Grieving is hard and it takes so long, I feel like I'm doing a really bad job. My friends must be sick of me and my Mum, who should be worse than me, is actually really good. I can't remember the last day I didn't cry. I'm pretty close to crying most of the time. I get really upset when small things happened, like when I stub my toe or have to drive at night in the rain. I’m officially pathetic. I have no resilience.
When we first got to the hospital we were told that Dad had severe brain damage. They said they wouldn’t know how bad it was until he woke up. I was angry, I thought he’d been cruel to me his whole life and now he was going to become a vegetable, a burden. What kind of daughter must I be to even think such a thing? Nanna didn’t go to the hospital after that first day. She couldn’t bear to see him like that.
After four to five days the doctors changed their tune and added the tiny two letter word – “if” – as in, “if he wakes up”. We could see his face sagging as the brain damage started to change its shape. This was not meant to happen. I grew up believing Dad and I would make amends on his deathbed. He was meant to be apologising to me with tears in his eyes, I was meant to forgive him. Instead, he’s lying there unconscious unable to assure me that he is sorry and that he did care about me.
The last time I saw him, we had a fight. When I said goodbye, he ignored me. My last living memory of my father is of him ignoring me. It’s an image I can’t escape or change, it’s permanent. I can’t ‘fix’ it.
It was about a week after the accident when the hospital called a family meeting; we sat in a drab ‘conference room’ with a box of tissues on the centre table. Must be the ‘good news room’. The doctor came in and closed the door slowly behind him, sat down and said, “He will never have a meaningful existence, know who you are, dress himself or eat. What would you like to do?” A silence descended the room as we entered our individual spaces of grief.
We made the agonising decision to turn off the life support - not right away, but in a few days time, to give everyone the chance to say goodbye… Everyone was numb and we were just going through the motions. Mum and Dianne thought they were killing him, but there was no choice. I’d come around from thinking he would be a burden and I didn’t want him to die.
We turned off the life support on the Saturday of the Clipsal 500 weekend. Next door, thousands of people were getting off on fast cars. They took him out of intensive care and left him in the darkest, dingiest ward, like a one-stop end of the road seedy motel. It was mouldy and had paint peeling off the walls. It wasn’t the lack of renovations that bothered me, but more the dimness. It was as though natural light had just given up and wasn’t even trying to get through. We assumed we would pull the plug and he would die. Again, we were wrong.
He spent the next three and a half days breathing like a racehorse that had just run the Melbourne Cup. It was disgusting. Mum didn’t want to leave him alone so she spent a lot of time there. I couldn’t handle it; I didn’t go in every day. I don’t remember what Dianne did. I was there when he died, 11 days after the accident. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, or just the end of one nightmare and the beginning of another.
We had to wait at the hospital for the police. Mum had to ‘identify the body’. I don’t know who they think we had been crying over for the last 11 days, but anyway, that’s what we had to do. Two police finally came about an hour later. One was a woman. The whole encounter struck me as odd. She wore a bulky blue uniform with bottle blonde hair, French polished manicured nails and a heavy tool belt. As she spoke, my attention was drawn to her frosted pink lips. The words and the lips just didn’t fit together. “Don’t worry, we will get her,” she said with force. I thought I knew what she was talking about, but I wasn’t sure whether I agreed.
Depression is a horrible thing. It just goes on and on and you even get comfortable in it. Misery becomes your pillow. It’s very hard to raise your head and get up in the morning. It's easier to sleep through. Big Brother has been my biggest escape - can you believe it? It's f****ing hilarious, if you think about it. The people – Bree, Fitzy - made me laugh, and I escaped into the nothingness of their lives. Think about it: I didn't run away, I’ve stopped drinking completely, I didn't go overseas, I didn't get into drugs, I didn't go skydiving, but I did escape into Big Brother!!
I read this today: “That life be a flow, and let go. Look at all the hundreds of flowers that open every day, without forcing a bud”. It helped, for about a second!
Written on 10 Nov 2004
Over 8 years since incident
Tags:
grieving, body, depression, life support
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jes | 12 Nov 2010
So many top sentences in this post. Corkers, pearlers and down right straight up truth. These are my favorites:
I get really upset when small things happened, like when I stub my toe or have to drive at night in the rain. I’m officially pathetic.
It was about a week after the accident when the hospital called a family meeting; we sat in a drab ‘conference room’ with a box of tissues on the centre table. Must be the ‘good news room’.
We turned off the life support on the Saturday of the Clipsal 500 weekend. Next door, thousands of people were getting off on fast cars.
Mum had to ‘identify the body’. I don’t know who they think we had been crying over for the last 11 days, but anyway, that’s what we had to do.
I thought I knew what she was talking about, but I wasn’t sure whether I agreed.
I read this today: “That life be a flow, and let go. Look at all the hundreds of flowers that open every day, without forcing a bud”. It helped, for about a second!