Angela Bishop: ‘Father’s Day is the hardest day’

Entertainment reporter Angela Bishop opens up about the grief she feels around Father’s Day since the loss of her dad, and later her husband.

Father’s Day used to be my favourite day of the year. Being born on September 6, every few years my birthday would fall on Father’s Day and we would have the most magnificent family celebration of my granddads, my dad and me. A party at our place with loads of presents. It was like Christmas, but just for the special people!

When I became a mum, I looked forward to those Father’s Days that fell on September 6 the most. When Amelia was seven, I took one of my favourite photos of her holding two cards up next to her face. One says “Happy Father’s Day Daddy”, the other says “Happy Birthday Mummy”.

As the day approached, she delighted in telling people how busy she was, getting presents and cards made for both Mum and Dad on the same day.

Angela Bishop and her daughter Amelia. (Picture: Instagram)

Angela Bishop with her late husband Peter Baikie when Amelia was seven. (Picture: Christian Gilles)

Sadly, that would be the last time she’d get to do that. Peter, her beautiful dad, died a little over two years later, after fighting a rare cancer called primary pulmonary synovial sarcoma.

But on that Father’s Day in 2015, we knew nothing of what was to come.

We climbed into Pete’s beloved 1958 Chrysler Imperial and headed to a classic-car show, where the car won a trophy. Later we went to the park and Pete taught Amelia to fly a kite. We celebrated with ice creams. It was the perfect day.

My own dad died in 2010, also from a rare cancer. He’d been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal stromal tumour in 2002, just a fortnight before I met Pete. There was no effective treatment available at the time, and most patients died within six months of diagnosis. However, a trial drug being tested in the US was showing some promise. But how to get it?

A few weeks after I met Peter, he invited me to his sister’s wedding, where I got talking to a friend of the groom. We did the old “what do you do” conversation and she revealed she worked for a pharmaceutical company. I said, “You don’t make Glivec do you?” She replied that as a matter of fact her company did make that drug, but why did I want to know?

A few weeks later, my dad was on a drug trial that ended up seeing him live for eight more years – long enough to walk me down the aisle, meet Amelia and even share one precious triple-billed September 6 Father’s Day.

Angela Bishop features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

Now, Father’s Day is the hardest day of the year. In the lead-up, I have to help Amelia navigate all the well-intentioned Father’s Day plans and activities organised at school. The TV commercials seem to start earlier each year, and the sight of a father holding his little girl’s hand in the street becomes impossible to bear.

So far, Amelia and I have dealt with it by running away and going for a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains, at a spot that was precious to the three of us.

But the Father’s Day memories we have are precious and good. Hopefully as the years pass, we will be able to cope a bit better, and just count ourselves lucky that we had two such amazing dads.

Angela Bishop is a co-host on Studio 10 and entertainment editor at Network 10.

For information and support for those with rare cancers, visit rarecancers.org.au.

Originally published as Angela Bishop: ‘Father’s Day is the hardest day’