When Evelien’s father died, it was her friends who cared for her best

In January 2025, Evelien Florijn’s father, Gert, chose voluntary assisted dying at his home in the Netherlands. Evelien, now 33, was by his side when he passed, along with her mother and two brothers.

Gert, who was 64 when he died, had been diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in early 2024; his health quickly declined in December of that year.

“He had already discussed the option of euthanasia months before, and he contacted the doctor to finalise that process,” Evelien says. “We knew the date and time about a week in advance, which is a very surreal and absurd thing to experience.”

While Melbourne-based Evelien says she was grateful to be there with him in the months leading up to his death, the combination of anticipatory grief and the grief after his death made it challenging.

“It was incredibly painful to know we were losing him and seeing him get slowly worse, but there was also a lot of love, closeness and fond memories.”

The death of a parent is the most common bereavement experienced in adulthood, says Chris Hall AM, chief executive of Grief Australia. However, this grief is often dismissed, minimised and unacknowledged.

“When an adult loses a parent, people often assume they are old enough to cope or that the death is somehow expected,” he says. “Yet losing a parent in adulthood can be profoundly destabilising, affecting a person’s emotional wellbeing, social involvement and personal life.”

According to Hall, family dynamics often restructure after the loss of a parent, and sibling relationships can either strengthen or fragment. This is why, after losing a parent, it’s often friends who can care for us best.

For Evelien, who had made Melbourne her permanent home only weeks before her father’s diagnosis, relocating back to the Netherlands to spend time with him meant her grief was compounded by logistics. “It felt like I had to pause my life for a full year. I had just decided to build my future in Melbourne, and then everything I wanted had to go on the back-burner because there was this much bigger thing happening.”

Through this time, Evelien says her friends, both in the Netherlands and in Australia, were incredibly important sources of support.

“My close friends in the Netherlands – Laura, Lieke and Richard – were the most practically present because they were nearby. They were the ones I could physically go to for comfort, food, company and hugs,” she says.

But her Australian friends, including 34-year-old Clair Henneberry, were also significant even from a distance.

“Clair, who was in Australia, offered to fly over for Christ