This excerpt from Allison Gilbert’s Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents (Seal Press, 2006) is reprinted with the permission of the author. Please click here to read Sheila’s interview with her. In this excerpt, Gilbert writes from her interview with Dennis Franz.

You ONLY GET one set of parents. If you’re close to them at all, you know how important it is to lose the biggest influence on your life. It takes a long time to adjust to the fact that you can’t give your parents a call or go home for the holidays to see them. You won’t get letters from them, send and receive gifts, or talk to them. You realize that part of the joy of success, of good things happening in your life, is sharing them. When you can’t share your happiness with your parents, it reminds you how much you miss them. And how much you loved them.

THE SAME HOSPITAL AT THE SAME TIME

My dad was a very private man, so when the doctor took out a tumor in my dad’s colon and told us that it was too late, that it had already spread, we decided to wait until Dad talked to us rather than bring it up. He underwent some chemo treatments; he thought he was going to improve. We were kind of living with false hope. He only lived for about six months after the diagnosis.

Dad had always been a strong, virile guy. Now he was getting smaller and frail. He had no energy and was in a lot of pain. It was hard to watch him deteriorating, becoming weaker and less vibrant. Emotionally, I think he understood what was happening, but he never talked about death, about the end, or about succumbing to the cancer. It was never discussed. We just tried to be optimistic in the face of complete adversity and make him feel as good as possible.

During that time, which was stressful for all of us, my mom woke up one morning with dad and said, “I feel dizzy, lightheaded. Do I look funny? Am I talking funny?” And then she collapsed. She had a stroke and went into the hospital. My parents were in the same hospital at the same time. As time went on, my dad got worse, and my mother was in a coma. I felt like I was at a tennis match, going from one room to the other.

Then Dad got so bad that he had to be taken out of the hospital.

 Hospice came to my parents’ home.

When my parents died I was working. I may have been selfishly taking my intense focus off that situation and putting it on my work. I was more able to take my mind off my parents’ dying than my sisters, who were there all the time. I was on the phone with my sister when my dad died. She had been saying that he wasn’t responding well, and today was not a good day. All of a sudden the conversation was broken. She said, “Oh, wait a minute-hold on. Oh!” Then she said, “Dad’s gone.” He was seventy-four.

Our mother was in a coma for several weeks after our father died. She was kept alive by a machine. The doctors encouraged us to pull the plug; they said that she’d been too long in that state and it would be wiser and more humane to let her go. We asked whether there was any hope, and they said, “Of course, there are always miracles and there’s always a possibility.” That was all we needed to hear, that there’s always a possibility. So we opted to hope for the best, and we hung in there.

My mother was the glue that held our family together, that made us as close as we were. She kept in touch with everyone. She was the kind of woman you could go to with anything, and she’d make you feel better about it, put it in perspective. She always made me feel that there was no obstacle I couldn’t hurdle.

Whenever we came to visit her, we’d talk to her, share our day and share our thoughts. We weren’t convinced that she was able to hear, but we just wanted to spend time with her. Then, one day she opened up one eye and looked around. After a time she was able to open her other eye, but they were not looking in the same direction. Through her own will, she was able to bring them together over a period of time. She could see, but she was never able to communicate or have control over any other muscles.

We didn’t know what our mother could understand, but we realized that we should tell her that our father had died. If she had any consciousness at all, she would be able to make sense of who was there and who wasn’t. We thought she might be wondering why our father wasn’t there. Breaking the news to her that Dad was gone was hard.

My mother’s condition was more severe and went on for longer than my dad’s. She needed around-the-clock care. We checked her out of the hospital when the doctors came to the decision that no further advances were being made. We put her in a nursing home. My sisters, bless their hearts, were always there to make sure that she was getting the best treatment she could get. And I was there whenever possible. Months later, while still in the nursing home, my mother suffered the stroke that killed her. She was seventy when she died, and I was forty.

I SEE MYSELF BECOMING MY FATHER

I understand my father better now than I did when he was alive. He was a kind, generous, quiet man. He had a quiet strength that my sisters and I loved and respected. But as I was growing up, I didn’t think that my father and I had anything in common.

Now I see myself becoming my father. I’ll say something or make a hand gesture and think, That’s my dad. And I understand his philosophy more now. Having raised two stepdaughters, I understand some of his difficulties and frustrations in raising children.

As the only son, I probably relate to the loss of my parents along the lines of how my father would relate to it. I see my sisters expressing sadness more, tears coming to their eyes, and talking more than I am able to. I get choked up when we talk about my parent! Sometimes I have those good cries. But I think I keep things inside more than my sisters do.

I try to emulate my parents as far as the things they un consciously taught my sisters and me about being good human beings-just being considerate of others and never forgetting that we’re all equal in this ball game. I don’t care who it is, I don’t look above or below anybody. I try to get on an even keel with everyone, and treat people respectfully, whether they’re the doorman or janitor or the president of a corporation. That was what our parents instilled in us, and that goes a long way.

I have kept some small things from my childhood that I remember being in the family house. Little knickknacks, figurines. My parents collected Hummel figurines, and my sisters and I distributed them among us. They will always remind us of Mom and Dad. When I was five or six years old, my parents made a little disc, a recording, of the two of them at the top of the Empire State Building. That recording has become near and dear to me. On it, you hear my young parents telling their children what it is like looking down from so high and how the people below look so small, like little ants. My dad said, in his German accent, “and windy, too.” That’s become something of a catchphrase in my family-“and windy, too.”

BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END

When you lose your parents, along with the sadness comes loneliness and a reevaluation of your place in life. After my parents died I developed an understanding that there’s a beginning, middle, and end to everyone’s life-a circular process of life. Your turn is going to come up, and it will be your children mourning for you someday. That’s the way life is. You have to keep the memories of your parents in your heart and in your mind.

My parents are uppermost in my mind whenever I gain any recognition. I always include them in my thank-you speeches or make special mention of them. The first Emmy I won for NYPD Blue was for them. I knew they were looking down and were as proud as I was. I always think, Gosh, I wish they were here to share this with me. My wife and I have such an abundance of lucky fortune; we know what joy my parents would have had in sharing my success and experiences.

Recently we bought some property on a lake in Idaho that is exactly what my parents would have loved. My father was a wonderful fisherman. He used to live to go fishing. I walk around the lake property now and say, “Can you imagine Mom and Dad here? This would be heaven for them:’ I say to my wife, “Gee, we could have bought them a nice house out here. We could have had them with us, given them cars, taken them on wonderful trips:’ So they’re never out of my memory. They are there with me, in every step I take.

Though I miss my parents dearly, I’m so glad that I miss them. If I didn’t, it would mean that they didn’t have as much of an impact on my life as they do. I would like to have the same sort of impact on our children.