How a heart breaks and DIF Fencing
Without Prejudice
My heart broke the day my child died and I had to continue living. I often wondered why? We're all born and then we live and then we die and nothing seems to be that important, all trivial stuff. What for ?? Why do we struggle and worry and dream big things? We are not going to be remembered after we are gone, so why don't we just lie down and die, anyway.??
My Mother taught me to not believe in any thing after her son died. There was no God, there was nothing, then she too died.
And how was I to find hope and solace in a cruel and often unforgiving world. Mothers should be also be allowed to go when their child dies. What use are they any more. ????
I can remember standing in a Supermarket aisle after Lauren died, looking at muesli bars and crying in public, what did I need muesli bars for?
Alena refused to go back to school and I said if she had a job she could leave. It was too hard for her at school to face people every day and listen to their platitudes
When she so desperately just wanted to be a 15 year old, cool, having friends, going out and she couldn't because she was expected to grieve.
But she didn't not for a long time. People would say to her how sorry they were and Alena would say,
"It's all right, it's all right"
But she asked Jackie to close the door on the night after Lauren died, she had seen Lauren standing at the end of her bed. Lauren's door had locked by itself the day after she died and B and I left it until one day we attacked it with a big knife and we struggled to open it.
There had been no open window, no breeze but it remained firmly shut for 2 days. We put the flowers in there after Jackie and I cleaned it.
One big arrangement from the Springvale Council, the pool owners. And someone from there six weeks later asked us to fix the gate at the pool.
The gate where Lauren and Tanya had slipped through on that fateful night. B informed them who we were and we heard no more from them until we took them to court, for knowing kids were getting in there and they had done nothing about.
My Brothers took photos of the gate and Natalie my niece, slipping through easily, the day they arrived from Queensland, my rescue team. They were brilliant all of my family arriving en masse to help us any way they could.
George took over the running of the business, Dave too. They were men and couldn't just stand around all the time, they needed to "do" something. Ian walked into the laundry where I was and said I was not to feel guilty, he still felt guilty about Jamie after all those years, and it was a wasted emotion.
But I did. I had let her go there to Tanya's house and I felt guilty I had. And Jackie and Helen and Kerry Cue were there and Melissa, my niece, I think.
It's so hard to remember details of that time because I was a walking, talking, breathing, automaton and at that time I didn't cry, couldn't cry.
The weather was unbearably hot all the time, wherever we went and it didn't help. Visitors came and I don't remember most of them.
At that time you are numb but still moving and every morning when I awoke I would be alright and then it hit me, Lauren was dead and she was still dead no matter what I thought, did.
Escaping the family and the house at one stage and running down the Court to see Sam Dewis's Mum, Carmen. Standing on her front step and blurting it out and being ushered inside. then Sam Lawson as she had become came to the house, so dignified and quiet and the
boys, Graeme and Steven King, the jockeys came and said
"Not Flossie, don't tell us it's Flossie"
They put notices in the paper and so did we and so did others, B writing a beautiful poem within minutes.
It was all not possible, not real, not happening and yet it was. A woman wrote me a card, her son had died in similar circumstances with mates drinking at the Sunshine Baths, in water to his waist, but he had also breached the covers and died from chlorine gas inhalation, his mates jumping straight in and dragging him out, but he was dead, aged 20.
I hoped Lauren had died that way and not struggling and kicking for air and wanting me. That killed me that thought and it was always my last thought before I fell asleep, my daughter struggling for air and crying for Mum. She was a Mum's girl, Lauren.
Once I had left her Dad and went to my Dad's, for a few days, hoping things would change
and she invited me home and had flowers and a box of chocolates for me. She'd made me tea outside with the Royal Albert cups and saucers and then she broke down and cried and begged me to come home. I thought about that time a lot, crying for her at last, and wishing I hadn't felt so awful. And I went home after that and decided I was not leaving without the girls again.
To be continued
My heart broke the day my child died and I had to continue living. I often wondered why? We're all born and then we live and then we die and nothing seems to be that important, all trivial stuff. What for ?? Why do we struggle and worry and dream big things? We are not going to be remembered after we are gone, so why don't we just lie down and die, anyway.??
My Mother taught me to not believe in any thing after her son died. There was no God, there was nothing, then she too died.
And how was I to find hope and solace in a cruel and often unforgiving world. Mothers should be also be allowed to go when their child dies. What use are they any more. ????
I can remember standing in a Supermarket aisle after Lauren died, looking at muesli bars and crying in public, what did I need muesli bars for?
Alena refused to go back to school and I said if she had a job she could leave. It was too hard for her at school to face people every day and listen to their platitudes
When she so desperately just wanted to be a 15 year old, cool, having friends, going out and she couldn't because she was expected to grieve.
But she didn't not for a long time. People would say to her how sorry they were and Alena would say,
"It's all right, it's all right"
But she asked Jackie to close the door on the night after Lauren died, she had seen Lauren standing at the end of her bed. Lauren's door had locked by itself the day after she died and B and I left it until one day we attacked it with a big knife and we struggled to open it.
There had been no open window, no breeze but it remained firmly shut for 2 days. We put the flowers in there after Jackie and I cleaned it.
One big arrangement from the Springvale Council, the pool owners. And someone from there six weeks later asked us to fix the gate at the pool.
The gate where Lauren and Tanya had slipped through on that fateful night. B informed them who we were and we heard no more from them until we took them to court, for knowing kids were getting in there and they had done nothing about.
My Brothers took photos of the gate and Natalie my niece, slipping through easily, the day they arrived from Queensland, my rescue team. They were brilliant all of my family arriving en masse to help us any way they could.
George took over the running of the business, Dave too. They were men and couldn't just stand around all the time, they needed to "do" something. Ian walked into the laundry where I was and said I was not to feel guilty, he still felt guilty about Jamie after all those years, and it was a wasted emotion.
But I did. I had let her go there to Tanya's house and I felt guilty I had. And Jackie and Helen and Kerry Cue were there and Melissa, my niece, I think.
It's so hard to remember details of that time because I was a walking, talking, breathing, automaton and at that time I didn't cry, couldn't cry.
The weather was unbearably hot all the time, wherever we went and it didn't help. Visitors came and I don't remember most of them.
At that time you are numb but still moving and every morning when I awoke I would be alright and then it hit me, Lauren was dead and she was still dead no matter what I thought, did.
Escaping the family and the house at one stage and running down the Court to see Sam Dewis's Mum, Carmen. Standing on her front step and blurting it out and being ushered inside. then Sam Lawson as she had become came to the house, so dignified and quiet and the
boys, Graeme and Steven King, the jockeys came and said
"Not Flossie, don't tell us it's Flossie"
They put notices in the paper and so did we and so did others, B writing a beautiful poem within minutes.
It was all not possible, not real, not happening and yet it was. A woman wrote me a card, her son had died in similar circumstances with mates drinking at the Sunshine Baths, in water to his waist, but he had also breached the covers and died from chlorine gas inhalation, his mates jumping straight in and dragging him out, but he was dead, aged 20.
I hoped Lauren had died that way and not struggling and kicking for air and wanting me. That killed me that thought and it was always my last thought before I fell asleep, my daughter struggling for air and crying for Mum. She was a Mum's girl, Lauren.
Once I had left her Dad and went to my Dad's, for a few days, hoping things would change
and she invited me home and had flowers and a box of chocolates for me. She'd made me tea outside with the Royal Albert cups and saucers and then she broke down and cried and begged me to come home. I thought about that time a lot, crying for her at last, and wishing I hadn't felt so awful. And I went home after that and decided I was not leaving without the girls again.
To be continued
