.
Some of the best messages I received say things like, “I’ll stay out of your way, but please call for help when you need it.” They understood that I have a lot of things to do, or have lots of things on my mind.
Maintaining a sense of humour is useful in times like these. Here’s an exchange I had with one of my best friends when Jaime and I started staying the nights at the hospice on his last few nights:
But some don’t read the room. I had to tell them I didn’t have the time for a coffee to talk about how to mend our friendship. Neither did I have the mental headspace for them to lament about losing me as a friend. I needed to focus my energy on Martin and Jaime. But they persisted on asking how they can best support me and Jaime. I blatantly told them to respect my space and stop texting me. Which they did… but then proceeded to email me instead. Some people just don’t get it 😞
At Mary Potter Hospice, they not only look after the patient’s wellbeing, they also look after the family’s wellbeing. After checking up how Martin was doing every morning, his palliative care doctor would also have a chat with me and Jaime. When I told him about overwhelming messages, he suggested going on airplane mode.
This was great advice. It was particularly useful when somehow word got out that Martin had passed away when he hadn’t, and we were inundated with more messages of a different kind.
Airplane mode blocks all communication. If this isn’t for you, find out how you can set a focus mode on your phone and add some contacts as favourites. This means they’re the only ones who can get through. Here’s how to do it on an iPhone. If you have all your Apple devices synced, it applies this mode for all of them too.
Another useful feature you could look for is blocking individual contacts. This is what Jaime now does for some of the people with less-than-useful comments.
This life experience helping Martin through his end of life stage taught me that it is totally OK to be selfish and only think about yourself and those nearest and dearest to you. And when your nearest and dearest are physically there with you, you don’t need the outside world intruding.
Martin passed away peacefully in his sleep on Thursday morning, 11th August. We had his natural burial the next day.
I kept airplane mode on for a couple of days after the funeral. It was important for me to be present for Jaime and those who were there with me in person. It was also good for me to sit with the loss myself, to truly acknowledge it.
