Episode 17

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Published on:

1st Apr 2025

Timeless Wait: A Daughter’s Heartfelt Journey Through Grief

In this deeply personal episode of 'Suicide Zen Forgiveness,' Elaine Lindsay shares her emotional journey of losing her father on March 9, 2025. Elaine discusses the challenges she faced, including her struggles with waiting, the importance of honoring her father's wish to stay in his home, and the meticulous funeral arrangements. She provides a heartfelt tribute to her father, celebrated as a hero and a deeply decent human being. Throughout her narrative, Elaine interweaves family history, reflections on her Scottish-Irish roots, and the profound impact her father had on her life. This episode serves as a poignant reminder of the importance of family, memory, and the process of grieving.

00:00 Introduction and Personal Update

00:26 The Struggle with Waiting

01:29 Remembering My Father

01:47 The Day of My Father's Passing

06:08 The Importance of Home

10:09 The Funeral Arrangements

13:48 The Waiting Continues

23:05 Final Goodbye and Reflections

28:03 Conclusion and Message to Viewers



Transcript
Speaker:

Elaine @TheDarkPollyanna: Suicide.

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Forgiveness, shadowing

stigma, igniting hope

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stigma the shame surround suicide

ideation and mental health.

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We talk about the hard.

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Stuff because asking for help

should be as easy as ordering a car.

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Here we share real stories from

those who've lost someone survived

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in 10 live with ideation or battle.

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Mental health challenges

fought because sharing your.

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Today's note, suicide and Forgiveness.

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The podcast is for education.

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Some of the subject matter could be

triggering for those who are either

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grieving or having mental health problems.

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If you are in North America, you can

text 9 8 8 for immediate support.

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And if you're elsewhere, please

reach out to your local suicide

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hotline for mental health service.

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You matter.

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My aim is to normalize the

conversation so you feel safe

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enough to speak up and ask for help.

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So now let's start the show.

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Hi.

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It's good to be back.

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I'm Elaine Lindsay.

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This is Suicide Zen Forgiveness.

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I have recently lost my father,

and today's episode is going

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to be a little different.

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I wanna talk about.

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waiting

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I will start by saying I

never learned to wait.

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I don't think I've ever

learned to wait, period.

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And sadly I've passed that on to my

kids, my daughter more than my son.

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We got to a place where

we move holidays up.

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And I think the earliest was December 3rd.

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One year we had Christmas and I realized

that we just couldn't go on like that.

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We'd be having Christmas in

summer shortly thereafter.

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Wait, I don't want to get lost

in that other minutiae because

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I have some things I really wanna say and.

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So if it's really hard I

could hope I get through it.

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My father is my hero.

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My father is,

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the most important person in

my life, most important person

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that is left on this earth.

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And I wanna take you through.

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The past few weeks, you see my

dad died on March the ninth,:

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due to a number of circumstances,

and the fact that it seems our family

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never does much that's

straightforward or in the regular way.

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Let me just go through it as best I can.

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I had started writing it out.

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When we left the funeral home

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I was feeling so small and

insignificant and utterly alone.

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I wasn't alone.

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I was with my husband, my son, my nephew.

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Let me backtrack and give you what I had.

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Then

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you see, I said my father died last

Sunday in the wee hours of the morning

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March the ninth, being the only child

left, and yet felt really weird to

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rate child, I mean I'm 69 years of age.

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In fact, I am the only child

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I spent the day waiting with

hubby that morning when we got

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to dad's, hubby went first.

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Dad had died in the night

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and.

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When I got there,

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we had called the doctor, so

we were waiting for the doctor

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to call back because he had

to come and pronounce my dad

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three weeks before my father died.

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Three weeks, maybe a month.

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We got news from the cardiologist that

things were very bad with his heart.

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His lungs were filling with fluid

and his kidneys were shutting down.

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I like to have things for real.

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I don't like people sugarcoating stuff.

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I hate false hope.

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I wanna know how things are.

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And the cardiologist, who is a very

kind man, he told me that the way

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things stood, it could be a month.

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It could be longer, but I

should get in what I could

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back to the day.

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The doctor showed up within

the hour, like he said.

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Now, we'd only met him

a few weeks before this.

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He is one of three on a

palliative care team in our area.

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They have in excess of 800 patients.

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Just think about that.

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Palliative care is end of life care.

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This is a small area

of the city I live in.

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They have over 800 clients.

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It really boggles the mind.

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In my usual bent fashion, I

met this soft spoken young man.

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He had red hair and a beard, and

that first day we met him, I said

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to hubby that he could basically be

12 years old except for the beard.

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I think it's me now.

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Everybody just seems so.

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Yeah.

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He was very efficient and did what he

needed and immediately got the medical

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box of supplies that we put in the house.

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The most important thing to my

father and the thing I fought

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with some of the doctors about

was him staying in his house.

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My father developed dementia

just before he turned 90.

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The dementia doctor said he

would be better off in a home.

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I explained to him, the dementia

doctor and my father's physician

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that I come from a very

different Scots family.

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Scots Irish.

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Actually, if you count my mother,

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we came to this country basically

with the clothing on our backs.

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My mother, my father, and me

and my grandmother and my aunt,

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they came with us in lieu

of our material belongings.

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Because family is more

important than anything.

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And my father told me, they also

came with a small box of dishes.

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The one thing my mother

refused to part with, and

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when we got off the boat in Quebec.

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We had to take a train from Montreal

to Ottawa to where we were going to be

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staying with my great aunt and her family.

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When we got to the train, one of the

train people told my father that he

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couldn't take the dishes on the train.

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If they were going to go anywhere,

they'd have to go in cargo.

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And he couldn't guarantee

they would make it.

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My father somehow found a pen

or something to write with, and

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he scribbled all over that box.

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Fragile fragile.

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He said he put it on every side and

just prayed that it would make it.

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Because he didn't wanna

hurt my mother anymore.

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Things like that

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are what made it so important to

my father to remain in his house.

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It's the house that when they

finally settled down and weren't

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being transferred anymore.

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My father, who was the

military man most of his life.

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They bought a house together and it

was the first house they'd ever bought.

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And to him, as he said, he

would only leave boots up.

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And I knew with no shadow of a

doubt that if we tried to put my

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father in a home or a veteran's home

or anywhere other than his house.

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We did we tried to get him to come

live with us and he didn't want to.

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He said that wasn't fair to my husband.

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My husband loved my

father as much as I do.

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It would've been just fine with us, but

we were able to acquiesce to his wishes

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and he certainly didn't ask for much.

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We were there every second day until the

last few weeks when it became every day,

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back to that fateful day.

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After the doctor left, we

were waiting for the priest.

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My father converted to

Catholicism in:

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Not as everyone assumed in order to

marry my Scots Irish Catholic mother.

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He actually converted because he wanted

to become a Catholic since he was a boy.

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You see my grand, his mom was Catholic.

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She married my Church of Scotland

granddad, and I don't know if she

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got to practice her religion openly.

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My grandfather was banished

from the family home for this

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offense of marrying a Catholic.

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Back then it was a very big offense.

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Now they say often converts are

the best, and my father was his.

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An absolutely modern Catholic.

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When my parents finally returned to

Ottawa from their posting in London,

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England, they settled in Orleans

new development where they settled,

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didn't have a parish of their own.

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So my father got on the committee

and built the church and the school

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in the new Dvine Infant Parish.

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They started in 1979 to talk about it,

and he's been a parishioner ever since.

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After a couple of hours,

the waiting was over.

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The priest came.

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Father Michael, was his

name very gentle soul.

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He made me feel better as

he gave dad the last rights.

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That was, I guess the other last

thing my father was adamant about.

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Father Michael spoke with me

for a while before he too left.

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Left me to wait this time

for the funeral home.

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To come pick up my dad.

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The young men who came were very kind,

very considerate, and one of them saw a

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legion photo upstairs and he came down

and asked if my father was military.

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Absolutely.

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He was in the RAF in Britain.

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He joined the RCAF here and

then became a UN peacekeeper.

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He said they would go outside because

they were going to make a point of

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covering him with the Canadian flag.

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On the trip to the funeral home

wasn't far from where dad lived.

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I had no idea that this was only

the start of what would become

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an absolute marathon of waiting.

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I love the fact that the young man

thought to offer my dad this honor.

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He'd be very proud.

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The waiting had to continue.

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See, I was waiting for a

return message from my nephew.

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He had gone on vacation

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basically a day and a half before

with his family in Mexico, and

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I was loathed to contact him.

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I didn't wanna interrupt their vacation.

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I didn't want their next vacation or the

one after that to be colored by death.

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I grew up in a household that was

colored by sickness constantly.

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My aunt was I my entire life and what

we did or didn't do and where we went

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was predicated upon the phone ringing.

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And I didn't want my great nephew and

niece, both of them now young teens.

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To have to go through this

feeling and this heartbreak.

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Every time something good

happened or a vacation came,

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they loved their great-granddad.

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They called him GGD very much,

and I didn't want any happy times

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to forever be tinged with dread.

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I live that I would much rather

give them the joy of their vacation.

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Wait to break the news until

they returned and there was

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nothing they could have done.

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There was nothing that couldn't wait until

the following weekend when they came back.

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My son and my nephew had of course

discussed this prior to leaving.

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And not surprising because this

was not the first time we had

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lost someone in the family.

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One or both of them were unavailable.

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Time, seemed to stand still.

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We had been at the house all day.

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We finally left to go home at

eight o'clock that evening.

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Makes me to go home to wait.

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And the waiting continued.

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I did speak with my nephew.

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My son had already told

him what was happening,

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but I suggested he not tell

the kids until they came home.

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I set up the meeting for the funeral home

the following week once they were back.

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As the waiting continued,

I got Antsier and Antsier

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as each day passed every

morning was a fresh hell.

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I always called my dad in the

morning and it became like a

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splash of cold water every day.

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So I'd stop myself from making that call.

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Realizing it wasn't a possibility anymore.

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A full week had passed and I'm

feeling like I've been put on ice

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finally leaving the funeral

home no further ahead in the

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process than I was before I went.

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It's exquisite torture.

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We went to see the funeral lady on Sunday.

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They actually had to change the

person that was going to interact with

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us because I moved it up two days.

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It seems like such a silly reason.

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I was worried about my father being cold.

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One of the first things this woman said.

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Was that as a Catholic, my father

should have known that he could

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have waited a while to die.

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Lent was not an appropriate

time, and she made it a joke.

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I didn't find it funny.

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I didn't find it appropriate,

and it certainly wasn't timely.

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She went on to say, lent,

church time is at a premium.

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Very few dates and times

available for a funeral mass.

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My nephew and son are the

co-executors of my father's estate,

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and all of us know the most important

thing to my dad was the funeral mass.

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It's actually critically important.

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Nothing else can happen

until that date is set.

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She also told us something.

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I didn't realize that there are

to be no flowers inside the church

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because it's Lent, there are no

photos, adornments, et cetera.

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'cause it's lent no music other

than that provided by the church.

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And I don't have a problem with that.

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I just had wanted to honor my

father with some Scots music,

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as well as some Canadian.

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My father was, oh, so

proud to be Canadian.

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We finished with the

woman as best we could.

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Now as we head home, I keep

thinking, oh, here we go.

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Hurry up and wait.

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Now I realize that things take time.

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I do.

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I also get the universe

is trying desperately to

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instill some patience in me.

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Now,

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another epic fail there.

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Don't do well with that, and I

go stumbling through the days.

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Each day seems interminable just goes

on forever, and yet at the end of

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the day, I feel that I've been stuck

in molasses and nothing happened.

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And that's not actually true

because I chose to be the one

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to create the memoriam card.

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I wanted it to have both Canadian

and Scottish symbols, and I added

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a Rabbie Burn Scottish death poem.

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I believe it's epitaph for a friend.

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We followed the protocol of the

military displaying the correct medals,

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wearing the uniform of the last

type of service my father provided.

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His final uniform, he was

a UN veteran peacekeeper.

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He had been a un peacekeeper

in Gaza in the mid seventies.

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Dad was a sergeant, retired in

the Royal Canadian Air Force,

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and in the RAF, he did his first tour for

13 months stationed at Aden, the British

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Crown colony of the United Kingdom.

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In what you now know as Yemen,

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I find myself, who is

usually chatty Cathy,

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not wanting to talk at all.

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I don't wanna go anywhere.

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I just keep worrying about my dad.

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He's cold.

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All this waiting is just making it colder.

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My dad and I had both reached a place in

life where being cold is a 24 7 event.

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Dad was cold 'cause 92.

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I'm cold due to liver issues.

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Really doesn't matter why.

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What matters is only Dad seemed to

understand just how cold it was.

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I kept waking up in the night

wondering was I somehow failing him

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because it was taking so

long and he'd be so cold

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and there was more waiting.

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Finally.

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Visitation evening came

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and

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I had made a video

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with mom and dad and their

friends and the family.

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I had to change it into a slideshow.

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So it would work on the DDVD that the

funeral home had, and that was okay.

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On the

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memorial card that I made.

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I added Scottish blessing for death.

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May the wind be always at your back.

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May the sun shine warm upon your face.

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The rains, fall soft upon your fields.

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And until we meet again, may God

hold you in the hollow of his hand.

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I tried my hardest to

keep it together today

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because I am at a total loss.

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That's how to go forward without him.

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I know intellectually he was ninety-two

. I was always so lucky to have him.

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As long as I did.

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More than that, we were so lucky

that he did not get dementia

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until he was basically a couple

of weeks from turning 90.

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So we truly are blessed.

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It doesn't change the fact that I

would still like to have my dad here.

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The other

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verse that I added, the one from Rabbie

Burns, I'd like to read it to you.

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An honest man here lies at rest.

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As air God with his image.

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Blessed the friend of man, the

friend of truth, the friend

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of age, the guide of youth.

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Few hearts like his with virtue, warmth.

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Few heads with knowledge, so informed if

there's another world he lives in bliss.

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If there is none.

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He made the best of this.

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This is my final goodbye to my dad,

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and yet

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it's not.

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We are waiting.

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We have to wait now for

the graveside service.

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We have to wait to bury

my father because I live

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in the frozen white north in the second

coldest capital in the world, and

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we must wait on the ground Thawing.

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There will be a military sendoff as my

father is buried alongside my mother

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in the military area of the cemetery.

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My father a very good man.

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He was.

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He was honest.

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He was kind.

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He was funny, he was sarcastic,

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and I hope

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I pick up all his good traits

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and pass them on to my kids and grandkids.

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Because I think the world has

lost a very decent human being,

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and that's my farewell to my dad.

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I thank you so much

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for listening.

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I know it's a.

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A different type of show today,

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but this too is part of living and

part of what I'm living through.

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And as the dark Pollyanna,

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there is a bit of an

internal battle going on.

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But for today, I can say

Pollyanna is winning.

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I thank you so much for being here

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and say to you, make the most of

your today, every day, and I look

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forward to seeing you again next time.

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Goodbye.

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Voiceover: Thank you for being

here for another inspiring episode

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of Suicide Zen Forgiveness.

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We appreciate you tuning in.

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About the Podcast

Suicide Zen Forgiveness Stories re Suicide Loss | Ideation | Mental Health | Offering Hope |Empathy for All
Sharing Stories to Offer Hope
Adding empathy and offering hope to end the silence, stigma, and shame. ~Elaine Lindsay©2021

Come along on the transformative journey of ’Suicide Zen Forgiveness,’ where host Elaine Lindsay, a suicide loss survivor and advocate, invites listeners to break the silence about mental health struggles. Elaine wants to remove the shame felt by all who are touched by suicide loss, ideation and mental health. With over 50 years of personal experience, Elaine offers candid conversations, heartfelt stories, and practical insights aimed at ending the stigma and offering hope. Each episode explores themes of resilience, gratitude, and growth, encouraging listeners to navigate life’s challenges with bravery and compassion. Tune in for a blend of wisdom, authenticity, and unwavering support on a group journey of healing, hope, and understanding.

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