Edit Suite WA

The world is full of good people. People who see something wrong or unfair and want to help. They will share on social media, sign a petition, donate money, time or expertise. They might even join a walk or ride to raise awareness or sell raffle tickets. We were those people. Until a friend died and one of us decided he had to do more. A lot more.

Maybe it’s an age thing. Perhaps it’s the fact that my parents died within two months of each other. Maybe it's that my youngest turned 16. Or that my eldest is finding her way as her true self. Perhaps it’s the fact I managed to keep on keeping on even when I felt like crawling under the doona and staying there forever.

I've been wading through sludge. A deep, dark morass that threatens to pull me under. Whenever I manage to push my way through for a few steps it sucks me back down, waist deep. I often feel so tired I want to sleep all day. I have terrible dreams, not really nightmares, but so vivid and disturbing they often wake me up. And I hardly ever remember dreams.

And yet, I'm also able to go about my life as if it's the same. To see friends. To laugh. To do the school run. And work. Do a lot of work, actually.

This surprised me. Grief is weird. No great revelation, I know, but the double whammy of losing both my parents within two months has certainly reminded me to expect nothing but the unexpected.

Losing my parents. Gah, I'm a trained journalist. They haven't wandered into the desert or got lost on some ridiculous bush hike. They aren't missing in some foreign country. They aren't lost. They are dead. They are no more. They're pushing up daisies. Well, technically, they are hanging out in my spare wardrobe at the moment, until we find a time we four siblings can come together to scatter their ashes, but my parents would have loved the Monty Python reference.

I started pulling this portfolio together weeks after my Mum died. Less than two months later, I am an orphan. It's only been a week since Dad died so it may seem strange to be writing this at all, let alone making it my first musing (I hate the word blog). It's a bit of a buzzkill, isn't it?