Grief

One of my earliest memories in my young life was sitting at Mum's feet in the lounge room while she did the ironing. Mum had bought me a pile of scrapbooks, pencils and crayons to keep me entertained and to 'explore my creativity'. I must have been about 3 years old at the time - before Mum went back to work and before I started kindergarten. I remember being so proud of my creations and Mum telling me how good they were. I certainly have no idea whether they were good or not, as they are long gone now - but it set the precedent for the future. I would excel in the arts, English and creativity in school. Mum also encouraged me to write and bought me journals along with the latest Macquarie dictionary. As far as Mum was concerned, if I was going to put my thoughts into the written word, I was going to know how to spell each and every one of them.

Mum would continue to do her best to be the mum she imagined herself to be - which was a big ask for somebody who lost their own mum when they were eight years old. I'm sure she felt the inadequacy of true nurturing in her life - and combined with the ultimate mother-in-law from Hell, my grandmother, who had an opinion on everything - it didn't make it any easier to raise her firstborn, my older brother, the way she wanted to. By the time I was born eight years after my brother, her self-confidence had been eroded to a shadow of her former light.

Of course I knew nothing of my mother's heartbreak at that young age. She did her best, as always - and continued to be there for the rest of her life for me, no matter what the circumstance. My eccentric spirit at times drove her to distraction - and as I approached my teenage years we didn't always get along. My own issues relating to others also became a problem at this age. It had always been difficult for me to pick up social cues and fit in with my peers - and it became a source of frustration for me, as I wanted nothing more than to fit in back then. Mum saw it as likely hormonal angst and I saw it as a lack of empathy and understanding on her part. I didn't know what was happening to me and why I had always felt different and I couldn't explain it to anybody. It just existed and was endured - like a metaphorical red flag frenetically flapping above my head to let everybody know that I was not like them. Autism as such wasn't even a consideration back then unless it was markedly in your face - and I was not diagnosed until recently - and for that in hindsight I am grateful. I learned to develop coping strategies and skills that would continue to help me as I matured. I learned to channel my feelings into creative pursuits. I went back to study and university as a mature-age student and learned the discipline and delight of structuring my ideas into essays and designs. I learned I was bright and skilled. I found myself - and Mum was always there with her advice and the unflappable common sense that made her who she was. She became a reliable source of family history and often told me stories about her childhood and her experiences growing up. In the last 30 years of her life I learned more about my mother than I had in my first 20 years. We were comrades in arms, conspiring against Dad and his hair-brained hobbies - taken up with gusto and great expense only to be forgotten after a few months when he found another object of desire to fixate on.

My dad was an entirely different fish. The will-o'-the-wisp swirling haphazardly around Mum's rock-steady foundations and carefully thought-out goals. Throughout my life he forever remained the same. Somebody who was untroubled by the complexities of life and who never held a grudge. A little naive perhaps, he could be childlike in his delight of his immediate surroundings and his newest adventure. He constantly lived in the now - and would forgive a slight in a second once the dust had settled. I remember some of the ignorant and hurtful comments that were made because of the colour of his skin. Dad moved on far more effectively than I ever did.

Those moving-on skills also equated to the brushing over of life's responsibilities. How he survived into old age had always remained a mystery to me. In his lifetime he had ridden many motorcycles, horses and he and his family lived off the land during the years between the Great Depression and World War 2. He left school at a young age and gained a trade. In his twenties he travelled to New Guinea for a new adventure, sight unseen, signing up for a few years to work on the gold dredges there. He rode motorcycles at breakneck speed on what amounted to little more than goat tracks and he played representative football as five-eight for Papua New Guinea. He survived the jungles, a couple of motorcycle accidents and a decent amount of duty-free alcohol. Dad also survived two more serious car accidents over the years back home, plus a housefire that left him with third-degree burns and a heart attack in his seventies.

Dad's zest for life and adventure never waivered into his later years. At the age of 91 we took him on his very first helicopter flight over the city of Brisbane. His excitement was a delight to watch. Hopping from foot to foot, he beat the pilot out the door to get to the helicopter. At 92 he tandem skydived and celebrated his achievement with a beer at the local pub. A year after that we went hot air ballooning over the countryside. Dad informed me afterwards that ballooning wasn't exciting enough for him. The serenity of a slow and peaceful drift at sunrise separated from the early morning machinations of country folk and their cows below us was lost on him. He was keen to continue to live large and would have likely roped us into many new adventures if not for his slide into dementia. I'm only grateful that it was not a prolonged illness, as I could see the frustration and confusion in his eyes over his physical and mental restrictions whenever I visited him.

Until 2023 when I lost them both, I was somebody's beloved daughter. I was an enthusiastic participant in my parents' lives - celebrating every milestone with them as they got older. I shared adventures with them, I confided in them and listened to their own stories of struggles and happiness throughout their lives. I took care of them when they were no longer able to be as independent as they would have liked to be. I was actively but not consciously storing up experiences and memories of them that now not only evoke sadness at my loss, but gratitude that I was there to live and relive it all with them.

A part of myself is gone. My identity as a daughter exists, and yet it does not. I feel that I am living in two parallel timelines - one a fragmented illusion where I can pick up the phone to tell them about my day. The other, a cold logic that reminds me that the memories of our conversations and the reminders of the things we used to do are all around me - but like the wind are intangible and impossible to hold onto for any length of time. They are gone and I remain - the keeper of the memories of their lives.

It has now been just over a year since my father passed away - and not quite a year since my mother passed. I am in the middle of that grieving space between them - remembering one year ago that I was barely coping with Dad's loss - to finally admitting defeat and putting my precious mother into a nursing home, as her heart condition had deteriorated to a point where I was no longer able to take care of her on my own. My grief and guilt in equal measures was absolutely debilitating. Watching mum struggle on in pain, progressively becoming weaker eroded any hope within me that she was going to rally and pull through as she had in the past. There would be no grinning wickedly from her 'deathbed' as she had succeeded in scaring us all once again, delighted and embarrassed that she had caused such a fuss for her family. When I sat alone by her bedside in palliative care holding her hand as she slipped away from me - I was relieved that, for her, the pain no longer existed - but it coincided in leaving me physically and emotionally flattened - as my pain was all encompassing and I wanted her back more than anything in the world.

I have struggled in the last 12 months to come to terms with their loss. I have engaged a psychologist, joined a grief support group and I have a support worker who visits me once a fortnight to see how I am going. I have learned that grief does not have a timeline and it is different for everyone. While it has been difficult to find room for anybody else in this space I have developed more empathy for those who have or are going through the pain of loss. Any loss or grief I have felt before this moment pales in comparison to losing my beloved parents in breathtakingly quick succession. Although I know that life is inevitably full of eventual loss, the reality is more painful than that logic of just knowing. I see myself mirrored again and again in others - and yet I am alone in my anguish.

I have been told that grief itself does not diminish or become smaller with time. It remains the same. The same-sized hole that we continue to live with in our lives. A constant feeling of sadness and loss that never goes away despite the happy memories we have of them. What happens, they say, is that we build our lives around that hole and our lives become bigger to accommodate it. We never forget, we never completely move on. We continue to live in the best way we know how to, despite our losses. All life is finite and despite our best efforts, somebody will grieve for us and remember us in the same way as we grieved for and remembered those we loved.

Dealing with my parents' deaths, finances and possessions has given me an insight into the true value of life. It was more or less rammed home to me as I was cleaning out their homes before selling them, selling their belongings or giving things away to those who needed them - and just keeping a few treasured mementos for myself. My parents were good people, they weren't greedy or grasping and they lived within their means. What they owned in their lives they deserved. They owned property, furniture and had money in the bank ... and when they passed away - all they owned was relinquished to somebody else. Everything they had worked for all their lives was no longer theirs. It belonged to my brother and I - and anybody else we chose to share it with. It was relegated to 'a belonging' - a thing to pass on. A monetary statement of their lives, but in no way a description of the fullness and the highs and lows of who they were. It is what is left behind after life, not life itself. I see possessions in a new way now. They are useful while we are here to enjoy them - but they have an inevitable transient ownership. The saying "we cannot take it with us when we go" holds new meaning for me as I contemplate the value of life itself and how it is lived as opposed to what material possessions are gained from it.

I still feel the love my parents had for me in everything they did for me and said to me, despite our ups and downs and despite how desperately I miss them. What they achieved in life isn't related to their possessions and their success isn't related to their monetary value. Their achievements and success is in me and how I live my life, my values, my overall compassion and my ability to think outside the box. My father taught me a lot about tolerance, empathy and living in the moment through his very actions. My mother gave me the tools I needed for creativity, determination, organisation and believing in myself.

As I get older in this new reality without Mum and Dad, I know my life here in this place is becoming shorter. I am the next generation with the memories and the teachings of the past to pass to others. I can only do that by example as my parents did. While, like my beloved parents, I am not without fault - I can hope that the positive aspects of who I am will make a difference to someone else.

What we do in our lives does count and it does have an impact on others. Every second matters and every memory we leave behind for others is precious. The things that we think are important today that are related to ownership and status are less important in our final moments than we can possibly imagine.

I am finding, after the last 12 months, that I care less about the complexities of ownership and consumerism and am more inclined to want to live my life in a more meaningful way to me - regardless of what others might think. I'm pretty sure that Mum and Dad would want that for me, too.