Dear readers, when children grow up and set out into the world, when we no longer have them around us 24/7, it can sometimes be difficult to gauge how they are really doing. And it’s not easy to know when, as parents, we need to be there for them and when we can support them from a distance with confidence. This is precisely the dilemma our reader Geka has just experienced. Her daughter is 17, lives in Denmark and suddenly fell ill. Here is the full story:
Adult children: When do I, as a mother, need to be there?
My daughter lives in Denmark. I live in the south of Germany. There are 1,236 kilometres between us. Most days, that is exactly what I look upon with pride. She went to boarding school at 16, turned 17 there, stepped out of her comfort zone and took control of her life. I see her up there in the north and often think: how brave she is. How much she is forging her own path. And how right it is that she is doing so. This distance is not just a loss. It is also an expression of freedom. Of growth. Of a life that no longer revolves solely around the family here, but around herself.
Until the night she rang because she couldn’t sleep any longer due to the pain. From then on, the distance took on a different weight. Those same 1,236 kilometres were suddenly no longer a sign of independence, but a reality that crept into every hour.
For four days I tried to stick to what I actually believe is right: to take her seriously, to trust her to handle things, not to rush in and smother her with my motherly concern. For four days I heard phrases like “I can manage this on my own, Mum”, and for four days I wanted to believe exactly that. And I did believe it. At least part of me did.
The other part grew quieter and at the same time more alarmed. Not hysterical. Not loud. More in that hard-to-describe way where something inside you stays awake, even when you’re still pulling yourself together. I was proud of her. And at the same time, I became more and more restless and torn from day to day.
It had started with a sore throat. That word sounds so harmless. Almost casual. Yet it had long since changed. At first there was just a scratchy feeling, then pain, then more and more of it. By 13 April, the pain was so bad that even she realised she had to go to the doctor the next day.
That alone said something. She doesn’t accept help easily, and she doesn’t go to the doctor easily. For her, it’s never just an appointment. It’s always a moment when the body slips beyond her control. An admission that something can no longer simply be brushed aside.
So on Tuesday she went to the doctor for the first time. Strep throat. Antibiotics. My first reaction was relief. Good, I thought. Now it has a name. Now something is starting that will help. But it didn’t help.
On Wednesday she went back. The doctor said that with strep throat, penicillin can sometimes take 48 hours to work. So we waited some more. Or to be more precise: she persevered, and I waited with her. On Thursday she was sent to the hospital in Aarhus, to see the ENT specialist. There, in addition to the suspected strep throat, they diagnosed her with glandular fever.
Even then, I hoped for a moment that at least it would now become clearer what we were dealing with. But by Friday, the pain wasn’t just still there. It was excruciating. She went back to her GP in Grenaa. He told her to be patient and come back on Monday.
I remember that something shifted inside me when I heard that sentence. Not outwardly. Not as anger. Not as a big drama. More like a moment of sudden clarity. I said that I would ring Aarhus myself. The doctor there listened and said she should come in so they could assess whether she needed to be admitted.
That made it clear to me: “Enough of the distance now”. Inside, I was calm and clear-headed. No drama. More like that moment when something inside you says: Right. Now. Twenty minutes later, the flight was booked. Shortly after that, I’d packed. I set off from Ampfing towards Munich, full of energy, in a hurry, right in the middle of a Lufthansa strike.
My daughter-in-law was a godsend during those hours. I tried to check in quickly whilst I was already on the road, and realised pretty soon that I’m not particularly good at driving, organising, thinking and feeling all at the same time. When the tears came, real tears for the first time in four days and nights, my daughter-in-law helped immediately, checked me in and sent me the boarding pass. Calm, clear, patient. No fuss. My husband supported me in his own way too. Quietly, reliably, without many words. One helped practically. One stayed on the phone. One thought things through with me. And I set off. An hour later I was at the airport. Fifty minutes after that I was on the plane. I didn’t have a perfect solution, but I had a flight.
What preoccupies me even more in hindsight than the flight itself is the sense of calm that came with the booking. Not because the situation was good. Not at all. But because powerlessness had finally turned into action again. As long as I was just listening, thinking things through, reassuring her, suggesting ice cream, recommending showers, praising her for getting in touch, and staying awake at night, I was there. But at the same time, I was bound by this unbearable contradiction: I am there. And I am not there.
The flight didn’t fix anything. But I was on the move again. In Copenhagen, I picked up the hire car. New road signs, new routes, new routines. I set off towards Randers, where she was now. The journey should have taken three hours and twenty minutes. In the end, it took four hours and twenty minutes because the sat-nav directed me to a ferry instead of the bridge. In my defence, I must say: I was on the phone to doctors the whole time during the journey. I let myself be guided and stopped thinking for myself.
I arrived in Randers at 11.30 pm on Friday. And there she was. My daughter. My big girl. On a drip, in pain, with that exhausted look that is unbearable when you love a child, no matter how old they are. And at the same time, there was immediate relief. She was in hospital. She was receiving fluids. The antibiotics were now being administered intravenously. She was no longer alone. I was no longer far away. Finally, someone in charge. Finally, people who cared. Finally, that old, almost childlike feeling: now we’re with the doctors. Now everything will be alright. Except that her body didn’t know that.
The pain wouldn’t go away. Not on the first day. Not on the second. Not on the third. She was given painkillers, even morphine. But even that brought little relief. And slowly, the doctor’s expression changed too. Not frantic. Not dramatic. More like the way good doctors look when they start to reassess things internally.
The CT scan came back at 4 pm on Sunday. That was the moment when the story took another turn. Up to that point, everything had been bad, but somehow still within the realm of: severe inflammation, glandular fever, high fever, severe pain. The CT scan made it clear: there was more to it. Not just inflammation. There were abscesses. Not one, but two.
And with that, it was also clear: we had to move on. The ambulance arrived around 5 pm. We had to go back to the hospital in Aarhus. Her windpipe was already constricted. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for days. Now it was no longer just about how much something hurt. Now it was also about taking no more risks.
We arrived at Aarhus University Hospital at 6 pm. And there, the tone was immediately different. Surgery today. No more lengthy deliberation, no more hoping that perhaps antibiotics might help after all. It was told to us calmly. But unequivocally.
Then began this strange time of waiting. Waiting, even though the decision had long since been made. Waiting for the operating theatre. Waiting with a body that had been at its limit for far too long. Waiting in that mixture of tension and tiredness, where you are both wide awake and completely empty.
At 9 pm she went into the operating theatre. One hour. Then the recovery room. There is that state after an operation where a person is both present and not quite back yet. That was exactly how she was. A very battered soul. Tears. Tiredness. Pain. Drifting off. Reappearing briefly. Crying again. Not nice. Just not nice. And that is precisely why it was good not to be 1,236 kilometres away this time.
On a night like that, there is surprisingly little you can do, and yet so much at the same time. Wipe her mouth, fetch a cold flannel, catch her drool, comfort her, lay a hand on her, breathe with her, stay by her side when she’s not quite herself.
None of it is a big deal, but it all helps. The night passed in waves. Sleep. Tears. Sleep again. And at some point in the middle of the night, something so small happened that you could almost overlook it. She swallowed. By accident. Not at all bravely. Not at all as an attempt. Just like that.
And then she realised: it doesn’t hurt at all. She was amazed. She was truly amazed. As if her body had just sent her a message she’d stopped expecting. In the morning she tried it again. This time deliberately. Carefully. And again, it didn’t hurt. Or at least not like it had in the days before, when even morphine could barely do anything.
That was the moment when something returned that had been missing all along: trust. Not that grand, solemn trust. More that very simple, physical kind: Ah. Things are working again. There’s space again. Things are actually getting better.
The doctor came back later, looked up her nose with the camera and said that everything looked fine. Everything that needed to come out was out. She had to stay for the rest of the day, three intravenous doses of antibiotics. But then she’d be allowed to go home.
And with that, there it was again, that old question. Only the other way round. At the start, I’d asked myself: Do I set off now, or do I stick it out? Now I asked myself: Do I stay a bit longer or do I go? Part of me wanted to stay. Just a little longer. Another half-day. Just the night. Just to be sure that everything really is fine. To be allowed to stay where I had finally arrived.
But she herself wanted me to go home again. She talked me into it. Not in the sense of: You have to go now. More like she’s been all along: clear, brave, loving, with an astonishingly fine sense of what needs to be done now. She made it clear to me that it was time to leave. That made things a bit easier for me. Because it wasn’t just an inner struggle, but became a shared moment. A moment in which she, in a way, allowed me to leave again.
That’s a bit of the madness of motherhood with nearly grown-up children: first you struggle to maintain the distance, because you don’t want to intervene too quickly. And then, when you’re finally there and things have got bad enough that intervening was the right thing to do, shortly afterwards you’re struggling again not to stay too long.
Not because you love them any less. Not at all. But because love changes. And because trust is its foundation. I looked at her and knew: You’ve sensed all this the whole time. You’ve realised that something isn’t right. You know your body. You’re following your own path. And now it’s no longer about taking the burden off you. Now it’s about letting you return to your own strength.
We organised what was needed. The boarding school arranged a taxi to pick her up from the hospital and bring her back. At 1 pm, I said goodbye to her at the hospital. She stayed there for her final doses of antibiotics. As I write this, I am sitting at Copenhagen Airport. She is currently on her way back from the hospital to the boarding school.
And I sit here feeling relieved. And proud. Proud of how she has coped with it all. How clearly she is in touch with her body. How brave she was. How, even through it all, she remained true to herself. And also with this quiet certainty that my gut feeling was right. Not in the sense of: I knew better. More in the sense of: It was right to trust it.
At the start, it was about moving from helplessness to taking action. No longer just listening, empathising, enduring, but setting off. And in the end, it was about something similar yet something quite different: moving from helplessness to trust. Not staying just because you still need it yourself. But leaving because the other person can manage again.
In between lie 1,236 kilometres, two hospitals, an ambulance, an operation, a sleepless night, help from family, good doctors, a body that has reached its limits, and that one small moment in the middle of the night when an accidental sip suddenly stopped hurting.
And in the end, I had something else too: the realisation that sometimes you do exactly the right thing when you’re guided neither by fear nor by reason alone, but by that quiet point in between. The point where you realise: now is the time to act. And later: now is the time to trust.
No sooner had I got back home than a call came from her after all. Perhaps, she said, it would have been better in the end if I’d stayed. And that, too, is probably part of the truth: that relief doesn’t always come in a straight line. That although a body may be on the road to recovery, a person still doesn’t immediately feel safe.
That sometimes you’re almost out of a situation, and then it calls you back one last time. Today is Thursday. Four days after the operation, and this morning was the first time she said that things are really going to get better now.
And in the end, this question remains: How do I know when it’s time to act – and no longer just to endure?
About the author: Geka Kless is a coach and trainer – supporting people through transitions, crises and questions of inner stability. In her work, she combines systemic thinking, body awareness and a trauma-sensitive perspective on relationships. She is a mother of four and lives with her family in southern Germany.
