WINE CHATS: Are you afraid of dying and leaving everyone behind?

Not to make you cry or anything, but do you ever freak out that you’ll die young and leave your family behind?

This week on The Nightly, we’re opening up a nice bottle of Penfolds Shiraz (which is apparently not as strong as a Cab Sauv) and get chatting about our fear of dying young and leaving our children behind. You know, just a casual chat about death… buckle in!

A bit morbid

Lyndsey: We’re going to talk about a morbid topic.

Billi: We are. We’re going to talk about whether you are scared to die a little bit. So trigger warning, sorry for whatever happens here. There might be tears. I don’t know. Let’s just get into it, shall we?

This week has been a bit of a funny week for me. I’ve just felt a bit off. First, my lower back was hurting. Then I’ve been a little bit sick.

And anyway, I was sitting at the dinner table the other night and sometimes when I breathe in, there’s a little pop that happens in my chest and then I feel fine. Lyndsey doesn’t get those, so she doesn’t get it.

Lyndsey: I don’t, but apparently it’s on TikTok, so it’s a thing.

Billi: It’s a thing. So I was thinking if I just breathe in, this thing will pop and I will feel relief, but it never popped. It just stayed there for ages. And I started getting this weird, chest feeling. And then I was like, Oh my God, what if I’ve got something, what if I really have cancer or something?

But I honestly thought to myself, what if I’m dying? Because in my head, as much as we all know we’re going to die, I always think it’s going to happen to somebody else. You really do think that, right?

I never actually think that I’m going to fall sick and I’m going to leave my kids early. And then I put my phone down cause I was eating dinner and watching something and I started looking at my kids and I started getting really emotional.

I’m going to start getting emotional again, because I was thinking to myself, I have a six year old and I have an eight year old. And my eight year old will obviously remember more.

But how much do you remember from when you were six years old?

Lyndsey: Well, you have childhood memories, but I don’t know if you can decipher how old you were, right?

Billi: Yeah. And your mother leaving you that young… You will forever be chasing that essence of that person who you lost. So here I am eating dinner thinking to myself, Oh my God, I’m dying. I just got really, really emotional.

Then obviously the next day I was fine. I was breathing perfectly. I don’t think it’s cancer. But it just got me thinking how scary it is. And I thought this a lot when the kids were younger where I’m like, if something happens to me, they’re not going to remember me.

And that was a huge fear for me. But still, six is still so young. Eight is still so young.

A mother’s touch

Lyndsey: I think as mums, no offence to the dads out there, but I think we created these souls in our bodies, right?

So the attachment and the worry about them living their lives without us… I’m going to cry. I’m not letting you choose the topics anymore. But there’s such a void in that child’s life, it doesn’t matter how old the child is when they lose their mother.

It doesn’t matter how old you are. And I even know my mum, she lost her mum when she was younger than me. It’s been decades and my mom still feels that void. I don’t think you ever lose that sadness in your heart once you lose your mother.

Obviously there’s sadness when you lose your father as well. I’m not trying to downplay that, but I just think there’s a different level of loss when you lose your mother. And being moms ourselves to our children, it’s just a whole different level of worry and sadness and dread.

I’ll have a really bad headache for two days in a row - I’m probably just ovulating or I don’t know, pre perimenopausal. But in my head, I’m like, well, I’ve, I’ve got a brain tumor. And of course, if I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t care.

Billi: I’m not scared of death. I have a very, I think, healthy understanding that we will all die and that’s okay.

I’m not terrified of death at all, of me dying. I have no problems with that. That doesn’t make me sad. Obviously leaving my kids behind makes me sad. Like, what will I leave for them? Thank God we have all these hours of this podcast, Lyndsey, for our children to get to know us.

Lyndsey: Please don’t watch, children!

Billi: And then they’re going to be like, Oh my God, look at all the stuff they said about us.

Lyndsey: I’m scared of the aftermath of me dying. Not for me. But what I leave behind and I always wonder, this is so bad, but I think, would I want to die and have my kids have that void in their life, but they still have Cameron.

Cameron’s obviously an amazing father and he would guide them through life. Or would I want to stay alive, but I don’t think I would be able to deal with losing Cameron.

Billi: I pray, not to God, but in general to life, you know, I’m one of those people who wake up in the morning and be like, thank you for this, thank you for that. I pray and hope that my children and I all live to our 90s and I say that to myself all the time.

I don’t care. I just want them to be happy, healthy and dead in their 90s. So they just get to experience the whole life and same for me. You know what I mean? And like, obviously we’re healthy people, but I could get hit by a bus. It could happen in a second.

Lyndsey: Anyways, it’s a sad thing, Billi, but you’re gonna live forever. People did not realize they were going to be your therapist today.

We’re going to live FOREVER!

Maybe we won’t live forever, that seems like a long time, but fingers crossed we kick it when we’re super old and wrinkly and surrounded by family!

We hope we didn’t make you too sad and remember to hug your children, mothers and fathers a little extra this weekend.

We also hope you join us again next week here on The Nightly so we can cry and laugh and get silly together.