I was told I wasn’t trying, when my mother was dying

I’ve only told this story to my mother just now.  There never seemed the appropriate time before.  In fact, I haven’t given it much thought until now. 

The story is instructive, for it isn’t the only time a boss of mine has prioritised the work over the life-death welfare of family.

Wind the clock back to May 2011.  My mother was admitted to hospital with a nasty chest infection, and according to the doctor she was literally drowning.  (Official diagnosis was severe pneumonia.) The penny hadn’t dropped for us at that point in time.  What none of us knew was she was dying.

After 10 days in intensive care we finally were able to reflect on her plight.  But the first four of those days she was more than occasionally delusional — the first time in our mother’s life when we didn’t know her, and she didn’t know us.  On the final night of these first four, the Thursday, the doctor said she might not make it through the next 24-hours.  It was such a dark time.

Coinciding with this, I was in the midst of rolling out a whole-of-organisation “Safety for Life” strategy road show.  I worked for a Port Authority at the time (the largest port on the west coast of Australia) and I had 360 employees to present to in sessions of 20-30 each.  “Safety for Life” appealed to employees’ commitment to the heart and morals of safety — that safety truly was a life-and-death proposition in heavy industry, where the Port had had fatalities on and off the job.  The first and second of these sessions was run on the second day of my mother’s stay in ICU.

I recall the first session went well, but the second session I was preoccupied by my mother’s condition, concern for my father, and when I’d next get 40 kilometres down the coast to the hospital.

When I returned to my office, I had my new manager come in and he said in a harsh voice, “Mate, I hear the last session you did was below par.  I know your Mum’s sick but don’t drop the ball again, okay!”  I was flabbergasted.  I had clearly wanted to do better.  (And for the record, the remaining sessions were all very well and passionately delivered.)

What I couldn’t understand was he knew my mother was in ICU, and it didn’t seem to bother him.  He made no enquiry of her before that quip and didn’t speak to me afterward.  I was preparing to lose my mother!

As it happened, we rode out those four days with Mum, my brothers, our wives and Dad, and the ten days overall.  It was the scariest time.

Before this 2011 experience, I had had extremely good and caring managers for twenty years previously.  I found it unconscionable that a manager of people could not only put the job ahead of one of his people, but that he did so when my mother was possibly going to die.

I share this to say, these things do happen.

Leaders have a real opportunity when life is tough for those who report to them.  Their opportunity is to show care and concern and support, and to help when life is overwhelming.  I don’t know about you, but I would do anything for a manager who stepped into the breach for me in the above kind of situation, and I have very fortunately experienced that on countless occasions.  For me, that’s leadership!

I left that workplace about 20 months later to commence a fulltime pastoral role.  The relationship I had with this new manager didn’t get any better, and for the first time I encountered a narcissistic bully who had positional control over me.  The ironic thing is part of my role as Port Safety Advisor was to call out and advocate for bullying and harassment as a contact officer.  This story I share here is just one during that time.  I went through a variety of depression throughout this period in my life, simply because I was in a situation that I could neither change nor easily escape from.