Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts

Monday, July 21, 2014

MH17 - Bring Them Home.....


It's Monday morning here in Melbourne; it's foggy and cold and people everywhere are shuffling off to work perhaps feeling a weighed down by a bit of Mondayitis or the return to school routine after a holiday break. It's almost impossible to comprehend though, the infinite amount of suffering many families are enduring right now at the hands of this unspeakable tragedy, the missile strike on passenger flight Malaysian Airlines MH17, Thursday July 17th (Friday AEST).

I feel like I have to write something down. I feel like my brain may just explode with the overwhelming amount of empathy and sadness I am feeling for these people, in particular for the Australian parents who have lost their three children and the children's grandfather charged with the job of accompanying the kids safely back to Perth for the beginning of the school term. I can't process it;  I simply cannot fathom how they are functioning. How are they getting up this morning in their house, drowning in the physical belongings of their kids knowing they won't be coming back? How does the human body have the ability to continue functioning in such circumstances? What does the mind do to ensure the broken heart keeps pumping?

Thursday, April 25, 2013

And That's All I'll Say About That...


IMAGE : THE MOTHER LOAD| And That's All I'll Say

Today, I feel a strange sense of calm and reflective finality. It's like that feeling when you close the final page on a life-changing book that is full of highs and lows but doesn't necessarily have a fairytale ending. I feel as though we're closing a door on cancer for the first time in years. I must note that no one in my house has it and for that I'm incredibly grateful (particularly given I've observed the kind of bravery one requires to navigate its journey and I'm convinced it's not in me) but I've lived relatively closely with it for years, on and off.

Yesterday we said goodbye to one of our dear family members, aged 46, mother of two beloved teenage boys who fought the bravest of battles for twelve years. In February, we said goodbye to my dear friend, aged 41, mother of three beloved children who I was lucky enough to share a wonderful five year friendship with as she battled so galantly. Both had cancer, both were incredibly positive and brave mothers, and both left us with many important life lessons while they were here; lessons that mean even more to us now that they're gone.

So perhaps it's time for cancer to just sod off and give everyone some health and happiness for a while, eh? We need to now focus on the healing of our friends and loved ones who remain, instead of living with the impending grey cloud of sadness, the roller coaster ride of test results, and the private dread that comes with observing (or living with) a terminal illness.

And that is all I'll say about that. Much love to the two special people in my world who are now at peace. Always with us, remembered with love, never forgotten. 

www.bcna.org.au

Monday, March 4, 2013

The Legacy Of My Friend, The Warrior Woman


IMAGE: THE MOTHER LOAD | The Legacy Of My Friend, The Warrior Woman

Although I don't feel the usual upbeat sense of creativity and enthusiastic desire to pour words onto the page for the sake of good therapy, I feel it's important to make a note of this time, this strange time I'm living where my dear friend is gone. The house is quiet, there are no random phone calls, emails or text messages containing the usual enjoyable nothingness of our everyday life. There is a void now which was always filled by our wonderful female 'friendship-py' things. And it's that I'm having such trouble getting used to. The quiet. The absence of our daily, often very personal conversations.