Video: We need to talk about Mum and Dad

In this video Tracey Spicer talks to Jean Kittson about her book We need to talk about Mum and Dad, a practical guide to supporting ageing parents. Jean shares tips about confronting the taboos around ageing, deciphering a whole new world of jargon and finding the right specialists to help you navigate headaches such as Centrelink, aged care and enduring powers of attorney.

Transcript

Tracey Spicer

Hi, I’m Tracey Spicer. And now we’re going to talk about life, death, and everything in between with a national living treasure. She’s just written this book called We Need to Talk About Mum and Dad. Of course, I’m talking about legendary author and comedian Jean Kittson. Jean, thanks so much for taking the time to do this.

Jean Kittson

Thank you, Tracey. Wow, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for talking about my book.

Tracey Spicer

It’s such a beautiful book. It’s incredibly well-researched, it’s heartfelt, and, of course, hilariously funny. What I loved at the start was your story about your then eight-year-old daughter and how brutal she was about you and your partner and your aging process.

Jean Kittson

Yes, well, I cannot forget the day she said, “When you get older, Mum,” probably thinking I was old already, “I’ll put you in a nursing home and I’ll raze this house and build something more modern.”

I started off the book sort of talking about the way we often joke about aging, and we banter about what it means, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty, we actually don’t know what it means until you start getting involved with a loved one’s that stage of their life.

We don’t know what it mean, what does getting older mean? What does it mean for health and living and for lifestyle or their lives, I mean, we all have lifestyles now, not lives, apparently. But, what does aging mean? And I don’t think we really know that until we have to start looking after a loved one.

Tracey Spicer

And we’re so bad at talking about aging and death, particularly in Western cultures. It’s as if we’re saying, “Oh, that won’t happen to me. It’ll happen to everybody else.”

Jean Kittson

Yes. Yeah, we are. And I don’t know why that is. I’ve thought that we have to talk about it because that breaks down the fear, and the taboo, and the ignorance. And we’re all going to die, sadly, but we are. And so, we need to talk about what that means. And when you talk about it, it removes fear and it gives you courage. And it gives you courage, not only to face your own death but more importantly, the death of your loved ones.

So, talking about grief and dying, we never did in our family. We were the masters of changing the subject. So, if someone said, “Oh, my uncle died,” we’d go, “Oh. Oh look, there’s a puppy.” Sort of try anything to smooth it over. What if I distract them from their grief?

But, I remember once I did a dinner, an after-dinner talk for an organisation called Good Grief and it made me reflect on grief. And we’ve always tried to avoid grief as parents, we want happiness for our children. Happiness is the main aim. But every life, grief is fundamental to our humanity and grieving for the loss of someone or anticipating the loss of a loved one is something that gives our life value, it means that we’ve loved people and they’ve loved us, and it’s important not to be afraid of it.

I think for my parents’ generation, one of the things was that when they came back from the Wars, they were told not to talk about people they’d lost and things they’d seen and the people they mourned. They were told to get on with their lives as if all that grief was a thing apart. I think they did, my parents’ generation never talked about bad things. They might’ve to each other or the war, I mean, they were literally told to forget it and see it as a thing apart. And I think that meant that we didn’t have those conversations growing up. I don’t know whether you did, Tracey, but we didn’t talk about that sort of thing growing up.

Tracey Spicer