Not For A Second-The Anniversary Beckons
Without Prejudice
Our lives changed forever one night and were never to be the same ever again. She was gone in an instant. A life, a history, a living, loving presence. Lauren. I hate saying it, I hate remembering it. I hate everything about the whole thing. I hate that I have to go on without her.
I remember a couple who lost their only child and both leapt off a cliff, unwilling to go on, a boy, aged 11. An adored child.
I felt like that for the first six years. Didn't want to go on, thought of my other children, my new baby Grandson and still wanted to die too. I didn't care about people that were worse off than I. Had children that were murdered, made to suffer. All I thought of was my pain. I wanted to burn her out of my memory so that the "force you to your knees pain,", tears, snot flowing from my nose would stop.
I hated going out in Public. I hated 12 year old girls with long shiny hair. I hated the parents that still had them. It would have been so easy to go then. Like my Mother who lost a child and continued on until one day she just took her own life. She was looking for my dead brother, Jamie in Woolies she said. She was quite mad at the end, heard voices, screamed her head off in the night and woke me up.
Other days she was fine.
People expected me to be just like her. But she was mad, mad with being shot at in the War, losing a fiancé, shot down. She was a flight plotter, my Aunt tells me, worked in the War Room as she was a genius. And in the end, mad as a cut snake. I hated her when she killed herself. Hated that she left us with that legacy of suicide, blamed my Dad, blamed the War, the Doctors, the shock treatments, the way she looked, no teeth, crooning, beckoning in her madness. Locked doors and bars on the windows.
I hated her illness and hated her not getting help when she started to talk, " funny" but most of all I hated the people that thought I would turn out the same. She became aetheist after Jamie died denying us the succour of faith. A faith, Presbyterian, that we had been. Marching off to Sunday School like good little Christian Soldiers. My eldest brother was a Sunday School Teacher.
We knew the stations of the Cross and Calvary which we sang after service as we washed and dried dishes. I was five then and my Sister, a good singer, 10. Dad was so proud he had another singer in the Family. They both liked me a lot as I was brainy. Jamie was brainy too and also a writer. Couldn't spell or handwrite for shit but was a good writer. Where did it come from, the ability to write ?
They said he was " accident prone " a dreaming child that never saw the danger in lufe and was suffocated in a sand cave in, along with his best friend Wayne, in Pirt Augusta in the fifties. I loved him, my beaming brother with his owl like glasses and cheeky grin. Always the daredevil. Always cracking jokes. Sliced off his thumb in a bike accident while Mum was in the loo. She packed it with sugar to soak up the blood. Red on white, thick sugar, snow flowers blooming on the ground, the sweet and the profane. A thumb lying there.
I had a nightmare after Lauren died. Our pet White bull terrier was cut in half and I was trying to join him back together. Edges lined up but they were brown and I knew they were not going back together. I cried then. I woke up crying at other times and every day for the first few months just as I floated up from sleep, everything was fine, until I awoke and knew it to be true. The incomprehensible.
I saw no sense in existence then. For what ? I had always wanted to be a Mother and I had failed at the most important job of my life. I failed to keep her safe, alive, and I was like an insect rotating on a pin. Agony. The worst kind.
But just through sheer force of will I kept going, getting up time and time again. Not giving in, just putting one plodding foot in front of the other. And one day she came to me. Told me that I was going to be fine, better than fine. And that she was happy. That she also was fine. That her Dad, my ex, were on different paths in life, that we had never been meant to be together. I knew that was true as I hadn't been happy on my wedding day. I hadn't wanted to marry him, but social mores said I had to.
I just wanted the baby and could have managed without him.
He told me to stop talking of her six weeks after she died. Stop talking of her 12 years on Earth. I was having counselling for grief, they counselled me to ask him to leave. Leave me and the other girls
Our lives changed forever one night and were never to be the same ever again. She was gone in an instant. A life, a history, a living, loving presence. Lauren. I hate saying it, I hate remembering it. I hate everything about the whole thing. I hate that I have to go on without her.
I remember a couple who lost their only child and both leapt off a cliff, unwilling to go on, a boy, aged 11. An adored child.
I felt like that for the first six years. Didn't want to go on, thought of my other children, my new baby Grandson and still wanted to die too. I didn't care about people that were worse off than I. Had children that were murdered, made to suffer. All I thought of was my pain. I wanted to burn her out of my memory so that the "force you to your knees pain,", tears, snot flowing from my nose would stop.
I hated going out in Public. I hated 12 year old girls with long shiny hair. I hated the parents that still had them. It would have been so easy to go then. Like my Mother who lost a child and continued on until one day she just took her own life. She was looking for my dead brother, Jamie in Woolies she said. She was quite mad at the end, heard voices, screamed her head off in the night and woke me up.
Other days she was fine.
People expected me to be just like her. But she was mad, mad with being shot at in the War, losing a fiancé, shot down. She was a flight plotter, my Aunt tells me, worked in the War Room as she was a genius. And in the end, mad as a cut snake. I hated her when she killed herself. Hated that she left us with that legacy of suicide, blamed my Dad, blamed the War, the Doctors, the shock treatments, the way she looked, no teeth, crooning, beckoning in her madness. Locked doors and bars on the windows.
I hated her illness and hated her not getting help when she started to talk, " funny" but most of all I hated the people that thought I would turn out the same. She became aetheist after Jamie died denying us the succour of faith. A faith, Presbyterian, that we had been. Marching off to Sunday School like good little Christian Soldiers. My eldest brother was a Sunday School Teacher.
We knew the stations of the Cross and Calvary which we sang after service as we washed and dried dishes. I was five then and my Sister, a good singer, 10. Dad was so proud he had another singer in the Family. They both liked me a lot as I was brainy. Jamie was brainy too and also a writer. Couldn't spell or handwrite for shit but was a good writer. Where did it come from, the ability to write ?
They said he was " accident prone " a dreaming child that never saw the danger in lufe and was suffocated in a sand cave in, along with his best friend Wayne, in Pirt Augusta in the fifties. I loved him, my beaming brother with his owl like glasses and cheeky grin. Always the daredevil. Always cracking jokes. Sliced off his thumb in a bike accident while Mum was in the loo. She packed it with sugar to soak up the blood. Red on white, thick sugar, snow flowers blooming on the ground, the sweet and the profane. A thumb lying there.
I had a nightmare after Lauren died. Our pet White bull terrier was cut in half and I was trying to join him back together. Edges lined up but they were brown and I knew they were not going back together. I cried then. I woke up crying at other times and every day for the first few months just as I floated up from sleep, everything was fine, until I awoke and knew it to be true. The incomprehensible.
I saw no sense in existence then. For what ? I had always wanted to be a Mother and I had failed at the most important job of my life. I failed to keep her safe, alive, and I was like an insect rotating on a pin. Agony. The worst kind.
But just through sheer force of will I kept going, getting up time and time again. Not giving in, just putting one plodding foot in front of the other. And one day she came to me. Told me that I was going to be fine, better than fine. And that she was happy. That she also was fine. That her Dad, my ex, were on different paths in life, that we had never been meant to be together. I knew that was true as I hadn't been happy on my wedding day. I hadn't wanted to marry him, but social mores said I had to.
I just wanted the baby and could have managed without him.
He told me to stop talking of her six weeks after she died. Stop talking of her 12 years on Earth. I was having counselling for grief, they counselled me to ask him to leave. Leave me and the other girls
