My mother died at the age of 46. Her death taught me a lot and one of the lessons I learned from her was the value of having insurance. This might sound quite heartless but it was a useful lesson to learn.
Mum was 46 when she started to feel very tired and then she started to lose weight. Her doctor thought she was suffering from depression and he gave her anti-depressants. She had recently been made redundant against her wishes and he thought this was behind her low energy.
Mum continued to lose weight and I remember visiting her at home and seeing her looking very frail, lying on the sofa with little interest in what was going on around her.
Eventually she had lost so much weight that her doctor could feel a lump on her kidney. After tests, a diagnosis of primary kidney cancer which had already spread to her lungs and brain was given. There was no treatment to give her except to take her home and manage the pain. The cancer in her brain caused some unpleasant side effects so she had to take steroids and later morphine when the pain became very strong. Her speech was affected because of the location of the cancer in her brain. She thought she was making sense but her speech didn’t make sense to anyone but her. It was a jumble of words that no-one could decipher so she couldn’t communicate with us.
This was heartbreaking to watch. Mum died 6 weeks after diagnosis.
Apart from the shock of this sudden unexpected loss, Mum also had no insurance cover organised. This meant no inheritance for my two brothers and I so we had to make our own way. I’m sure if she had known this was going to happen in advance she would have taken out life and trauma cover. But this is the point that I learned. We don’t know what’s ahead so we can either roll the dice and bet on surviving healthily to our death at a ripe old age OR we can take action now to look after our loved ones. We can look into what insurance is available to meet our needs. It makes sense to do this, especially if you have debts and and a family you want to look after.
I thank my Mum for this lesson and for many other lessons. May she rest in peace.