A very busy week

 For someone who officially doesn't have very many commitments at this point in her life I sure as hell seem to have had a busy couple of weeks. I've barely been home this week. I've been visiting Britta in hospital the last few days as well as helping her mother make a photo book about the accident for Britta's little girl, which we finished yesterday morning. I cried making the book, realising how much this little person has to take in, and how much her little mind must be trying to make sense of. She's a smart cookie, though, just like her mother. She's wise. She'll be OK.

Britta has graduated from the hospital to the rehabilitation facility. She appears to have gone from strength to strength this week, which surprises no one who knows her, but still seems beyond anyone's expectations. It is her birthday today. There's going to be a small surprise gathering for her in the patients lounge at the new facility. Her internal injuries have stabilised and now begins the very long process of healing her muscles, nerves, and bones. It must be so disconcerting to be unable to move, to lose all of your independence, to be absolutely immobile. It's like the stuff of your nightmares. Right now the focus is on getting her settled and comfortable in the new facility. I think I'll take her some things to brighten up her room.

News of Britta's accident and injuries was obviously a very horrible end to last week/start of this week. But it hasn't all been doom and gloom. My dear Anika graduated from her PhD on Saturday, to much fanfare from those of us who love her and have been a part of her thesis journey. I could not have been more proud. She has worked so bloody hard on that thesis, with so much guts and determination. Talk about a woman on a mission - she definitely had one of those with that project.

Anika and Sasha after the ceremony

The only sadness of that day was realising that the tea we were served as part of our celebratory High Tea at the Park Hyatt was somewhat over brewed, and that the scones had a slightly offensive fruity glaze (that's an in joke). I did dearly wish that I was up there with Anika, both of us graduating together. But that was not to be. At least not yet. Maybe my turn will come. Maybe my thesis will be finished. Maybe not. Who's to say anything with any certainty any more?

By far the cutest thing of the day was Anika's little daughter, Sasha (my god-daughter) calling out 'that's my mummy!' when everyone was clapping her as she received her testamur on the stage. It reminded me that little children don't really 'get' that their parents are anything other than their own particular mummy or daddy all the time. We all hoped that Sasha would remember the day in years to come, though we also all professed that we couldn't remember much of ourselves at three-years-old, apart from stories we'd been told.

Because Anika was in Melbourne from her current home in Canberra for the graduation, we also enjoyed a little party for Sasha's third birthday, which fell the week before. It was rabbit themed, as she pretty much loves rabbits to the exclusion of all other things. She calls them 'hop-hops', which is too adorable for words, really. I bought her Little Ted from PlaySchool and she loved him.

Trying to get a photo of all three of us proved impossible!

The birthday girl

On the home front I don't have much to report. I owe the Australian Tax Office $35 after submitting my tax return. I'm thinking of asking them for a $1 a week payment plan on that! Given that Britta has been utilising everything our fabulous public health system has to offer I was actually glad to pay extra tax this year. If only all our tax dollars were being spent on such important things.

I'm thinking of planting about one million Camellia plants in my front yard in Max's memory. The one we planted for him in November is going so well that it's really given me faith that perhaps propagating Camellias is my calling. . . stranger things have happened. For someone who has not ever been interested in plants or nature, I find what I am about to say just as eery and weird as you might find it. Here I go, though: it's been a very good winter for Camellias in Melbourne. That's what anyone who knows anything about plants has been saying, so now, I'm saying it too! Oh, how things have changed. I don't know who I am anymore. Next thing I'll be wearing sensible shoes. . . oh, wait. . . that's already happened too!

Leslie is still looking for another job after being made redundant. I am still asking myself 'what now?', though I'm working on that with my psych by way of defining my personal values. More about that another time once I have a clear idea of what they are! We are still forging ahead on the 'get pregnant quick' scheme. But, as Phil Collins made very clear in the 80s, you can't hurry love, and by extension, fertilised embryos I guess. He also sang something about 'One more night', I think, so I guess we'll give that a try. He seems to have known what he was on about.

I want to plan a gathering and service to honour Max's birthday in November. I've been day dreaming about it. I had this vision of John Farnham performing a song I'd written for Max on the day. Is that weird? I think it is, but it's probably not the weirdest thing I've had in my head over the last eight or so months. Perhaps I'll get my people to call his people. Isn't that how these things work? If anyone has any ideas for a venue I'll gladly take them. I want a lovely, small-medium room in Melbourne that has audio-visual equipment and is not super expensive to hire.

I've been managing quite a bit of anxiety of late. I thought that my all of my anxiety had gone away. Normally it manifests in me unable to leave the house, cancelling all engagements and social responsibilities, unable to use the phone or do anything much to help myself. I haven't had any of those feelings in a while now, so I assumed that some how I'd been miraculously cured. It turns out that anxiety is a clever son of a bitch though. Did you know that it can sometimes disguise itself as manic activity? A desire to be everywhere, to find out everything, to run around like a headless chook in service of some aim or another? That's what I've been doing. I thought I was just being productive, looking for answers as to what happened when I was pregnant; looking for answers as to what we might be able to differently next time, if there is a next time; planning project after project to do in Max's memory. . . the list goes on. My psychiatrist raised the point that it might be anxiety driving a lot of my current behaviour; a desire to mitigate risk and uncertainty. And she's right, you know. She's most often right. I can't trust any of my motivations or feelings anymore. I don't know what is a good idea and what is not. I don't know when I'm being sensible and when I'm being anxious. I don't know what is real. I feel completely ungrounded. And, no, I don't really like it.

What a way to earn a living

I was anxious about returning to work after my long break, not just because it signals the unwanted return of responsibility I'm not sure I can yet handle, but because the last time I was in that building I was still pregnant. In fact, I was in early labour, except I didn't know it at the time. My friend and colleague, Hannah, who was there with me that fateful night would be there with me this first night back, and I would not have wanted to be working with anyone else.

For those of you who don't know, I work in a boarding school where I look after 50 adolescent girls, mostly from country Victoria and South-East Asia who come to the city to experience the best secondary education that money can buy. I have worked there since 2006, take a year when I took a full time job in the corporate world. I returned there when that government contract was up, as I probably always knew I would. The place gets under your skin, the girls get into your heart, and there you end up stuck with crap hours and poor pay but somehow still returning year after year. I've watched many staff come and go over the years and whether this is a thing to celebrate I don't know, but I am the longest serving member of staff, and have cared for some of our current Year 12 students since they were in Year 5 - just tiny little people living away from their parents.

Obviously, I love my job. It does not have much going for it in terms of career or remuneration, so it can only be my heart which brings me back there. Working with people, with children especially, is what I love best. Those types of jobs - the caring professions - bring out my best and make me feel like I am making a difference. I knew it would be hard going back after Max's death though. The girls had all been so excited during my pregnancy and were shocked and upset to hear our sad news at the end of last term. Many of them have a wisdom and maturity beyond their years, but I was still concerned that they would not know what to say or how to react, and that my relationship with them would be changed as a result.

To their credit, those children responded to my sorrow with so much more heart than most adults I know have. I think I've mentioned before that so many people seem afraid of mentioning the death of a child as if it is catching or will invoke some kind of nasty spirit, or like death is just a dirty word. People talk of my 'angel' son, not my dead son. They say he was 'lost', not that he died. That kind of thing. It doesn't necessarily bother me, as I guess it's all semantics, but at the same time I'm so relieved when someone talks to me in the language of the real, it is refreshing and lets me know that the person is not afraid of feeling or knowing life as so many people seem to be.

Some of the girls in the boarding house did not say anything to me, but told me they hoped I'd had a very relaxing and healing break. When you think about it, even that acknowledgement is very generous from a child who has most likely never had to face someone outside their family who is grieving. When so many of the girls later met me with unabashed sentiments, straight from their hearts, I was absolutely overwhelmed. Quite a few looked me in the eyes or held my hand and said 'I am very sorry that your baby died'. The simplest of responses, but one that said everything anyone ever needed to say. Many people Leslie and I have encountered could take a lesson in fearlessness from these fifteen-year-old girls who were not afraid of me in my 'altered' state of grief and not afraid to mention what had happened. I was so touched, and so proud, of how they welcomed me back into their lives with an invitation to bring this new me alongside the old; that there would be room for us both.

It was a very long shift - in hours and events. I worked from 1pm - 11pm, which was always going to be tiring after over two months spent being able to rest whenever I needed. But it was a few very stressful things that happened later on that really did me in and left me in a pile on the floor yesterday not knowing if I could ever go back. At 10.30 that night we received a phone call to say that a girl's mother had suffered a stroke and was unlikely to survive the night. I understand now that she had been ill for some time, but I did not know this at the time. The young girl, a Year 12 student, was new to the boarding house, although an existing student at the school. When she broke down in a panic, I did too. I barely knew this girl and I had no existing relationship with her that I could use to try and comfort or protect her. All I had was the thought of death, and that here was someone else suffering who did not deserve to be so. I am usually good in a crisis at my work - it's how I've managed to work there for so long and not let the never ending stream of things that go wrong really get to me. But this was really too much. We bundled her into a family member's car to go and say goodbye to her mother at the hospital and I sobbed and sobbed - for her, and for me and for Max, all of it together. Thank goodness I had my lovely colleague and friend there, with whom I have now been through so much, and we cried together.

The trauma was not to end there, though. We finish our shifts at 11pm after all the girls are in bed, and we sleep over in the boarding house and the next morning I start work at 7am again to do wake up and get everyone off to school. We don't get paid for sleeping over but it is a requirement of the job. At around 1.30am I got a knock on my bedroom door from my workmate to say that another of the girl's had suffered a serious asthma attack and despite ventolin was not able to really draw breath. In my pyjamas and with my eyes stuck together from hours of tears, I now had a medical emergency on my hands and a girl who was freaking out from not being able to breathe. Fortunately, we'd had a parents cocktail party earlier in the evening and her mother had stayed in Melbourne overnight. She returned to school to pick her up and take her to the hospital, and she was fine, but I just couldn't believe lightening had struck twice in the same shift. As it did a THIRD time when at 5.45am the school's alarms went off, indicating an intruder, and I woke with the thought that I was responsible for the lives of 50 other people in that instant. Just what I needed. Thankfully it was a false alarm, but for my poor body which was traumatised, sleep-deprived and just wanting to go home, it was the last straw.

I pretty much collapsed when I got home at 9.30am yesterday morning and vowed that I could not return for another shift. Unfortunately things are not as simple as that. I can't just quit, and I guess nor do I want to (or do I?). It just made me acutely aware of the fact that I am not who I used to be, and that at the moment I am still intensely vulnerable and need caring for myself at the same time as I need care for those kids I'm responsible for. I don't know how to manage the anxiety of the job anymore - the fact that things are always going to wrong when you're looking after that many children and that I might not be able to deal with the issues that arise without major upset or trauma to myself.

So much for easing my way back into the world of work. . .