Frankie says…Choose Life (a guest post)

Lisa from Giving Back Girl responded to my plea that I was lost for words. Writing for uni and freelancing with tight deadlines can do that to a person. Im word spent.

Here she is talking about her space in between. I love her writing and I love that we have carved a friendship out of a chance meeting and a few online shenanigans. Follow her blog here or her twitter feed here,  or just send a big fat Like out to the universe if social media isn’t your thing.

And as Molly Meldrum would say…do yourself a favour (and have a read and share)

 

My mum died when I was 28, she was 55.  Hers was an unhappy life, and even though I like to think that she adored my sister and I, and would have walked over hot coals for us, I think she may have even been a little disappointed in us.  And let me just get the record straight, I loved my mum and would have walked over coals for her without flinching.  But this isn’t about that.  Or maybe it is.

I have a crazy-detailed memory.  My life memory is like a whole series of mini movies that I can replay at will, to see what I was wearing or eating or doing.  But there is a period of my life where my memory movies are dark, I don’t replay them often, perhaps when I’m with my sister and too many pinot gris’s have been consumed and we feel we need to talk about our “stuff”.  Because I saw things that frankly a child should never, ever have to see.  And I lived my life in a way that no child should have to live.  There was nothing sinister, just negative and destructive, snipping away at any chance I had of a normal childhood.

There was a period when my mum was in a hospital (I’ll pause while you fill in the blank about the kind of hospital it was) when my powers of memory decided that “no, this is not something we’re going to save”, and my memory thankfully deserted me.  I have no memory of that time, just an occasional bleep.  The power of my consciousness to protect me still intrigues me.

But what amazes me most is my adult reaction to my life, when I think back on it.  You see, I could have chosen to be a victim, to drape myself in a cloak of self pity, to wallow in my memories.  I could have let my childhood experiences shape my future, to manipulate my relationships.  I could have dragged it around all my adult experiences like an unwanted suitcase that you can’t get rid of.  I could have worn a name badge with a “Hi I’m Lisa and I’m damaged”.

But I didn’t.

I chose to not let my childhood experiences have any impact or influence on my life, the life that I’m in control of.   They are part of me and always will be, but I have come out of this as a survivor, someone who has chosen a “happy life” and chosen not to be a victim.

I am not a victim, I am in control of what I choose to do with my childhood experiences.

And I choose to remember the good memories.

I choose to remember how clever mum was, of the shape of her fingernails, of how she loved when I got promoted in a job, of loved the weather, and watching big seas. Now I always pick up shells from the beach, because she taught me to do that.  I love that I share “Grandma” memories with my three young boys even though they never met each other, so I have given her a personality, quirky and a little kooky, which she was, and which my boys love.  I love that my eldest looks like me, and that I look like my mum, and that somehow we’re keeping that part of our gene pool going.  I know that my Mum would have been so proud of me for creating my beautiful boys, and for taking a gamble on a career path that she would have loved to have done herself.

My space in between is a little special, because even though I could choose to take on a role as a “victim”, I unconsciously wanted no part of that.  Maybe I was a little exhausted from it all, and craved normality and happiness, or maybe I knew how destructive that could be on all the things I wanted in my life.  And I think this choice has done something a little magical to my relationship with my mum.  I miss her dreadfully.  I love her dearly.  And I have regrets that we didn’t have a second chance at life together.

 

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Saying no, to being a victim is a powerful thing. Having worked in the ‘victims’ field for eons Ive seen how the move away from promoting resilience, how buying in to labels, letting the world and all its darkness take you away from seeing the light is something that is not helpful.

I also like that through my blog I get to see the little bits of peoples lives.

What did you think of Lisa’s space in between…whats yours?

All those odd socks.

The Morcombe’s released a statement this morning about the frustration of, one year after their son’s remains were discovered, there is still no access for the family to his body and their need to have a funeral – a send off for their boy.

During National Missing Persons Week last month I attempted to explain what it might mean to try to find rituals for people that live with losses that we don’t know how to, or want to, acknowledge. Miscarriage, stillbirth, suicide, homicide, missing people…they all sit in spaces that are hard to quantify because they don’t fit with our black and white concept that we are born, we live to an old age and then we die. The funeral industry doesn’t have alternate website where we can find out what to do in these circumstances. I’m sure there needs to be a space in the white pages but I don’t even know what we would call it.I explained it like this:

I began to ask families, in the early days of working with them, what they did to acknowledge their loss. Some found that a ritual, like a memorial service, was not useful as it was an outward sign that the family had given up hope of a return. For others they focused on providing chances to come together, some held picnics and some found that just sharing in an activity that the missing person had enjoyed provided them with the space to reconnect with the person that was not here. One of the ideas we shared was to introduce the concept of a celebration, so far.

By signaling so far the pressure was not placed on the family to concede anything – to concede hopefulness or hopelessness – it just provided the space between loss and remembering and it was a way to come together and share what the person had offered without labeling them just as missing. While death and its finality provides the chance to follow a clearly worn path both in spirituality and practicality the process of missing is far more ambiguous. In allowing people the space to create their own rituals of remembering the concept of an ambiguous or unresolved loss might be far better understood by the wider community and in turn create better opportunities for support for those enduring such losses.

I was supposed to meet a woman this morning who finds a space for rituals where others have failed. She looks at creative ways of honouring the person that isn’t here. I was reading an interview that she did a while back and I was struck by how passionate she was to just listen to what her purpose in life was. She text me the wee hours of the morning to say she had to be with a family who had lost someone. Selfless people end up in spaces like these.

All I keep hearing, all the murmurs that keep finding their way to my inbox or to my phone say that someone needs to create a space where missing, and the other misplaced socks of our life, can be honoured and looked after and embraced.

I’m just not sure how to do it alone. Does anyone have any ideas?

The C word…

A few days ago I took a little excursion to a suburb Id never been to, to collect a book that I needed. On the way home I was mulling over the conversation Id had with the nice man that I’d collected the book from. In the middle of my brain fog I missed the exit off the freeway and then had to drive on, way past where I lived only to finally turn round, drive back and then miss my exit coming in the other direction. Epic fail.

I’d mentioned to the man what I needed the book for, what I was studying. When I mentioned ‘missing’ he mentioned the C word. Closure. Ive had a few families like this one point out their disdain for the word and I think driving home I was wondering what other words we shouldn’t say. And then I got to thinking about who makes the rules about what we can and cant say.

My girl, in the infinite wisdom of a almost 7 year old, likes to point out words that belong on the can/can’t say list. She has a whole heap of them that she adds and takes away from the list depending on her mood and what might have slipped out of my mouth. Chubby is her forbidden C word, its always been on her list despite her strong desire to watch the Biggest Loser while eating Maltesers. She’s cant spell irony just yet.

I was trying to work out how we all make the list of the right and the wrong words, they seem to attach themselves to people as we grow but more so as we encounter new life experiences. Loss and trauma will do that to you, a conversation can be a virtual minefield of word based bombs. Ive dodged a few in my time….like most people have. Sometimes the need to say the right thing makes you say the complete opposite. Working in the mental health field before moving to missing I noticed how many words litter our vocabulary that paint a pretty crap (apparently that’s a good C word) picture of how we view people that are struggling with poor mental health – crazy, loon, psycho. We throw them around without thinking what power they have. When I started working with families who had lost someone I was cautious about how I discussed things, not to use flippant cliches and not to do dumb stuff like calling a dad by the name of his missing son. More than once.

The thing is no words are ever going to be right, we cant all be conscious of how our words can be misinterpreted when our overall message is one of support or love but we can be open to hearing about what words really rub people up the wrong way. To learn more about how they are heard by others. I was waiting for a friend at the movies last night and lurking on twitter thinking about my shakespearian twist on what comes out my mouth when this quote grabbed me, and then I realised it doesn’t matter how we say things, it matters that we reach out in the first place.

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

John Maxwell

Do you have words that you cant stand? Do you tell people not to use them?

Ripples of emotion.

Sarah Godwin, Kate McCann and Nicki Durbin

In some strange twist of fate I emailed Sarah earlier in the year for a piece I was writing for a magazine but the email got lost in cyberspace only for her to find my blog, comment on it and for me to realise it was the same Sarah.

Sarah is currently working for Missing People UK, a long distance from the place where ‘missing’ happened to her. This is my last interview for the week – thanks for those who have shared, commented, tweeted and emailed. I have one last post scheduled for tomorrow and then Ill be returning to my usual random ramblings about my little space in the world (I might also have a little snooze in between)

Sit back and have a read…

Sarah, can you tell me about your son Quentin?

Quentin is my second child out of four, my only son. He was born in England but we moved to New Zealand when he was 2 so he grew up there in a large family – 3 sisters, a step-sister and brother who was also his best friend from the age of 3.

As a baby, Q was beautiful, chubby, placid, golden curly hair. As a young school boy he was the one who always got into trouble, even if his friends were doing the same naughty things!

As a teenager he was a mixed bag, with a love of nature, gardening, bee keeping, an ability to meet and talk with people of all ages – he came across as a very loveable boy. But he was also conscious of fitting in with his peer group and anxious to be ‘one of the lads’, often causing conflict with his softer, caring side. West Auckland is not an easy place for a boy to become a young man. The early teens were a testing time as his peer group changed in secondary school, some of the influences not what a parent would choose for their child but you had to let them learn to find their own way and understand the need for self-discipline. Perhaps we gave Q too much freedom, perhaps he would have chosen the harder path anyway, but in his mid-teens he certainly gave us anxious moments and our learning curve both separately and together had some steep rises.

Q was able to talk about his problems and shared a lot of his troubling times with me, but when he was 17 he became ill with manic depression/bi-polar disorder and although he stayed home throughout his manic episode, it shook his confidence very badly and he lost his way in the world. The depression that followed 2 years later was well-hidden but obviously there was a lot of soul-searching going on in his mind and these worries were the main reason we believe he felt he should just take himself away from the family and not ‘burden’ us anymore.

What was your experience of support for families of missing people in NZ?

The NZ police became involved from Day 1 and worked hard to try and find evidence of Q’s whereabouts. Eventually after some weeks we had our own liaison policeman who was absolutely great, he tried everything to get a result; today I still have a very good contact at West Auckland police. Apart from this there was nothing in the way of support – no charity, no organisation specialising in missing people and no counsellors with experience of this particular trauma. It was a very hard, very lonely and isolating experience. With his siblings, there was no advice on how to help them through their loss – we all had to find our own ways together and separately.

You moved back to the UK a few years after Q went missing – did that space give you a chance to reconnect with you, Sarah, rather than being Q’s mother?

Moving back to England after 20 years away was my best shot at survival. Emotionally I was blasted by losing my son and a difficult divorce which split the family and sent us all off in different directions. It took me a very long time – about 10 years – to really come to terms with everything. Yes I could reconnect with Sarah but she was a bit wild and traumatised so not an easy person to live with!

Q was always there, once a mother always a mother. I went through a period of not talking about him – a sort of denial but only because it was too painful to be explaining the whereabouts (known or not known) of my son to new people I was meeting.

 

Tell me about your work with Missing People UK. What does your involvement give you?

I contacted the charity Missing People in 2009 after reading their excellent report  “Living in Limbo which said so clearly what I had been feeling and experiencing all those years on my own. I soon became involved as a volunteer representative in their new campaign Missing Rights, to encourage improvements in law, policy and practice that will benefit both missing people and those they leave behind. One of my first big assignments was to speak at a Parliamentary Inquiry in June 2011 about the emotional impact of our situation, alongside Kate McCann and another mother Nicki Durbin.

This 3 day Inquiry was successful and has contributed to significant changes in Government and Police policies. This in itself is very satisfying but for me personally, the highlight of that day was meeting two mothers in the same situation as me – my first experience of being with others who knew exactly what I was feeling without words. It was very powerful for me and ample reward for my time and emotional energy.

I have now become involved with fundraising as a member of the Trustee Development Board and I am part of a group piloting new ways to give counselling support to the families of the missing.

Through my contact at Missing People I have gained insight into the wider issues and I really appreciate knowing that there are so many people working in this charity who care deeply about the missing and their families – they are a very dedicated and wonderful bunch of people. But most of all, it has given me opportunities to do something, to be involved, to be with people who care as much as I do, to be in contact with families who are also without a loved one.

I think one of the hardest things to accept in my situation is the absolute loss of control, not being able to do anything to change the situation, wracking my brain to find new ways of searching – after 20 years there  little left but hope. Working with Missing People has changed that, it has strengthened me emotionally, taken away the feelings of isolation and given a purpose to my efforts beyond our own family situation.

What does a week focusing on Missing People mean to you – what do you think the community needs to understand?

A week highlighting the issues of missing people nationally is undoubtedly beneficial; it may bring publicity to particular cases, with the chance of new information. On a wider approach it gives an opportunity for people who might not normally ever confront this particular experience to understand the complexity of issues around ‘missing’. Not just the enormous emotional ripples that extend through families, friends, work places but also the practicalities of varied legal and financial implications which can cause further devastation to those involved. The telling of case stories is also important to make people aware that those who go missing can be from any background, any home situation – there is perhaps a willingness to point the finger and say ‘That would never happen in my family’ but it can and it does!

A further big result from such a focus is getting the information out to a wide audience what support is available for both the missing – they can re-connect via a confidential phone line – and their loved ones. It’s happening too often that people in these troubling emotional situations don’t know where to turn for support and no one signposts them to the appropriate support networks.

 

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Thank you Sarah. Having run the only support service (in NSW) for families of missing people and knowing that there is nothing anywhere else makes these words resonate even deeper. I spent a week at Missing People UK in 2006 and I was so excited to see rooms full of people all working on the same issue – having come from a tiny office with no colleagues it was hard to get on that plane and come home.

Thanks for your inspiring words Sarah. Hopefully we can bridge the gap in Australia some time soon.

 

Impostors in the world of missing?

Faye and Mark’s sons image has been splashed across the media for the last few years. That’s how I met them, they receive support from an old colleague of mine who has a passionate desire to right wrongs and to force conversations where conversations need to be had.

Mark agreed to have a chat with me about sitting on the outside of the missing persons sector and what it means to be searching when they know they are not expecting their son to come home. Here both Mark and Faye share their story.

*the information contained in this story, and the names used have been previously published by other media outlets.

 

Matt’s been missing for 5 years….can you tell me about the circumstances of his disappearance?

Our youngest son Jason was home ill from school on Tuesday the 25th of September 2007, Faye rang him to see if he was OK around lunchtime. Jason let her know that Matt’s work had called twice that morning to try to find him as he hadn’t fronted for work. Matt’s working week was Tuesday to Saturday so this essentially was his first day back after the weekend. Matt did not live with us at this stage, he was living with his partner Michael Peter Atkins at Cronulla. Matt was 20 and Atkins 44. We were not happy with this age difference but for the sake of Matt, we accepted him.

After Jason’s phone call we started contacting Matt’s friends and tried to contact Atkins. They started getting back to us that no one had seen Matt and finally Atkins called back to say that when he woke up in the morning Matt was gone (he subsequently changed this from waking up in the morning to lunch , then late afternoon). He said he also had been looking for him. Later in the evening Mark insisted Atkins come to the Police Station with he and Faye to report Matt as a missing person. Atkins reluctantly attended and a report was made to police. On the Thursday Matt’s car was located at Waratah Oval at Sutherland. In the boot was a Bunnings receipts with Atkins fingerprint on it. Police went to Bunnings and obtained CCTV footage of Atkins there around midday on the Sunday purchasing a mattock and cloth tape. Matt was last seen on CCTV footage leaving ARQ nightclub with Atkins around 3am on the Sunday morning . On Friday the local police involved the homicide squad and on Saturday homicide detectives formally informed us that they were convinced Matt had met with foul play and this was now officially a murder investigation. They were looking not for Matt but for a body. A strikeforce had been formed – Strikeforce Bowditch. In August 2008 Atkins was arrested and charged with Matt’s murder. He did not apply for bail and stayed on remand for 13 months until his murder trial from August to October, 2009. After nearly 8 weeks the jury found him not guilty of murder nor manslaughter. I was quoted to the press shortly after the verdict as saying “Not guilty does not mean innocent”.

Does it feel like time has been frozen to that day that you found out he was missing?

Both yes and no. At the time a minute felt like an eternity. Some days you think where have the years gone. But when you begin to go over the events, even though you go through the motions of day to day living, nearly five years on a big  part of you is still in a time warp waiting for that phone call to say they have found his body and you just can’t let go of going over the events and the timeline of those early days, retracing people’s steps and behaviours of that time trying to find a missed clue.

Has your idea of hope changed as time as moved on? What do you hope for now?

There is no change in our hope. Right from the outset we knew Matt wasn’t coming home alive. We still hope his body is found is found for two reasons. Firstly, Matt can be given the send off and place to be laid to rest with dignity that every decent human being deserves and secondly, Matt’s body constitutes “compelling new evidence” which we need to get back into court. There are no double jeopardy rules for murder in this state and Matt’s alleged killer can be re-tried.

People often throw around words like closure and acceptance which the majority of families living with such a traumatic loss rebel against. What do you think people don’t understand about living with the loss of your child?

NOTHING OFFENDS US MORE THAN THIS AWFUL “C” WORD, “CLOSURE”!!!!! We set a high standard and Matt knocking on our front door saying “Sorry I haven’t called IS CLOSURE, NOTHING LESS. So many well meaning friends, colleagues and compassionate members of press often say “Well at least if you can find Matt’s body you’ll have closure.” We just grit our teeth and turn away. Of course we accept Matt’s loss. We accept that he won’t be coming home. What a lot don’t understand is that this kind of a loss is not just an horrific and awful memory it’s also NOW, it never leaves you. NEVER a day goes by where we don’t think of Matt and what he would be doing now if he were alive. Both of us and both of Matt’s brothers are covered in tattoos commemorating Matt so we all never fail to see reminders of him wherever we are.

For most parents, with a child missing, the idea that they grow old and pass away without knowing what happened can be haunting. Is this something that you fixate on?

Yes it certainly is something you do and always will. No parent should ever have to bury a child no matter what age that child is. But what makes it more difficult for us we know Matt is dead, but we can’t even bury our son, so we have a double wammy, missing and dead. Not knowing what happened to him haunts us everyday. We don’t want to go to our graves not knowing, not only for our sake but for the sake of our other two sons. We don’t want them going through their young lives into their twilight years not knowing what happened as well, we don’t want to leave that responsibility on their shoulders, we are the parents it is our responsibility not theirs. Their lives have already been put into turmoil by these advents and by being able to find Matt will in some way let them move forward knowing that their brother has been respectfully laid to rest and we all can say our goodbyes to Matt, even though that will be one of the hardest things to do. At the moment we can’t say our goodbyes and have nowhere to go and visit him.

Finally, what does missing persons week mean for your family?

Sadly, we feel like imposter’s. We feel that we don’t belong. We’ve always thought of missing persons as those who are currently missing with the hope of one day being found or returning. We think of missing persons as living beings out there, somewhere, as yet not found. We’re even a little jealous of those that have strong hope that there loved one will return as we have been denied that hope by Matt’s killer. We have sympathy for and the greatest respect for those that have a cherished one missing and wish those with hope every positive outcome possible. _______________________________________________________

 

Im always astounded to see that in the midst of sadness and loss people think of good news for others. They see that whilst their own hope is limited, others should still be allowed to hold on to theirs. Thanks Mark and Faye for your honest and insightful words…it was lovely to sit next to you at the launch of the week. For more information about Matt and his family you can follow them here.

Missing, whether it be homicide, suicide, or just not here right now, can cover that range of what a missing person might be defined as. What does ‘missing’ mean to you?

My brother David

A few years back Robyn and I went to watch a performance. A story I had written about her in 2005 had been turned into an interpretive dance piece. We sat still in the audience watching it play out ahead of us. In walking back out to the brightly lit foyer afterwards we stepped to the side and had a giggle…meeting people who have had the worst happen to them doesn’t mean that there isnt a space for a big laugh now and again. Robyn has shared her story of David with you all.

Have a read.

Robyn – its National Missing Persons Week. How many years has David been missing, what were the circumstances around his disappearance?

David went missing in Iran in November 1993.  He was on an extended trip travelling through Europe and had decided to travel home overland through Turkey and Iran and on to India before heading back to Australia.  He was an architect and interested to visit the various monuments in these countries.  He had been staying in Tehran with a family he had met whilst travelling overland from Turkey.  He was last seen leaving their house very early one morning on November 11, in a taxi headed for Tehran airport.  He was due to fly to Shiraz to visit the ruins of Persepolis, and then meet up with the family in a few days time. He never made his rendezvous.  It was a month later before we (David’s family in Australia) learned that something was terribly wrong.  For several weeks we had been surprised not to hear from David – he had been in regular contact with family and friends.  We all just hoped that it would be difficult for him to contact home due to where he was travelling.  This was pre mobile phones and emails, so communication was far less frequent.  When he failed to call before his flight home, we suspected that something was wrong but still had no proof and hoped for the best.  My parents and I headed out to the airport to meet David’s flight on the evening of December 8, 1993, only to watch all the passengers disembark without David.  This was the defining moment when we knew that something was terribly wrong. It was another month before we traced David’s last movements to the family in Iran (tracked back from an address on a box containing a kilim that he had bought in Iran and shipped home).  Despite family travelling to Iran and extensive investigations involving AFP and DFAT, we have had no further news of his whereabouts in over 18 years.

How do you acknowledge the anniversary as it comes around?

There are so many anniversaries that are significant.  The last day we saw him, the day he was due home, birthdays, Christmas.  The day he went missing, November 11, was also my parents wedding anniversary.  It is also marked by Remembrance Day, which is now particularly poignant for me.  When people pause for a minute silence on that day, I think of David.

Your parents passed away without finding David – did they ever come to terms with being able to sit with ‘not knowing?’

Mum and Dad both died longing for news of what had happened to David.  I don’t think they ever came to terms with not knowing and I believe that they both died with broken hearts.  It makes me so sad that the final years of their life had to be so hard.  I have to make a conscious effort to remind myself that they were not always sad and that a large part of their lives had been happy.  It’s easy to remember the worst times when they are the freshest memories. I keep a wedding photo of theirs in a frame at home.  It’s a close up of just the two of them. They are young and look so happy.  When Mum died I felt like it had been so long since I could remember her being happy in any way. That’s when I got this photo out and framed it. I keep it there to remind me that there were good times.

How do you handle the question – have you got any siblings?

It really depends on the situation. It still conjures up very raw emotions for me, even after all this time. I never say that I am an only child, but how much information I share about David’s circumstances depends a lot on who I am with.  Most people don’t cope well when you tell them that your brother is missing. It’s not a situation people are familiar with and as such, don’t know how to respond. The result can some be insensitive comments – a situation I try and avoid.  Sometimes I will say that I had a brother but he died.  If I feel comfortable, I will share my story.

Whats does missing persons week mean to you?

A moment to pause and reflect.  It’s the first week in August which is also my Mum’s birthday – so again anniversaries seem inextricably tied together with “missing”.

Missing seems to permeate everything.  It’s a huge part of who I am.

 

For more information about National Missing Persons Week or about the only support service in Australia that responds to families click here.

 

Rituals for the lost, is it possible?

But your name is written on my heart forever

And there is never a day when I do not search for your face

Somewhere, everywhere, anywhere

I see a turn of a head

A back that reminds me of you

And I hurry to look more closely

Only to feel despair again

Because, of course, it is not you

D. McRae McMahon (2003)

 

There is much that is missing when a person vanishes. There is the oscillation between absence and presence and more profoundly there is the absence of ritual. I began working with families and friends of missing people in Sydney Australia in 2003. Missing soon consumed my focus and I began to notice gaps that I hadn’t noticed before. I noticed that there wasn’t a section in the newspaper that allowed for people to share their loss, to share what it meant to not have a missing person in their lives or to even publicly notify others that a loss had occurred.

When we think of missing we immediately picture posters with multiple images, not unlike headshots, that only capture the name of the person. The posters only serve to identify the person as missing, not as a person in their own right.

A book published in 2011 by Jenny Edkins Missing Persons and Politics reviewed the power of the images of those missing after the September 11 attacks in the US. The book outlines that missing persons posters serve as a ‘precious remnant, a trace, a proof the person exists. This is a person, a missing person, they proclaim’. So to in the celebrating, so far, is the opportunity for the left behind to say this is who I am missing and this is what they meant to me.

Missing cuts across all sectors of the community and missing can occur in a multitude of circumstances – abduction, homicide, mental health concerns, parental child abductions and misadventure but the commonality is that in the very moment where missing occurs there is a loss that a person left behind is enduring.

I began to ask families, in the early days of working with them, what they did to acknowledge their loss. Some found that a ritual, like a memorial service, was not useful as it was an outward sign that the family had given up hope of a return,. For others they focused on providing chances to come together, some held picnics and some found that just sharing in an activity that the missing person had enjoyed provided them with the space to reconnect with the person that was not here. One of the ideas we shared was to introduce the concept of a celebration, so far. By signaling so far the pressure was not placed on the family to concede anything – to concede hopefulness or hopelessness – it just provided the space between loss and remembering and it was a way to come together and share what the person had offered without labeling them just as missing.

While death and its finality provides the chance to follow a clearly worn path both in religiosity and practicality the process of missing is far more ambiguous. In allowing people the space to create their own rituals of remembering the concept of an ambiguous or unresolved loss might be far better understood by the wider community and in turn create better opportunities for support for those enduring such losses.

Its National Missing Persons Week here in Australia, starting today. I have seven scheduled posts to cover the week. Drop back in or follow #nmpw on twitter to join the conversation.

Have you ever thought about the impact of the loss when a person is missing?

 

 

 

The nest egg.

I watched the family of this poor boy try to find words to convey their trauma and sadness on TV this morning. I watched the camera pan to his siblings sitting to the left of their bewildered parents and I wondered where would they go from here. Not in the years to come but today. Where would you turn if you lost one of your lights? The news reports explained that Thomas was out on his first night to popular area of Sydney, the CCTV footage showed him walking hand in hand with his girlfriend and then he steps out of camera. The power of knowing what happens next makes you want to press pause and rewind over and over again almost trying to keep him in view, keep him safe.

I can clearly remember sitting with a family a few years back in counselling. I had already been working for a few years with people living with life altering traumas – no two stories were the same, they all showed different traits of resilience, of strength. The family and I were talking about the grief of losing a child – replaying over and over the events that led to the sadness, the rawness of approaching anniversaries and that impending doom that nothing would ever be the same ever again. It was an uncomfortable place for me to be sitting too – I was heavily pregnant with my first child and trying my hardest to be supportive and engaging while my own baby squirmed inside of me. I remember as we catalogued the pain they were experiencing – both physical and emotional – that it was like a nest egg. Parenting is like having a nest egg – a giant fund that you contribute to for years and years only for to find yourself one day looking in and realising that it had all vanished in the blink of an eye. That all those years of juggling, of working hard and of hoping for that day that you could sit back and reap the rewards, were stolen from you. I cant imagine walking along one path for so long and then the world throw you a giant detour.

If you take a moment to read the blogs, the magazines, the news sites about parenting you find that the elusive work life balance gets thrown around on a daily basis. We wish away the early years full of sleep deprivation and tantrums, we struggle through the primary school years where it feels like the bell rings almost 5 minutes after school starts  and then we hold our breath as kids reach the years where they dip their toes in the world of independence.

There is no way of holding them back, of keeping them wrapped up at home because like many of us; we went out at night, we found ourselves in precarious situations and many are still here to tell the story. The randomness of it all means that there can be no preparation for it. No amount of counselling or supportive words changes what has happened. So sad.

How do you juggle the need for kids to assert their independence with your fear of what could happen to them?

 

Missing You – a TSIB book review

Over the last week its only been about missing people in my little corner of the world. Last week I spoke at the National Missing Persons Conference about the disconnect between the way the media speak about families of missing people and the way these families describe themselves. In the telling of the missing persons story, their stories seem to get lost in the process. The story of being left behind is not often loud because the need to search is the priority.

One of the handful of families that attended the conference last week was Loren. Loren and I met online last year through the editor of Mamamia. I recognised her from her little profile pic that Id squinted at the morning of the conference so that I knew who to look out for. Lucky she was wearing her glasses. Loren’s brother Dan is missing, the day we met in real life was a year to the day since she’d seen him. The word yearn is not a word that pops into peoples vocabularies these days but Loren’s pain and desperation and longing for ways to find her brother and bring him home radiate out of her. Her yearning is visible. In a sea of unfixable challenges the need to fix it for her is palpable. The same can be said for most missing persons cases whether we hear them face to face or from afar.

Five Mile Press sent me a copy of Justine Ford’s new book to review on my blog because of my interest in the area of missing.  Missing You – Australia’s most mysterious unsolved missing persons cases – catalogues twenty stories of unsolved missing persons cases in Australia. Ive read a lot of true crime stories over the years and especially so in the last year as Ive moved from the counselling world to the research space – its been an interesting ride. Justine’s stories are told with respect and compassion about the multitude of situations people find themselves in when they vanish and the trauma of being left behind. Some of the names – Jamie Herdman, Christine Redford and Bung Siriboon- were familiar to me and others weren’t. They were the ones I was interested in.  Families of missing people, the longer the person remains lost, have to compete for space to get their story noticed, they have to find ways to engage and then reengage the public to remind them that they are still searching, still yearning for answers. In the telling of a story in Justine’s book she was able to share a piece of that person – it made them more than a missing person, it made them real. The cataloguing of clues, of Police insight (which seemed to have been provided with cooperation in this book) and the perspectives of loved ones, of forensic professionals and the stories of those that are found but not yet reunited with whoever may be searching for them is provided with enough space to give you a sense of what it might mean to not know where someone is.

One of the later chapters sums up the need to keep the interest alive – no matter how much time has passed. Linda Stilwell, was snatched from a funpark in St Kilda in 1968 at the age of 7. Her mother recalled that even back then people expected her to cry more than she did. Like many of the families Ive met over the last decade the challenge in living with a loss that may not be permanent means that those conventional ways of grieving, of releasing the sadness about the loss makes it difficult. It makes it difficult for people to truly understand what it means to live in that space of someone being both here and gone ‘all I would like is to be able to give Linda a funeral, not be thrown away like a piece of rubbish’. Telling her story 4 decades later and still pushing for the truth through the coronial system just goes to show that families of the missing cant simply move on from their grief.

Its not often that a book gives a space to the grief of an unresolved loss – this book isn’t just for people with personal experience of searching of missing but for the wider community wanting to understand more about the need to bring them home. Its unfathomable that someone can be here in a moment, gone the next and that no one has the pieces that complete that jigsaw puzzle. Someone, somewhere, must know something.

Missing You is out now. For more information about Justine Ford’s new book click here

For more information about Loren O’Keefe’s search for her brother, join her search on FaceBook.

Linking up with #ibot

What garden path? a TSIB interview

Tash contacted me a few months ago asking for some room to explore her space between her man and his illness. After a few speed bumps we managed to get the interview together and what we finished up with was a poignantly funny piece about living for now, having a love and hanging with your soul mate. I get a little frustrated by the continual sharing on social media sites of inspirational quotes – they depress me, more than uplift me as we can’t all be up all the time. Its ironic then that I think Tash’s next business venture should be  writing little manifesto’s for just getting on with it!

Its bloody cold in Sydney at the moment, so pop on a pair of daggy old slippers (if you’re in these parts or swan about with your skin showing if you’re lucky enough to be in a warmer climate) and sit back and learn about what it means to love, in sickness and in health.

 

Tash…tell me a little about you

Hello!  My name is Tash and I am 26 years old. In the past year I have moved to Ballarat in Victoria, with my partner Chris. I really like to make things, dance in my lounge room on Saturday nights in my pyjamas, read-lots and I love comedy of all sorts. One of the most important things I think we need in life is to laugh. And be comfortable. (Hence the pyjama pants)

I live with my ‘Chef-man’ Chris, Matilda (our Border Collie) and Mary (our cat). We moved to Ballarat from South Australia because we were not happy in SA and we needed a fresh start. We both were in jobs that were unfulfilling, and we could not work out where to go next. We had had a few years of really average things happening-Chris has a form of bowel cancer called ‘Lynch’s Disease’ (officially called the very scary sounding, Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colorectal Cancer) and quite frankly we were both emotionally tired and felt like we were facing a dead end.

So we packed up our life, put our houseboat up for sale (yes we lived on a houseboat!) and drove to Ballarat. Now we live next door to my brother and sister in law-we even have a gate in out back fence. I feel like I escaped. I am so happy in Ballarat and love our life we are building together.

What makes you love Chris like you do?

So many things Sarah! I think he is marvelous…right now he is sitting across from the couch from me, watching QI with a glass of wine. He is laughing at Bill Bailey, with our Border Collie curled up next to him. I feel very lucky to have his love, I feel very blessed to be sharing my life with him. I like that he can laugh at me when I am grumpy and make me laugh at myself too. We play cards together at the pub. He writes me cards for Mothers Day from Matilda and Mary (our cat), his laugh is deep, his soul is large, he has kind eyes and a slow smile that creeps across his face.

When we met we would talk for hours, all through the night. He is the strongest person I know. He has to face the reality that one day, the cancer will come back. He has to have tests every three months, for the rest of his life. He does not get the luxury of remission.

We are 23 years in age apart. We fell in love whilst working together (oh God it was complicated!) We danced around the concept for about a year before we finally bit the bullet, had a massive fight on New Years Eve and ended up kissing that same night, somewhere on the Murray River.

I think one of the main reasons I love him is because he adds so much happiness to my quality of life. We love going for long country drives together, poking about in markets and spending nights in with cheese, wine and a good movie. We are a partnership and we support each other in the ways that the other can not.

How does illness live between the two of you – is it there some days and then forgotten on others or is it always in the background?

Chris has a hereditary form of bowel cancer. It is in his DNA, his father died from the same form of cancer, and his brother has the same cancer too. (a real shitter eh?) We have dealt with numerous operations and rounds of chemo. Chris is currently in the clear, but he did have a tumor removed from his shoulder last month. Lynch’s Disease has an increased rick of getting other cancers too because of the mutations in his DNA.

We live in limbo. We do not plan a future, perhaps further than a year. Being 26, most of my friends are starting to think about kidlets and marriage but Chris and I know that we will not have kids, because his cancer is hereditary, which is something which I have learnt to accept, as much as one can anyway. Our everyday is the same. We live exactly the same life that everyone else does – rego, bills, dreaming of holidays – but there it is, always hanging around the edges, the sinister. We are scared that it will come back. Every three months, there is the slow build up of tension before his tests (Chris calls it his turkey basting-I’ll leave it to your imagination!) then the waiting for the results, then the release when it is all-OK.

I think the thing that we try to remember is that if we did not follow our hearts (as clichéd as it sounds) we would not be sharing this experience of our relationship. It was not an easy decision for either of us to let go of our individual fears and jump in.

I definitely do not regret it, and I am pretty sure Chris does not either!

How do you sit not knowing what the future will hold? 

I have never worried about the future prior to Chris and I definitely do not focus on it now. I have learnt that you never ever, ever know which garden path you will end up dancing down, and that is honestly what I love about life the most. This may sound strange to some people, but I would rather have a wonderful time with Chris now, and in the future when something does happen to Chris, I can hold onto the wonderful memories we have created. I know, that because of my age, that there is a possibility that I will have another partner in life-but then again, I may not. Who knows? We concentrate on the here and now, and what makes us happy. I hope this does not come across as sounding frivolous and shallow. But there is no point in worrying. You will miss things that happen right in front of your nose.

What would you say to people in a similar situations?

Do what makes you happy. Accept whatever may come will come. Tell everyone you love them, all of the time.

Live for today.

Make sure you are happy with your doctor, and then trust everything he says. Do not Google any medical terms/symptoms EVER. Be gentle to yourself. Utilise services that are available to you, social groups, doctors, everything. Remember that when things are really, really shit (and they will be!) that you will be OK.

Surround yourself with people that make you feel safe. Make sure you laugh a lot and fill your life with colour and love.

I think the main thing I have learnt is that I am strong. I can deal with most things that come my way. That is not to say I do not cry, or get angry, or feel weak some days. I have learnt to be very content in the right now.

To not worry about the future.

To not worry if the couch is old, or if we have an old bomb of a car, or if we do not know what we will be doing in five years.

I wake up every morning with a big black dog that runs in and jumps on us as soon as she senses we are awake, a little cat that sleeps on my feet at night and next to a man who loves me….even with bed hair.

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Thanks Tash, its hard not to get caught up in collecting what we thing we need when what we want is some chances to laugh and be surrounded by people we love. I must admit Im also partial to a poke around at a good market too! Tash also writes a blog which you can visit here, if you liked Tash’s story and you’re new to TSIB jump over here and read some of the other interviews. Im always happy to chat with other people about their space in between…

Oh and yes, Dr Google is never a good idea.