There’s no warning when you do something wonderful for the last time, so here’s what I do

There is a line in Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea that twanged my heartstrings like a banjo when I read it. Set in a time of COVID lockdown, Lucy Barton, who escapes to a beach house in Maine with her ex-husband, finds herself pondering the passing of time:

“And thinking of this now made me think ... that there had been a last time – when they were little – that I had picked up the girls. This had often broken my heart, to realise that you never know the last time you pick up a child. Maybe you say ‘Oh, honey, you’re getting too big to be picked up’ or something like that. But then you never pick them up again.”

Illustration: Dionne Gain. Credit:

It’s the most bittersweet wrench – remembering both the joy of those moments, and the fact that you probably don’t remember, or clock, the moments when they passed, when your child last fell asleep in your arms, their forehead burning with fever, or crawled into your bed after a nightmare, or gave you a necklace they made out of pasta shells.

You’d think a bugle should sound or something, doves be released or a cloud of cockatoos squawk in unison to mark such a moment. A military 22-gun salute would be appropriate when you change your last nappy, for example.

I was reminded of this when reading the responses to Charles Blow’s column about the beauty of embracing ageing in The New York Times. Letter writer Kathleen Burns from Wisconsin said she had just spent the day making bugs out of Play-Doh with one of her young grandsons, something she had once done with her now grown daughters. As she sat down that night to take off her sandals, she saw Play-Doh stuck in the tread, and thought of how she’d hated, as a young mother, seeing that gunk stuck in hair, carpet and clothing. But instead, her eyes welled up: “How many times will I play like this with my grandson? How much longer will he want to play with me? At my age, it is a gift to play.”

Swiftly flow the days, swiftly fly the years.

There must be a word for this emotion, for the sensation of a heart being clenched then released. It incorporates so much: nostalgia, recognition of past delights, an understanding that as time creeps by, we can easily forget the other worlds, arms, houses and lives we have inhabited. Or that what we once considered mundane – or annoying – kids demanding to be picked up! Kids – insisting on yet another bedtime story when you’re almost falling asleep yourself – were in fact marvellous.

When I told Jeremy Fernandez about the Play-Doh story on the podcast we host together, we were inundated with emails about last moments like this. Maura, a mother of three kids, two girls and one boy, was infuriated by long strands of hair around the house when her daughters were teenagers: “I’d daily implore them, ‘Girls, clean your hair up!’ I’d bellow loudly from the shower, sink, benches, out into the house on deaf ears. It was a persistent rant of mine to ‘pick up after themselves’, this included their hair.”

She continued: “Roll on a few years and my eldest daughter Hannah is 20 and diagnosed with malignant melanoma stage 4. Hannah died within 12 months of diagnosis. Something that has never left me is to this day now 15 years since Hannah left earth, is when I see a random hair, I stop and pay attention. I think of Hannah and what I’d give to have her here, to leave an earthly hair trail for me again. I never imagined as a Mum there’d be a last time for random hairs. What I then cursed is now a portal to a love that never dies. I’m eternally grateful to random hairs and not knowing when our last one will fall.”

Random hairs as a portal to an unending love. The beauty of that.

Susan told us about the day she was distracted, putting away groceries when her 24-year-old daughter rang. Susan told her she would call her the next day. But the following night, Scarlett had a massive pulmonary embolism; four days later she was declared brain-dead. “That was March 2021. I will be forever heartbroken. I now savour every single conversation with my son and I’m never too busy to talk to him.”

So much love, longing, heartache, wrapped up in last moments.

One shrewd thing my mother said to me when I was a kid was: “Just in case, if anything ever happens to me – or your dad – after we’ve had an argument, or you’ve said something you regret, I want you to know that I forgive you, and I love you.” (I think a relative had just died after saying something mean to a sibling.)

It was such a kind thing to say, and I knew even then, as a young teen, that she was recognising that last moments don’t always go the way you would hope.

If we knew it was the last moment that we were seeing someone, talking to someone, making love to someone, dancing or crying with laughter with someone, surely, we would say something expansive and beautiful and meaningful instead of being our usual flippant or grumpy or ordinary selves. But there was grace in this comment because it also freed me from any possible regret. It meant that if anything had suddenly happened to my mother, we’d be able to focus on big love, not small words.

I’ve said the same thing to my own kids.

This week, while grieving beloved former Herald editor and ABC executive Judith Whelan, a woman I loved and admired as a friend and mentor, it became clear, again, that all days, in some way, have last moments. When we texted just a few days ago, making a date to meet again, she said: “SO keen to see you. I’m not going anywhere in a hurry, day or night”.

But she was; she did go.

Even before I became a mother, listening to the stunning Sunrise Sunset in Fiddler on the Roof would pluck that banjo in my chest. In the musical, these words are sung by parents at a wedding:

Is this the little girl I carried?/ Is this the little boy at play?/ I don’t remember growing older/ When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?/ When did he grow to be so tall?/ Wasn’t it yesterday/ When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze …

Swiftly fly the years.

This week, I told my 15-year-old son about these “last time” conversations and we laughed. He was a hug-mad toddler, and I used to carry him all around the house, while doing chores, as he clung on like a koala, wrapping his arms around my neck.

Now, he is just – just – a fraction of an inch taller than me. Now, he is strong enough to pick me up and throw me over his shoulder. Now, his sister is in the final months of school, blossoming even as I gaze.

Julia Baird is a regular columnist. She is co-host with Jeremy Fernandez of the ABC’s Not Stupid podcast.