Vicky Ewan: Family ensures that life goes on

I remember my husband mourning the loss of his dad in 2012. 

This gentleman's death was not wholly unexpected, but it occurred whilst we were out of the country, on a wonderful family vacation, and we only learned of it once we arrived back on terra firma - a distressing reacquaintance with the unremorseful nature of the real world, thrown into sharp relief against the awesome experience of hyper reality we had so recently enjoyed on our holiday. 

Some days later, amidst the grief of adjusting to his new status, I recall my husband quietly stating that, as his sole remaining parent had died, he was now an orphan. 

At the time, this self-identification, although factually true, seemed a dramatic conclusion for a man approaching his fifties. 

I was sympathetic, of course - I love my husband, and understood that his loss was significant - but I had, at the time no way to relate to the situation into which he had been so decisively thrust. 

Still a young woman at that point, with four children and dreaming of a fifth, and blessed with parents whose health, despite their undeniably advancing years, was enviably robust, I was very little preoccupied with the mortality of anyone really close to me. 

My father’s parents had died before his move to England, and his stepmother, a gentle soul whom I had met only once, had passed away a good while ago. 

My mother’s parents were no longer with us, either; my mum's mother, a darling lady, died whilst I was a middling teen, and my grandad, who managed to reach his hundredth birthday, died a few years later, stealing away unobtrusively and leaving behind fond memories of fragrant pipe smoke and Handel’s Messiah, both of which had hung evocatively in the air during his extended stay at our family home some years prior to his death. 

The loss of each of these gentle folk was full of sadness, but not unusual: grandparents die; parents do not. 

My mum's death, therefore, struck a harsh blow; though she had been gravely unwell in the previous weeks, she had rallied, and we had expected to welcome her home in time for Christmas that year. 

Sadly, that happy realisation was not to be. Suddenly, I was motherless, bereft of the mainstay of my childhood and friend of my adulthood. 

There was much to regret, and even more to mourn: the world was a poorer place. But I still had my dad. 

When my brother and I were growing up, our dad - who was by no means prone to fanciful indulgence - would sometimes bestow a regal title upon our mum, by adding the suffix “ship” to her name. 

This might sometimes pertain to whatever she happened to be doing at the time (once, when she had handed him a postage stamp, he had dubbed her “Your Stamp-ship”), but was most often limited to the rather charming “Your Mum-ship”. 

It was a quirky and unexpected expression of whimsy from this rarely effusive man, and it always made us smile. 

When she died, he was at the forefront of our lives for the first time in our family's history, catapulted into the spotlight as the figurehead of our small ship even as our focus shifted to his needs and the decline in health that our mum's death had, perhaps, precipitated. 

There we were, adrift, our ship rudderless and in danger of capsizing. My brother and I, a willing crew, did our best to navigate our reconfigured trio through these unfamiliar waters without our mother, but we missed her kind hand at the tiller, and there was occasional mutiny on deck. 

In many ways, though, my relationship with my dad blossomed over his last few months, as his deterioration accelerated and his dependency increased. 

As a profoundly proud man, he had little patience for infirmity in himself, but, forced to submit to the limitations imposed by his illness, he cultivated depths of tolerance and acquiescence (though peppered with an occasional show of spirit) that were humbling to observe. 

Sat at his bedside towards the end, I was moved by his dignity and courage as he was steered on to seas that he had no choice but to sail alone. 

And when my dad died, and I realised that I had joined my husband's lonely little club, I finally understood how alone in the world he had felt at the loss of his own father. 

Like my brother, though, who has his lovely wife at his side, I am not truly alone - though my deckhands may be a little green around the ears (and the gills). 

Nevertheless, our family voyage is well underway; we must unfurl our sails, and pray for calm waters, chugging along trustingly in her Mum-ship's steadfast wake.