Incurable Podcast – A Mother and Son Cancer Journey

In this conversation on 20Twenty, we discuss a crisis that many of us will face in our lifetimes. The loss of someone we love to cancer. Well, given just months to live due to incurable cancer, Melbourne mother and grandmother, Rhonda Bjelan did something remarkable. She agreed to do a podcast with her son documenting each step in her journey from diagnosis to death. The reason is humbling. So others going through something similar might be helped.

Well, the podcast is called ‘Incurable’, and is a deeply personal insight into the emotional rollercoaster that all families experience when faced with the reality of losing their mother. The ‘Incurable’ mother and son podcast was launched at the beginning of this month. Clayton Bjelan is part of the team at Christian broadcaster 89.9 The Light in Melbourne, he’s Ronda’s son and also the co-host of the ‘Incurable’ podcast.

Clayton lost his mother in September, 2019. “You never really get over the death of those closest to you,” he says. “Someone recently described grief to me as a bit like a brick. It’s got sharp edges at the start, so it doesn’t matter which way you move. It cuts deep, but in the end maybe those sharp edges get smoothed a little. But the heaviness is always there. I think anyone who’s lost somebody is like that. It’s certainly the case for me and my mum.”

Clayton continues that his mother had no idea that she was sick. “Mum was actually going in for a knee replacement. It was completely out of the blue. The doctor said, look, as you’ve been doing some of these tests in preparation for the knee, we’ve actually found this cancer and it’s incurable. We thought maybe she had a year but it ended up only being about three months. I started thinking about what I could do, because I didn’t want to regret that time with mum. I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.”

Clayton continues, “Mum had an incredible heart for Jesus and wanted to help people. That’s sort of who she was. And I thought, I wonder if we could do this podcast together. Would she be willing to spend time with me chatting about these things in the hope that someone else who might go through it would be helped? I thought I was going to have to do a lot of convincing, but she said yes pretty quickly. And then we immediately had this idea that we just wanted to be as real and honest as we could.”

The interesting thing is that mum had a vision about 30 years ago where she felt like God actually said to her one day she would stand in front of a stadium full of women and share the love of Jesus with them. So as we were thinking about doing the podcast, we thought maybe this was the way that God was going to share her voice with so many other people around the world.”

Clayton says they wanted it to be available for anybody to get that bit of hope and understanding in the midst of something so tough. “We all have to face death, and we don’t like talking about it. But if someone else can listen in and get a bit of hope, then that’s good.”

Clayton also talks about a moment in the podcast where his mother asks why. “She trusted God greatly, but she just didn’t get why this would happen. She felt like she had so much more to give. And then in the next breath she says, but I also didn’t get why a five-year-old kid goes through this and here I am at 67 and it doesn’t make sense. We do grapple with that. We talk about the fact that from mum’s perspective, she was very comfortable knowing where she was going to go. She trusted in Jesus and knew she was heading to heaven. But at the same time she was really scared of going through the process of death. She didn’t want to leave this life. That was something that we lived through and there’s an angst in that. So we try and talk about that too.”

Clayton reflects on an interesting part of the podcast as they approached the last few episodes. “We were talking about this idea that mum felt that she just had to believe and God will heal her. And that’s what she was going to focus on. But I was focusing on praying for peace, even in the midst of what it is. And the incredible thing is that even as we went through that, we were able to have differing opinions of sorts and still have this remarkable trust in God. We talked often about that one line in Philippians that says to live is Christ and to die is gain. We can live out our faith and hopefully share love to anybody and everyone who is around us, but to die is to gain more of Christ.”

If you would like to download Clayton and Rhonda’s podcast, you can do so at incurablepodcast.com, or listen below to continue listening to the rest of Clayton’s inspirational discussion with Neil.

Tune into 20Twenty and join the conversation with Neil Johnson, weekdays on Vision Christian Radio. Click here for your local times.

More from 20Twenty