Roberta Hope

“When I think of my mother, I don’t think of a loss… I had my dad.”

Roberta Hope’s mother died when Roberta was only five. Now in her fifties, Roberta has few memories of her mother. However, she was buoyed through her childhood by the love of her dad, and never felt she lacked for a mum.

When she turned five, like most other five-year-olds, Roberta started at her local Canterbury primary school. Unlike most other five-year-olds, it was also about the time her mother died. Two years earlier, Roberta’s mum had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was only thirty-five when she died.

Until we speak, Roberta – now a mother to two grown daughters – hasn’t really thought about the past much. It’s not something she does. Even so, she talks about it all fluently and easily, considering each of my questions, posing some of her own, then offering an answer. 

“Would I be different now if Mum had lived? I don’t know. I don’t really look back much. Why don’t I…? Well… I don’t do emotion well, and I don’t do other people’s emotions well.” She laughs. 

“Would I be better with emotion if Mum hadn’t died? Possibly? I don’t know. It’s hard to know. Is it part of my nature? Or is it because I lost her? Or maybe I just learned to handle my emotions differently? I mean, we all grow and develop in different ways based on our experiences as we go through life.” 

When Roberta’s mother died, Roberta and her sister – a few years older – had a lot of support. Plenty of aunties and uncles, and their dad was a dedicated dad. In fact, he did so well Roberta says she honestly feels she didn’t miss her mother much. In fact, she can barely summon a memory of her. 

“I feel like I have a memory of her taking me to kindergarten. But I'm not 100 per cent on that. It's more of a feeling. I do remember knowing that she was sick, and we spent a lot of time with two different aunties and uncles who lived nearby. But I’m not even sure if those memories are coming from when she was sick or after she died. I can’t put a time on them.” 

Roberta can’t remember her mother dying. She can’t remember a funeral, although she knows there was one and reckons she would have been there.

“For me, after that, it was just a fact of life that I didn’t have a mother. When I think of my mother, I don’t think of a loss – it’s more about something that’s just not there. But, then, again, I had my dad.” That’s Roberta’s answer to most questions around, “Do you feel like you missed out on — ” She had her dad. He was there for her when her mother couldn’t be. 

“Sometimes I think I feel her around me more these days. Funny, I just did my garden and I bought two plants called by my mother’s name. I hadn’t planned on buying them, but they were there. I’m not sure I believe in the afterlife, but it felt right to buy those plants. I feel like she’s a wee bit closer, and they remind me of her.”

Roberta’s dad remarried around the time Roberta turned ten. “I didn’t have the same relationship with her that I have with my girls, no, but then I do have really great relationships with my girls. I’m very lucky. Taking on someone else’s children is hard. She was not an emotional support for me, but I still had my dad and my grandparents and aunts and uncles, so I didn’t feel any lack. 

“I try to be a positive person, so I don’t look back and think about what I missed out on. I had a dad, and even when he remarried, I still had him.” 

Her dad was always available for a hug and a chat, even though he was busy. “Honestly, even today he’d do anything to support me and the girls in whatever way he can. He’s a doer and a helper.” When Roberta had her first daughter and needed some help, her dad flew straight to Wellington, where she lived at the time. And, when her marriage broke up, he was by her side the very next day.

“There are times when women need their mum, but he was my mum as well as my dad,” Roberta says. “And when I did need another female, there were others around who I could go to. When my dad pops off there will be a big gap. So, it’ll be the things then, that — Oh! I might cry!” she says, and does for a tiny bit, then resumes. “When he pops off it’ll be a whole different thing. I still find it difficult to talk with Dad about Mum, because she was a major part of his life, while because she wasn’t for me. I don’t have the same emotional attachment.” 

Roberta is happier talking to her aunt, a sister of her dad’s. “She’s less emotional. She’s able to chat away and give me information about my mother in a way that’s more at my ability to take it in. She talks about my mother like she’s talking about a friend, rather than my dead mother. She wants me to know her, but she keeps it light. She’s able to share memories without grief, whereas my dad, of course, feels the loss of what could have been. 

“From my aunt I like hearing about the things Mum did for us. Like, she was a sewer and she sewed clothes for us. She played the mandolin, and now I have it. It’s been in my cupboard for a long, long time. I haven’t found anyone to teach me, but I’m going to one day.”

Roberta was very keen to find out whether the breast cancer that killed her mother was hereditary. Turns out it’s not, something she’s glad of for her sake and her daughters’. “But once I got past thirty-five and I hadn’t died, and now that my daughters aren’t dependent on me anymore, I feel more relaxed about it.” 

It’s in reference to thinking about her relationship with her own daughters, now and in the future, that Roberta sometimes, maybe, thinks about what her mother missed out on. Recently Roberta read a book that resonated with her, revealing something of her mother’s side of the loss dynamic. 

“It’s called The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes, which is about the final days of a woman in hospice. She has a fourteen-year-old daughter and, man, I cried through that. I think it gave me a better understanding of other people’s emotional reactions. It was a book club book – I wouldn’t have read it otherwise, because, as I’ve said, I don’t do emotion,” she laughs.

“But once I started reading it, I think I needed to read it. It was informative and a bit cathartic. I sometimes do think about everything that’s happened in my life which she's missed out on, rather than me missing out not having had her. I think Dad thinks a lot about what Mum missed.

“Over the last few years, I’ve done some reflection and I have a good friend who I feel comfortable sharing with. A lot about letting go of vulnerability is about choosing the right people to talk to. My friend is a thinker, so we’ll walk and chat, and I can trust her to look after my emotions.” 

With her girls no longer living at home, Roberta feels she has more space to sit and think. Not so much about looking backwards, rather, reflecting on where she wants to go next. “Think about the words ‘fill’ and ‘still’. You can ‘fill’ your head with stuff or be ‘still’ and breathe in and reflect. Now that I'm older I have more time to be still and reflect, and maybe let those emotions in.” 

With that space comes time to sort out a box of photos her father gave her, perhaps adding to the photos of her mother hanging in her hallway. And, maybe, even, to learn to play that mandolin. “I think this stuff is important as it's about saving the links to my mother. As much as I struggle with the emotion, the links are really important to me.”

Not long after Roberta and I talked, her daughters suffered a similar loss. Their father, Roberta’s ex-husband, died suddenly of a heart attack while out running. While the girls are older than Roberta was, she emails me to say she feels all the emotions of loss for her girls. 

“I can feel what they will miss out on, what he will miss out on with them. I wonder how it will affect them? I know between family and friends they have lots of support, but that won't make up for losing their father.

“I think the difference for me was that I didn't know Mum or have memories of her. I didn't know what I was missing out on. But when my girls were born, I was aware I didn't want the same thing for them.

“Unfortunately, with their father’s death, that will happen for them, too, but in a different way. I’m here to support them through it.”

Advice from Roberta on supporting grieving children

Get life insurance to smooth the financial aftermath of a parent’s death

Roberta works for a bank but says she would give this advice anyway. “When I organise home lending for customers, I always ask them, ‘What have you got for life cover?’ They think I’m just trying to sell them something, but actually, from my perspective, it’s about what they have to cover themselves if something goes wrong.

“My parents had life insurance, so when Mum died we could stay in the same house and life went on as normal. Dad could keep working, but we still needed that life cover.

“After a parent dies, a family’s financial situation can change a lot. If that means you have to move house or move cities, it changes a child’s whole life, taking away much-needed stability.

“Because we had insurance cover, we could stay near our family and everything familiar. We could keep doing the same activities, riding our bikes to the same places, seeing the same friends.

“Because my life mainly stayed the same, it was much easier than it would have been if we’d been forced to move away due to a change in finances.”