Neighbours star Takaya Honda has taken to Instagram to announce some devastating family news.
In a moving post, Honda revealed that his mother, Rhonda had passed away after a lengthy battle with Alzheimers.
“I got a call from dad while I was walking Mia [his dog] yesterday afternoon,” the caption, which accompanied a stunning photograph of the pair, read.
“‘You have to fly to Brisbane tonight, mum might not make it ‘til morning’.”
Honda then said that he and his wife Amy found flights and found someone to take care of their pup and upon arriving at the airport, his dad called again.
“A fear ran through my body, ‘oh no, I’ve missed her’,” he penned. “I hadn’t. He just wanted me to talk to her and tell her that I was coming.”
The two-hour and 10-minute flight time from Melbourne to Brisbane was “uncomfortable” for the actor, and with an hour to go, had the urge to look at the time. It was 22:22.
“I did something I don’t know normally do. I took my shoes and socks off, to relieve some of the discomfort. It worked – mostly.”
Upon landing, he got another text.
“My heart pounded again…’22:17pm 3rd last morphine done’. She is looks very comfortable [sic]. What did this mean? Dad is a man of few words and his written English isn’t great. I couldn’t fathom that he was telling me she had passed and assumed he was just preparing me for her to be unconscious when we got there.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered much either way, her Alzheimers had meant that she was nonverbal the last few years.”
Honda and his wife then jumped in an Uber, meeting his dad at the front door of the care facility.
“We hugged and dad just said ‘sorry’,” he wrote. “Again, I didn’t think much of it. What else do you say?”
He continued: “We walked the long walk to her room and I opened the door. The first thing I saw was my brother so we hugged and he left Amy and I in the room with mum. I looked down and stopped. She was already dead. I had missed her.
“I sat next to her and placed my hand on her shoulder, the front of her was cold. The back side, still insulated by the bed, was warm. I didn’t say anything out loud, but I said a lot in my head, I knew she could hear it.”
Honda then revealed she had died shortly after the final morphine shot, “about the time my legs had become uncomfortable.”
“I hadn’t got to say goodbye, but she had.”
Takaya Honda reveals the last time he had seen his mum
“The last time I had seen her, as I left I told her ‘It’s ok mum, you’ve done enough. Don’t worry about me, you can go.’ When I left her this time, all I could say was “goodbye”, “thank you” and “I love you” – it appears so general to me now, but if I were to be specific I wouldn’t have known where to start, nor could I have captured it all.”
After he left the room, his dad said his “final goodbye”.
“He held her head in his hands as if trying to look in her eyes and said his ‘goodbye’. He then lightly tapped her on the cheek with his right hand. Something I had seen him do many times to wake Mum up on my visits.
“This time was different. He of course knew that she was dead. But one last time before he left, he had to check. And in the brief pause he took after the final tap he looked at her and said ‘ok’ and we left the room.”
Honda believes his mum “held on” until after he had filmed “one of the biggest scenes I had ever had to film”.
“On that day, she hadn’t had a great day and shortly after completing the scene, I read a text from dad saying as much.
“I look at that now as if that was the only way to communicate to me that she was with me for it and she was proud – something I had been telling myself that morning to aid me in the scene – something I had told myself just after they yelled ‘cut’ as I felt it was the best work I had ever done and that somehow it was for her.
“This is all to say, she was always my biggest supporter, whether she was able to say it with words or not.”
“I write this now, the morning after she left us. Not sure what else to do. Not sure how else to tell anyone. She deserves more than just ‘mum died’ and I want people to feel the sadness that I feel. They won’t.
They can’t….”
He concluded: “I don’t want her story to end, but I am happy, for her sake, that it has.
Rhonda Honda.
27.10.1957 – 20.08.2023.”
For more information on Alzheimer’s, visit Dementia Australia.
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