How Anticipatory Grieving Helps Pico Record a Lasting Message for His Children

Say goodbye to your wife and children. And say goodbye to your husband and father. Together they know they have to do it soon. And together they also want to deal with that approaching loss as best as possible.

How do you leave a message to your future relatives? Pico recorded a video message for his children Olaf (9), Annemijn (14) and Joshua (14). He did through the Komma foundation. He also goes to grief therapy with his wife Pauline.

He coughs briefly and takes an audible breath into the phone. “We try to give the grief a place before it happens,” says Pico.

This is also known as anticipatory grieving. Grief counselor Stephanie Beijnes helps people who have to deal with this. “With anticipatory grief, it is important that you say goodbye, but also embrace everything that is still possible,” she explains. “I help people to prepare themselves practically and emotionally for the loss, but also to look at what they still want to experience within the possibilities that are available.”

Anticipatory grief occurs in people whose loved one is terminally ill, such as Pico, or suffers from dementia.

Life story included

What Beijnes sees a lot in her practice is that people are on one of two sides: saying goodbye to the person completely or not being concerned at all with the impending loss. “My job as a counselor is to illuminate the side that is snowed under, both for the person who is sick and for the person who is close to it.”

Pico tries to give attention to both sides. So has he through the Komma foundation, which helps terminally ill parents record their stories free of charge, recorded a video message for his children. ‘Let parents live on’ is the motto of the foundation.

‘The mimicry is thus preserved forever’

The Komma Foundation visits families with children between the ages of 0 and 18 in whom one of the parents is terminally ill. “By capturing an extensive conversation on video, they put a symbolic comma instead of a period at the end of their life story. The mimicry, a smile, a look are preserved forever,” says Michiel de Hond, founder of the foundation.

“Parents are often relieved that they were able to have this made for their children. The earlier in the disease process parents ask us to come by, the better the image is and will remain of this parent as he or she was, before they possibly change at all. consequence of the disease.”

“I want to create an image for my children,” says Pico. “About where I was born, went to school, went to work, etc. I have a thousand pictures of myself on my computer, but then you only see the nice stories. I want to leave more than just holiday pictures.”

The video focuses more on life after his death. The grief therapy he is following with his wife is more focused on the relationship with his wife at the moment. “In this way we remain husband and wife instead of patient and healthcare provider.”

No more treatment possible

Everything changed for Pico on December 29, 2020. The internist called: he had thyroid cancer, with metastases in his neck. Shit, he thought, but this isn’t the end. The disease was treatable. “I was full of confidence,” he says looking back.

He was allowed to enter the medical mill, with the unconditional support of his wife and three children. His thyroid gland and thirty lymph nodes, with all of the cancer in them, were removed.

Gone cancer, Pico thought. But the cancer had progressed to his lungs. The doctors suggested a treatment with radioactive iodine that kills the cancer cells in the thyroid gland. This worked for most patients, but not for him.

“They saw on the scans that the iodine was not absorbed. The iodine had disappeared, because you pee, poop or sweat it out. And that mess was spread too far over my lungs. The doctor said: we can do nothing more for you do.”

Despair, sadness and fear prevailed. “But I had no fear of death,” he says. “I felt especially fear for the children, to leave them early. And fear that they are not yet ready to miss me.”

Pico tries to alleviate that fear by recording the video message, which lasts about one and a half to two hours.

‘You’re not immortal either, are you?

The cancer is spread all over his body. ‘The metastases are in his neck, in his neck, near the lungs. There is no stopping it anymore. If all those small tumors, because there are a lot of them, grow a little…’, said Pauline during an evening devoted to Alpe d’HuZesa cycling and running event that raises money for cancer research.

He doesn’t know how much time he has left. But Pico is not concerned with that either. “You’re not immortal either, are you?” he says. “Did you think I’m busy dying every day? Besides the fact that I breathe heavily and can’t do everything at full strength, I’m a very normal Dutch guy. Death is just as much part of life as life is part of death. Life would be nothing if we didn’t die.”

Pico continues to live the way he did before, only more aware, knowing that life is finite. For example, he cycled up the Alpe d’Huez with his daughter Annemijn, with whom he has done so far 50.000 euro raised for cancer research. Or does he go out with the family; they mountain bike together or swim in the mountains.

But he also sometimes does things together with his wife, without the children, such as going to Bali or Lisbon. “Family life naturally swallows you up quickly. Occasionally we also consciously go away with the two of us.”

Builder and doer

Pico is ‘a builder and a doer’, he says. In his work as a real estate agent, he continuously built his own business and, of course, houses. Together with Pauline, he also built a future for their children. But his illness forced him to stop building. “I think that may have been the biggest blow for me. I always strived to create security, peace and legacy.”

Last March, Pico expected to live another year and a half. Now he cycled the Alpe d’HuZes together with his daughter Annemijn at the beginning of this month and he feels stronger than ever. He will soon start with medicines that will hopefully inhibit the tumors and reduce complaints. Although it will not be without side effects.

Being in motion

He’s going to experience it, he says. What the avid cyclist and family man especially wants to make clear is that ‘the approaching end does not have to stop you from achieving things.’ “You can also inspire people and do special things when you are sick.”

“I hope that I can get other people moving, just as I still want to be moving myself.”