If you had a cancer diagnosis in the 1980s, was it discussed openly or hushed up?

[SilverClock19]

Name changed for this as I have family on mumsnet and I don't want them to know I've posted.

I'm trying to make sense of a situation from my childhood that I'm having difficulty processing. As a child in the 1980s, one of my parents died from cancer, they were quite young and it was devastating. I've recently found out that from the time of their diagnosis (terminal) they swore my other parent to secrecy, and my other parent kept that secret. Therefore their death came as a bit of a shock to everyone, not mention it put my surviving parent under tremendous strain. They were also adamant that after they died, no one was to know what they'd died from. I don't know why, but this information has really knocked me for six and I'm trying to make sense of it. All I can really come up with is that cancer wasn't talked about in the 80s the way it is now, and that caused shame and fear? I'd really welcome perspectives from anyone who's been through similar as for some reason I'm finding this difficult to process.

My dad was close to his step-dad; step-grand-dad was about 59yo when diagnosed with multiple cancers in about 1981. I was 12 or 13. The whole family rallied round to support him & my grandmother. My very young cousins spent a lot of time trying to keep his spirits up. No shame or secrets. sorry. I think your parent did something weird there.

My mother (b. 1940) was terrified of dying with cancer, I think there was a strong fear of it in her generation. I don't think MN is typical in the way people react here. Shock yes but not the kind of obessiveness I read on MN where people only perceive one possible diagnosis (cancer) for every health question (and only one possible outcome from a cancer diagnosis). So it was a different disease with different prospects in past, but not shameful.

My foster sister's mother died with/of brain tumour in 1971; it was just a sad fact, not something secretive or shameful.

exactly the same thing happened to me
in the early eighties. Dad died of cancer. Mum kept it secret. We were all
kids. He was dying and they both knew it, but us kids (aged 12 down) didn't have a clue it was cancer or that he was going to die. Massive shock. Even though I'm now half a century old, it still affects me. Lies are never a good thing.

Thanks both of you for your replies. It sounds like @latesummervibes experience is more like mine. I'm not sure why I'm so unsettled by all of this...I think it's perhaps that I'm angry at the situation my remaining parent was put in, but there's no one for me to be angry at/ask them why there was the need for such secrecy.

I think death in general wasn't talked about.
Mid 80s my Gran was ill and the doctors told my dad they didn't expect her to live 6 months, because they couldn't find out what was wrong and it was effecting her heart in a way they couldn't stop.

All we knew as children (I was 10yo, the middle of 3) was we had to go and visit her in hospital every weekend. As it was 200 miles away this was quite a harsh weekend for us.
But we weren't told she was likely, or even it was a possibility that she might die.

In the event they found the issue after about 4 months and solved it very quickly after that. It was only about 7 or 8 years later that I discovered that they hadn't expected her to survive.

I don't think cancer was talked much about at all. I now know people who did have cancer in the 80s and all I knew was they disappeared from life, either to return to quiet voices saying "you know, they've been very ill" or didn't return. At the time cancer wasn't mentioned at all.

Thanks @MargaretThursday and that sounds tough with regard to what happened with your gran. I think you're right in that people just didn't talk about death/dying as much.