Surviving death

Recently, I seem to have been surrounded by death or the threat of it.

A couple of friends' beloved dogs have died, one beautiful woman I know has had a harrowing cancer journey, another bestie is nursing her ninety-three year old mother through what is beginning to look like her final days. This transformative spectre has loomed large.

These events have reverberated through my mind, reminding me of loved ones I have lost.

The first in my young life, some forty-eight years ago now, was a little classmate of mine. Donna Anthony. Donna was a cheeky little girl I discovered in the school library one day. She was hiding between two shelves and trying to reconcile herself to the fact that she was constantly being told she wasn't good enough. Apparently, she was downright naughty.

Donna had a big sister, Wendy, who could do no wrong. Unsurprisingly, in comparison to this paragon of virtue, Donna had developed a deep and abiding feeling that she could do no right. (Frankly, from my encounters with Wendy in the schoolyard I had found her quite stuck up and thought she had some pretty serious tickets on herself.)

In an effort to comfort Donna, I told her about my naughty little sister and how very much I loved her. I read her chapters from a book I had been reading, literally entitled, "My Naughty Little Sister," and arranged to meet her in the library regularly. From the lunchtime gatherings, a friendship blossomed.

Several people warned me about Donna, told me she might bite me. But that was never my experience with her. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Donna, would open up like a flower during our visits. She would go from tearful or all spit, piss and vinegar, (as she fended off what was largely, for her, a hostile world), to laughing, warm and playful.

Donna developed cancer in her right leg when she was seven and I was eight. She was off school for a number of weeks, and when she returned, she hobbled in on crutches, a horrific absence where her leg had been. A nasty brown wig perched on her head, replacing her beautiful, long, flyaway golden hair.

The day she returned, they sat her next to me as we were friends. I smiled at her and she back at me wanly as she hobbled in the class on her crutches and sat down.

I tried to hide the fact that my heart was in my mouth and I wanted to throw up as I imagined every indescribable horror my young friend had gone through.

I made it to morning recess, then ran behind the back of the library as my body succumbed to wave after wave of the crippling paroxysms of a panic attack.

I had to be taken home. Mum worked through it all with me and I returned to school the next day, emotionally armed and ready to be a supportive friend.

Donna rallied for a while. She received a wooden prosthesis, which she would fling about herself with an abandon that was utterly and uniquely Donnaesque. But as time went by, the days when she felt good enough to come to school became fewer and farther in between.

Eventually, she succumbed to the cancer. I was invited to her funeral but with the best of intentions, my parents decided it was best for me not to go.

I despaired, I wanted to tell her parents how sorry I was that their cheeky, naughty, brave little girl was gone. I wanted to be there to say a last farewell, to stand up and be counted as her friend. But it was not to be and I consigned Donna and her death to a distant room in the back of my mind and heart. I locked the door on it and lost the key.

For many years, Donna remained buried beneath that emotional stone wall. I survived the deaths of grandparents, uncles and aunties, even some good friends. But with the passing of my father in 2003, the torrent of emotions came rushing back. All of a sudden, I was having panic attacks. The world buzzed in my ears, but I couldn't for the life of me make out what it was saying.

I had started a PhD at the University of Melbourne not long before Dad died and I went back to it after one short week of grieving.

I remember, for weeks after Dad's death, months even, I would try to select articles for my research and not take them in. I would read the same paragraph over and over again and not take in a single thing. When I look back, I realise I should have taken that time off, allowed myself to grieve, allowed my mind to reassemble itself into the new thing it needed to become in a world without my father. But instead, I built more walls.

I was fortunate enough to go to Uluru with friends last year and literally walk in the soft, nurturing soil of the red centre. I had a wonderful time but on the day I was supposed to fly out, I tested positive for COVID.

The resultant week of isolation in my hotel room afforded me an opportunity, (just like the Melbourne lockdowns had,) to look at and assess my life. And it was there, alone in that room, that Donna came back to haunt me.

When my father had died, he had evacuated his body as soundly and completely as his father before him. He'd called me the night before we died and we'd managed to say everything we needed to say to each other. He died as kindly and as honourably as he lived.

But Donna's death, with all the surrounding grief and trauma and lack of closure, (as the psychologists call it), was a different story for me.

Donna was there in my isolation room with me, I couldn't get her out of my head. But through a mountain of very cathartic journaling, some thirty word stories and some semi-delusional conversations, I faced her and honoured her and came to some peace with the circumstances surrounding her life and death.

What I've learnt from that experience is the following things:

1) WE MUST TAKE THE TIME TO GRIEVE. Whether it is through the performing of ceremonies, or writing, or just going to ground and working through the torrent of emotions that surround such losses.

Me going back to a PhD I ultimately didn't complete was not in my best interests. I was not a robot, I needed time to heal. Locking my emotions away and soldiering on did not serve anyone, least of all me.

2) We must take time. Full stop. COVID has provided some remarkable opportunities for reflection. And I realise that periodically, I need to slow down, to stop sometimes and take the time to reflect. To listen to what that small voice inside me is whispering.

3) This life is precious and who knows when it comes to an end. It may come quietly, in sleep at the end of a long life. It may ravage us with illness. It may rip us violently away from this mortal coil. Whatever fashion death comes in, it comes. By living life fully we become more ready for it, we make friends with our own mortality.

4) Honouring all those who have come before gives us comfort. There's a reason the Greeks light a candle for forty days after a loved one's death and the Mexican's celebrate Dia del los Muertos. To cherish the memories of their dearly departed and keep them alive in spirit. My Nichiren Buddhist spiritual practice was especially comforting in this respect. The twice daily chanting included a prayer for the dead and an opportunity to remember them.

5) Some people don't get to make it to adulthood, or even their teens. Some might get mere moments on this beautiful, chaotic, extraordinary planet. But we who get longer, we have a remarkable opportunity to hold them in our hearts, and to live and be a voice for them. And when we do live with them in our hearts, boy, it's an amazing thing.

I have been on hot air balloon rides, and in helicopters, I have thrown myself into love and work, parenthood and every other experience I've encountered. Thanks to my father's death some thirty years before expected. I've realised security is an illusion. But that needn't scare us. It can make the time we do get, the experiences all the sweeter.

My father had certain dreams, he never quite stepped outside his comfort zone to realise. Knowing that, I write and dance and live outside my comfort zone as much as I can, gobbling up extraordinary growth moments. Because Dad can't make the choice to do that any more. But wherever he is, I want him to know that his life and death has affected me irrevocably, just like Donna's and all my other dearly departed.

My middle name is Margaret after both my grandmothers. I used to hate it, but now they are both gone I am so grateful for and proud of that moniker. I try as hard as I can to be the living embodiment of the greatest things about both of those wonderful women. It's the best way I've found to honour them whilst still moving forward into the future.

My uncle John, a pilot who taught countless young people to fly once told me, "I used to look up at the birds in the sky, sailing on the up-draughts. And I thought to myself, I want to be up there too. I want to experience such freedom," and he did.

Through his words, his life and his death, and all those now departed, I have learnt to look up, to savour each breath, to fly and embrace every thread of what life has to offer.