Inspirational Stories

A Brave Mother

Northcote mother Pauline Shepherd had just been told she was pregnant when her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died at North Shore Hospice six weeks after their boy was born. Cathy Withiel speaks to the brave mother, now coping alone with four children.

Photographs of her dying husband cradling the infant Eyzic sit on the mantelpiece of the Shepherd home in Northcote. That’s all they have now – memories and photographs.

But mother Pauline, 34, is grateful that her soulmate Lewis Hete, 31, not only got to name their baby boy but bond with him before time ran out. The jocular, strapping plasterer and devoted family man died of stomach and brain cancer on August 13 last year.

Now Pauline has the sole responsibility of raising her adopted 13 year old daughter Laikan and the couple’s three children, Taine, 6, Fabian, 3, and nine month old Eyzic.

It’s not easy, living with dying.

But this brave mother is willing to share her story to highlight all that North Shore Hospice has done and continues to do for the family. And one day, when the grief is less raw, she wants to volunteer her services as a counsellor to others in the same situation.

Pauline was born and educated in Auckland, and when she was 26 she met and fell in love with Lewis. She was an usherette at a theatre, he was in the building business, and it was, to use the well-worn cliché, love at first sight. They lived in Huntly for a while, then in Papakura and finally Northcote.

Their eight years together were happy. Lewis loved gardening, cricket, fishing and was a devoted Warriors fan. He was a hands-on dad who loved romping with his boys and cooking up a storm. He also loved chess. The family were fiercely proud of its Maori heritage, and life was good.

Around Christmas, 2001, Pauline found out she was pregnant. The couple were delighted.

Their world fell apart one month later.

Pauline and Lewis were fishing in January last year when his arm suddenly froze, and, to use his description, “felt as heavy as concrete”. Pauline rushed him to the doctor, who thought it was a bloody clot. Acute stomach pain followed and he was hospitalised for tests. The shattering news was broken in February. He had terminal stomach cancer, which over the next few months spread to his brain. They told the children together. Pauline explains: “The first thing the kids asked is: ‘Why is this happening to Dad?’ We had no answers. I still have no answers. I don’t know what to tell my sons.”

Worse was to come. Pauline says as the cancer took over his brain, his personality changed. He battled constant pain, mood swings, aggression and there were often angry outbursts. “The children couldn’t understand why Dad couldn’t read a book to them, or why he yelled. This was not the Dad they knew,” she says.

Hospice was there for them, even though Pauline didn’t want to know them at first. “I guess hospice symbolised the end for me.” Palliative care nurse Margaret Holmes was a stalwart. She brought in morphine for Lewis and empathy, kindness, friendship. The stuff that got the family through.

Lewis was present at the birth of little Eyzic and chose the name himself, just as he had chosen the names of his other two sons. Memories of this time are bittersweet.

Lewis was not bedridden and remained independent right up until the end.

But the cancer advanced rapidly and the family all moved in to North Shore Hospice about a week before his death. This was the break that Pauline needed. Now, while the staff played with the children, fed the family and were there for them, she had time to sit at her husband’s bedside all day without worrying about what the kids were up to. To spend uninterrupted quality time with him. To grieve.

Hospice even accommodated their extended family members from Waikato.

Pauline was with him at the end. “But I was a bit sad I did not get to say any last special thing to him just before he died. He just slipped away in his sleep.”

Lewis, she says, initially wasn’t pleased about going to hospice, but once he was there loved its homely feel and appreciated all that the staff did for him. She says Maori are often proud and rely on whanau to see them through times of hardship. But hospice helped them, and she can’t recommend it highly enough.

Pauline says she felt relief that his pain was over, but sadness that he had gone so quickly. He was buried at Taupriri Mountain near Hamilton. The funeral was emotional. Little Fabian tried to climb into the grave with his dad. Onepoto Primary pupil Taine took the death badly and the little lad subconsciously assumed the male role in the house. Pauline smiles: “He told me ‘I am the boss of the house now’. I just laughed”.

After the funeral, she says, she returned home to the stark reality of a life without Lewis.

Once again, hospice stepped in. She and the children went to counselling sessions. At first Pauline was in one-on-one sessions, then she progressed to group sessions with the other young people who have lost partnership.

She found it healing to talk to people in the same position, people who knew first hand what she was going through. Just when she thought things could get no worse, they did.

Two months to the day after his dad’s death, Taine accidentally tipped over a pot of soup, scalding the back of his head and his back. He was rushed to Kidz First Children’s Hospital in Auckland and Pauline had to farm out her other children so she could keep vigil on the little boy’s bedside. She realised subconsciously, as only a mother can, that in some way Taine wanted to join the father he idolised. She says even though he is still in counselling, Taine sometimes wakes up at night yelling for his dad. “I tell him to look at the photographs of his dad around the house and say to him: ‘Talk to him, tell him you miss him, he can hear you’.”

Although almost eight months have passed, the hurt is still very raw but life has a semblance of normality about it. The family had a wonderful Christmas lunch at North Shore Hospice and all make use of the continued support that hospice provides.

Pauline finds being busy helps, especially at night. If she’s done all her ironing, she irons again. Anything not to dwell on grief. She’s also become acutely aware of her own mortality, not want the kids to be in the position of not having either a mother or a father. She’s taken out a life insurance policy and when she’s feeling emotionally stronger, she’ll give up smoking.

Money is also tight. The breadwinner is dead. And although Pauline drives, she does not own a car, which also means she can’t visit Lewis’ grave as often as she’d like.

Meanwhile, his legacy lives on in his sons. Eyzic is a bundle of joyful giggles, Fabian is the spitting image of his father, and Taine wants to be “just like Dad.”

Story kindly written by Kathy Withiel for North Shore Times Advertiser. Photos by Paul Restall, North Shore Times.