Aunty Kate's Eulogy

Janelley, Leslie and little Max, my dearest friends, my family. Your beautiful son has touched my heart and I will never be the same again. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.

I met Max, I saw his big lips and his enormous flipper-sized feet and that’s a memory I will guard with my life. I also saw my dear friends and their love for each other and for Max. As much as losing Max will make us all here and you both question life, the world, the injustice, the sense, for the hours of Max’s life, he knew no anger. He will only know the love and care you showed him in everything you did.

Please know that everyone here will protect Max and his memory and love him like you both do.

Your friends, your family flew across the country, came despite their own grief to be with you. That’s evidence of how much we care about each of you and for Max. This room is full of the people you can call at 3am, people who can make a Twinings tea and sit with you; people who will take you to the footy even when you might not feel like going. Please take comfort if you can from the people in this room who love you.

Janelley, we will smile again, we will go out for breakfast again (hopefully on Saturday) and we will even laugh again. It won’t mean the pain has faded or the memory is not as clear, it’ll just be that somehow we can and we do. And when that happens, Max will be there too, in our hearts which is where he will live forever.

I promise we will all look after Max’s memory as well as after you and Leslie. We will never stop looking our for you, caring for you or loving you.

Missing you and loving you today until forever our Maxwell Alexander.

Daddy's Eulogy

I want to thank you all for coming to help us mourn little Max’s death and to help us celebrate his life.

Its been a long week for Janelle and I since we lost Max last Friday morning. It is easy to think of all the things that I have lost with Max. I won’t get to teach him how to ride a bike or kick a footy. I won’t get to scare away the monsters under his bed. I won’t get to see him fall in love or even smile. I won’t get to pick him up and give him a cuddle after he scrapes his knee. I won’t get to help him discover himself, the person that he was meant to be. I won’t get to see him become a man.

My only solace is that in his 5 short hours Max was loved, protected and cared for. For every second. He never experienced anger or impatience. He was never alone. Never lonely. He spent his whole life surrounded by people who loved him. We should all be so lucky.

I’m so sorry that so few people got to meet our Max, so I thought you might like to know a bit about him. Kate and Janelle think that Max has my lips and Janelle’s cheekbones. I’ve never been good at that game of picking out features of children from each of the parents, especially not facial features.

He has my feet though, great big paddles - they are like flippers. He isn’t small either. The midwives said before he was born he would probably weigh around 500 grams, but he topped the scales at almost 700. I’ll take credit for the genes and Janelle can take the nurturing and nutrition I reckon. I think he had both our fingers though, long and slender.

The other thing I’m sure of is that he has Janelle’s heart, those of you who know her well will know that Janelle’s heart is pretty much her defining characteristic. The midwives said before he was born that his heart might keep beating for a few hours. Just a few. But Max showed them. Even though he stopped breathing shortly after he was born his heart continued on for five hours. Surely only his mother’s heart could be so big and strong.

I’m so proud of Janelle. Whilst grieving is a very individual and personal thing, everything that I have gone through she goes through as well, but she has a physical side to the experience that I can never appreciate. I’m sure that those of you that know her as well as I do will agree that she is far stronger than she realises. I hope that somewhere down the line she will learn this lesson, maybe Max will be the one to teach her. In spite of all that has happened, I am more in love with her than I ever have been and I cant imagine a life without her.

I have always tried to live my life in such a way that the world is a better place for having had me in it. I don’t claim to be a Fred Hollows or Mother Teresa but I do believe that in my small way I do my part. I wanted to teach Max this philosophy too. I never really cared or thought about what he would do when he grew up, so long as he was happy and made others happy. That would have been good enough for me. The cards have fallen in such a way that Max won’t be able to act as a positive influence on the world. I think that he can still fulfill my dreams for him, but I think I’m going to need all of your help.

I hope that you can all see the love that Janelle and I have for Max and the grief and the anguish for his loss. I want you to embrace and absorb these feelings and take them home with you. Take them home with you and appreciate what you have just that little bit more. You are all good people. Janelle and I wouldn’t have invited you if you weren’t, so I’m sure you already do. I want you to take these feeling home and appreciate and love what you have just that little bit more. Just a little bit. Especially your children, if you are lucky enough to have them.

Thank you.

Mummy's Eulogy

I’m a speechwriter by profession, and until a few days ago the hardest speech I’d ever written was a motivational one for a bunch of Western Bulldog recruits – not least of all because I didn’t, and still don’t, know how many people are even on a football team.

Now, I’m faced with the overwhelming task of finding the words to tell you about my beloved baby, who lived and died as the rest of the world went about their nightly slumber. I want these words to be perfect, as he was, but that seems such an impossible task. So instead, I will just speak with the language of my heart, which is all I have left.

My son, Max Alexander, was delivered in the still of the night, in a moment of the most perfect calm. He was welcomed by his adoring daddy, his doting Aunty Kate, and two amazing midwives, none of whom left his mummy’s side as she experienced hitherto unimaginable fear, pain and uncertainty.

Max had the gentlest of landings onto this earthly plane. I birthed him tenderly, gladly, and humbly in the knowledge that the precious gift I was about to be given would not be mine to keep.

We know how fiercely, how bravely he battled to get to us because he wore the marks and bruises of his journey on his tiny body. The story of his life was written quite literally on his fragile, parchment-like skin, and as we caressed every inch of his body, in awe of what we’d created, his story transferred through our fingertips where it now sits protected inside every molecule of our being – forever a part of us.

We dreamed of a baby and imagined Max into being for so many months that we feel we’ve known him forever. We feel so privileged that he chose us to be his parents – his most careful protectors. My only wish is that I could have kept him safer; that I’d spent more time marvelling at the amazing changes he made to my body as he grew; that like thousands of other elated new mothers I got to take him home where all his things are waiting for him in a now empty room.

Leslie and I have been joined in love for so long, but we never thought we’d be joined in grief this way – it’s not the natural order of things. We stand helplessly at the beginning of a scary and untrodden path that we have no idea how to navigate.

We are so grateful that you are all here with us, and for us, as we come to terms with the cruel and recurring realisation that our baby is gone – visible only in moonbeams and stardust, and the precious few photos we have to treasure.

What’s perhaps the hardest thing to comprehend is that my body has immediately gone on with the business of living whilst my heart and soul lag so much more sorrowfully behind. All evidence of my sweetly swelling belly has disappeared, my aches and pains relieved.

But I want them all back, as no ailment or discomfort could compare with the indescribable emptiness I have in the pit of my stomach, where a painful brew of fear, sadness, despair and shock have replaced the delightful feeling of Max’s tumbles and kicks. My arms throb to hold him and I want to cut them off to make it stop.

Max, my darling, as I celebrate proudly everything you were, I also grieve for the boy you will never be. I had so many dreams and plans for you, and I still do.

After all is said and done, your daddy and I will leave here today with the comfort of a single truth: You lived, and you were loved.

Goodnight my baby boy. I will awaken all the days of my life giving thanks for all you have given me.