‘Are things our parents did right in danger of being lost’ in this era of chic novelty

An old Buddhist story tells of a wealthy family who asked a Zen master to write them a blessing to hang on their palace walls. After a few days of contemplation, the master returned with a scroll bearing the words: “Father dies. Son dies. Grandson dies.” The family were disgusted but the priest insisted that this natural order of things was true wealth.

Myself and my nine sisters and three brothers are all aged in our 40s and 50s. The subject of death has come up in conversation in recent years. I would say to my Mam and Dad, “if you could make it to your 90s I’d find it easier to let you go”.

Dad made 83. Just weeks ago, he breathed his last.

When Dad thanked me and my sister sincerely for helping him walk to the bathroom, I told him: ‘Dad you looked after us for decades, it’s our turn to look after you now’

Up until a week before he died, Dad had been living a busy, active life, having overcome heart failure and cancer in previous years. When my Mam told us on the family WhatsApp group that Dad’s health was taking a sharp decline and she didn’t think he would recover, we all descended on our homeplace to help and just be there.

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When Dad thanked me and my sister sincerely for helping him walk to the bathroom, I told him: “Dad you looked after us for decades, it’s our turn to look after you now.” What we did for him in those final days was a drop. Over the years, he and Mam gave us the ocean.

Parenting in Ireland in the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s was different from what it now is. My parents, like most of their generation, never read a parenting book, nor did they attend many developmental checkups or medical appointments. Extra-curricular activities were few, the school was everything and children had friends over but not playdates. Our entire generation watched the same few programmes on television, we had sandwiches covered in Johnston Mooney and O’Brien wrappers for our school lunches, and uniforms and books were passed down from older siblings. Life was simple, but, as I came to appreciate when I had just two children of my own, simple was by no means easy for my parents.

With 13 of us born in 17 years, Mam and Dad worked tirelessly their whole lives to provide for and raise us. Mam sacrificed her career ambitions to care for us full-time, as well as being a homemaker for Dad. With quite literally a houseful of children, they were immersed in our needs and wants to the exclusion of their own.

As well as working full-time in the Department of Agriculture and part-time in Posts and Telegraphs, Dad worked hard at home too. Along with my late uncle, he built an extension on to our Dublin home in the 1980s. He made cupboards, hung shelves, did repairs, designed and maintained the gardens along with my Mam, fitted windows, drove carloads of us to and from school whenever he could and brought us on weekend outings to Howth, Malahide, St Anne’s Park and Dollymount.

As we grew up, he helped us learn to drive and buy cars and houses, supported third-level education, came to our own houses and gardens to build sheds and do odd jobs and moved on to doing school runs with grandchildren.

I wonder, are there things that parents of that generation did right that are in danger of being lost with current approaches to parenting?

My parents lived “attachment parenting” before it ever had a name. Dad was instinctive, self-sacrificing, watchful, truthful, humble and devoted to his children and grandchildren until the end.

Like many fathers of that generation, my Dad sometimes embodied a tough love that was wholly sincere.

Back in the mid-1990s when one of my sisters started dating a local “bad boy” type whose credentials didn’t meet my Dad’s standards for his daughters, he didn’t seek her permission to intervene. When this cowboy rocked up at our front door, Dad made sure to be the one to answer and ran him using embarrassingly colourful language. Dad didn’t say the words “thank me later” to my sister, but she did.

Of course, with a family so large, there were times of tribulations. This was when Dad, along with Mam, shone brightest and sunk their roots deepest for us

Dad frequently sacrificed popularity to keep us on the right path over the years. He would take the straight-talking direct approach, with political correctness getting thrown to the wind. In more recent years, Dad said to me that some of his daughters had succumbed to middle-aged spread and I asked him if I was guilty. “You’re not fat … yet”, he replied, and his honesty benefitted me more than a sugarcoated lie would have.

Of course, with a family so large, there were times of tribulations. This was when Dad, along with Mam, shone brightest and sunk their roots deepest for us. When I graduated with my degree from DCU, I had my first anxiety attack at the ceremony with my parents witnessing it. Dad gently touched my face and spoke to me from the heart as he and Mam drove me home. The tough love belied great empathy and tenderness.

Dad and I made many happy memories together too, when he would come to visit me in my home in Cavan, which he helped fund, and he would do odd jobs and gardening while I was at work, and come for a pint with my friends and me of an evening.

What is remarkable is that each of us 13 siblings has our own store of memories of myriad ways in which our parents loved us, and each of their grandchildren does too.

Just two weeks before he died, Dad said to me when we popped into the sitting room to say goodbye, that my older daughter looked a better colour and stronger than she had on our previous visit. I didn’t know it would be the last time she’d see him alive, but I knew what he meant and I was touched by his watchfulness.

We were indeed blessed to have had Vincent Hogan for 83 years and for the natural order to be followed, but we hope he’s still watching.