Angela Bishop’s 11-year-old daughter’s brave interview about losing her dad will bring you to tears
In what would have been a brave moment for Angela Bishop’s daughter Amelia, the 11-year-old has opened up to Woman’s Day magazine in an exclusive interview about losing her beloved father a year ago after a battle with a rare cancer.
The only child of the entertainment reporter described to the women’s magazine how she had made her dad, Peter Baikie – who lay in his hospital bed knowing his days were numbered – his favourite chocolate cake for his 55th birthday.
Amelia recalled, “Daddy got a taste of his early birthday cake. I had to blow out the candles – he had oxygen tubes and it could have blown up the hospital and we didn’t need that.”
Fun-loving Peter, who loved to joke around with his daughter, “had a lick of the icing, the rest of us had a piece of cake,” Amelia explained.
Sadly, these heartfelt days were the last Angela, Amelia and Pete would all spend together as a family.
Choking back tears, Angela shared, “We were planning his birthday party for the following week and instead we had his funeral.”
It has now been 12 months since Pete lost his devastating battle with a rare cancer, and the girls have had to endure “a couple of firsts” since his passing.
Angela continued, “The first Father’s Day, which was awful, both our birthdays – Amelia’s was in October and mine was in September, very close to Father’s Day.”
She added, “That was a difficult week.”
Describing the grieving process, Ange said, “There have been really hard days – you just don’t know when it’s going to hit you, it can be the slightest thing and it won’t be what you expect.”
Getting used to Pete not being around has also been a huge adjustment for Angela and Amelia.
“We’ll go for a bushwalk now and there should be three of us and there are just two,” Ange explained.
Meanwhile, the girls are also making sure they continue Pete’s legacy and make his dreams come true. One thing on his bucket-list, which he sadly wasn’t able to achieve, was to ride a motorbike around Uluru in the Northern Territory.
“We were going to do that together, but he didn’t make it,” Ange told the magazine, before adding, “We (she and Amelia) still went and it was incredible. When we went on a bike ride we really felt Pete was there with us and that was really healing.”
The girls are now focusing on raising money to go towards research of rare cancers.
“You would give anything, anything at all to make it go away and that’s why I want to raise money because I know what fundraising can do and with rare cancers it’s so much harder,” Angela said.
How have you dealt with the grieving process after losing someone close to you? Share your story with us in the comments below.