A situation familiar to many modern parents. Making their way through rush hour traffic to pick up their children who possibly attend a number of different schools spread throughout busy cities. The GPS recommended fastest route would only work if your car could sprout wings and fly over traffic. Another of the more stressful times of the day, the morning school drop-off being the first one. You finally arrive at the school gate and then the stress levels increase even more. Hundreds of similar parents vying for a small number of legal car parking spaces. Scanning the roads surrounding the school for a hint of a place to stop. Trying your best not to run anyone over, having to make your way around cars that have double or triple-parked. You make your way onto the grass berm next to the road. You pull your handbrake to immobilise vehicle staking your claim to this treasured location. You rush out of your car and sprint towards the school gate as if you are about to complete a marathon. Exhausted, about to collapse, running on sheer willpower alone. Next up for this sporting event is trying to find your child in a sea of other children wearing completely the same clothing. The good old bastion of conformity the school uniform. A blur of green and blue as children walk, run, skip on their way out of school. Is that my daughter? Is that my son? No, that kid just looks like them. No, that’s one of the more vertically challenged teachers. There’s my precious. As time is running out you haul them over your shoulders in a fireman’s carry and race to your car. Buckling them into their car seat as if it was straitjacket. Only three more to pick up….

Stressful enough on any standard school day, the school pick-up becomes even more stressful when the other parent is dying in the local hospice inpatient unit. At 4pm every afternoon the children of two different families would arrive to see their unwell parent. Typical Kiwi kids wearing a number of different school uniforms. Various lengths of hair, various ages and stages, brought together for the same purpose. Trying to spend as much time as possible with a parent who might not be around for much longer. A heart-warming sight but at the same time heart-breaking. In the future these school aged children would likely remember visiting their parent at the local hospice. I hope that their memories aren’t too bad. I hope it wasn’t a scary place for them. I hope that they felt welcomed. I hope their family tells them later on how meaningful their visits were for their late parent. I hope they are told how much their parent loved them and had tried their best to stay alive as long as possible, much longer than most people did. How their parent held on for their birthdays, their first day of school, or for their graduation and other important milestones. I hope they can remember the happier times when one of their parents wasn’t dying and they always did things as a family.

Every birthday from now on, there will be someone missing from the celebration. Christmas and New Year will not feel the same any more. Life will go on but it will be different. Who will take the kids fishing for eels? Who will teach the kids how to drive? Or how to cook? Or how to sew clothing? Someone will be missing when they turn 21. If they get married, someone else will walk them down the aisle. The youngest kids might not remember much about their parent at all.

Please make the most of each day. Time with children and family is so darn precious.