I’d write poems or somethin’
Though I cannot,
Not really
Not good ones.
Self aware.
They’d be less meta than this.

There’s an anvil on my chest
It pins me down and keeps the words
Scratched into the metal, or pressed in, stamped.
Anvils, typically, say ACME or 1921 or ANVIL
But this one is marked and heavy with sentiment
Scrawled upon its sides.

I love you and
I miss you and
I wish you could have stayed
Sentiments like that.
Heavy.
Stamped on me too.

I lurched with guilt when the thought crossed my mind. Will you ever be a big man? Will you run and play and go to school and get a job and marry a girl (or a boy) and live and live and live, then die an old old wrinkly man, happy, in your sleep? Or will you die when you’re 39 and leave your wife and kids shattered and confused?

I shouldn’t look at a baby and think that. God, that beautiful little boy, content and settled on a plane with his mama. He doesn’t need me conjuring unintended curses on his life expectancy. But we’re brainwashed into blindly believing that we have this guaranteed, mapped-out existence of longevity and grey hair and walking sticks and Metamucil and reduced busfair and a before-5pm discount.

We don’t.

But these terms… Brother? Father? What are they?

My brother brother, the bigger little one, is Gerard. I remember the day that I realised he could beat me up (early 2006). I also remember when he was six or seven and I pushed him over every time he tried to stand up. I remember the day he was born. I remember the bobbly electronic ball he got for his third birthday. I remember standing outside his door when he was eight and overhearing him play with his Action Men: I don’t want to fight you, Doctor X, I just want the gold coin!

And the other brother? Jake. The littler little one. We’ve really only met a handful of times. He’s funny and clever but kind of a smart ass (A Study on Genetics: Page One). He starts sentences with “my dad”, because we’re not familiar enough for him to make the inherent connection that we share a father.

I’m the eldest. And that comes with lots of things, good and bad. One of those things is that I’ve wished for a big brother more than once. With no real concept of what that would be, I just kind of envisioned someone who would poke fun and protect and appreciate and be hilarious and be a dork and brave and admirable.

It turns out that I didn’t really need a real big brother for that.

Aaron King wrote ‘Alley Cat’ (a parody to Phoebe Buffay’s ‘Smelly Cat’) when I returned home from the US missing Joey in 2010, and Aaron King deleted Joey from his Facebook friends when I returned home from the US having been dumped in 2011, because no one treats my friend like that and gets away with it. Aaron King is the man I said goodbye to when I wrote him a four page letter and dropped it into the South Esk River on Friday last week. And Aaron King is the man I said goodbye to when I joined hundreds and hundreds of incredibly sad people to abide with his wife and sons at his funeral on Tuesday.

…

So, again. These terms: Father. Brother. They may be a little wishy washy for me, but not for The Kings. Not at all.

Aaron King is a father unlike any I’ve ever seen or known. He wrestled with his sons every day. Every moment that he wasn’t at work providing for them, he was with them. He affectionately called them ‘baby’, regardless of their age. He didn’t tell them how to be… he showed them. He showed them how to be brave, that it’s okay to cry, how to love their mother, how to love their brother, how to kick a footy. He let them sneak sips of his Pepsi after bedtime. He hugged them tight, and then wrapped them in headlocks, making them beg for mercy. He instilled in them a love of family, fun, adventure, perseverance, music, sports, silliness.

(Only Aaron King’s sons would tussle their mum’s hair at their dad’s funeral, and only Aaron King’s wife would love it.)

Aaron is gone. But these things will stick. I know they will. Those boys will spend their lives inherently knowing that their father was a king among men; not for status or blue blood or grandiosity, but this: that they are destined to be better men for being his, for having his influence from the second they were conceived, with no moment bringing anything final, anything over. There’s no until. He’s theirs, and they’re his. Always. Their family is forever.

Death thinks it’s all powerful and sneaky for snatching their dad from them as boys, but Death isn’t braver or better than the King.

As for Lisa… well. She’s unlike anyone I know. There’s no doubt that she’s broken, but there’s even lesser doubt that she’s strong. She shared with me (and others) a gift that I will never forget, and will never be able to convey my gratitude. In the moments that she could have been spending precious final seconds with Aaron in his private viewing, she came into the foyer to find me, to ask me if I would like to see him. (If you know anyone else who would do that, you need to introduce that person to Lisa so that they can start a club foundation and save the world with kindness and selflessness). She stood in front of hundreds and eulogised her husband. No wife should ever have to stand at a pulpit at 37 and eulogise her husband. Not ever. Ever ever. But Lisa did it so lovingly, bravely, proudly, and with just the right amount of funny. Let me somehow convey this: I thought I’d seen the depth of her grace and courage when she buried her son four months ago, but, boy, oh boy. I said out-loud just when you think you know how amazing someone is…

…

Just like Noah, Aaron leaves behind him a lot of broken hearts. A stunned silence fell across the hundreds that gathered to say goodbye to him. Noah’s balloon release was colourful and freeing and childlike and ‘bye Noah!’. But Aaron’s? Silent. Whispers of sadness, an eerie wind, grey clouds, peering sun. His time for freedom is a lot messier, a lot more confusing, totally different to Noah’s.

But they’re free. That father, and that son; they’re together. And knowing that they’re together is the force that drives the four Kings left behind. They’re loved infinitely in every realm, and one day, they’ll know how much.

…

If you can, please help.

…

I’d have believed anything before I’d believe that Aaron had died. But he did. And this is more than the universe just keeping us on our toes. This is… a constant belting across the head that says we can’t count on today or tomorrow or any other day or any other thing so love love love love love.

…

I have so few words. I want to write all day and all night about how incredible Aaron was; how thankful I am to have known him, how his absence will rock his beautiful family until they are reunited with him and with Noah, how his legacy will shape his sons into men like him. It’s all there… the sentiments, the truths of Aaron. Shell shock, though, blocks the way. But it’ll come.

I wrote a letter to Aaron and I dropped it in the river. Everything I wish I could have told him in person. Everything he’d be too humble to accept. I don’t do it for the credit.

This big kid is now playing with his precious son, in ways they’ve never been able to, not ever before.

Aaron King, 23 December 1972- 26 January 2012.

I know! If I write in lists of threes, you know, about things that I know about, or things that I’ve seen, or like, or love, or want, or hate, or am amused by, or whatEVer, then, I’ll be writing about something on which I have at least a marginal amount of authority; something I feel okay about sharing, something I think I can speak to, about, for. But it’ll stay with a lid on it; creative constraints, of sorts, because I don’t want to get ahead of myself, and I don’t want to bore anyone, and I don’t want to… [this justification goes on].

It didn’t quite happen like that. It fell away because I felt completely uninteresting; because something would get my wheels turning but unless it fit the mould, I wouldn’t write it down, OR it’d be half-assed and a little embarrassing. And you know what else? I wasn’t scratching the surface of what I thought, or felt, and I wasn’t getting that back from anyone else either, which drives so much of what I love about what grows in this space. It’s a slow process, but it started happening when I started happening. People trickle out of the woodwork, I understand them more, they understand me more, it goes on.

…

And when this all started, I thought I knew at least a little bit about the fundamental life things like loss and pain and sadness and love and happiness. Most people, I suppose, feel that way. And then something really friggin’ serious happens, and we lament and envy our old selves for their breath, and we laugh at them for their naiveté.

I’d nod with some impression that I even vaguely understood the load behind the sentences that fell heavy, but accepted-ish, from the mouths of incredible people. When Noah was diagnosed… or, when the twins were born, and then when Liam died… or, during the war…, knowing that I didn’t, but trying to.

I still don’t.

But I’m closer. And every. single. event that has had anything to do with my proximity to that understanding has happened this year. 2011.

And whatdoyaknow. It’s almost funny, really. But there are three big events. Monster. Inside and out, gut-wrenching, upside down. But this is the right way of doing it, if there is a right way, I think. Not a futile list, but a real one. Not linear, though. Scrambled and all over the place, like flashes of memory, of feeling, of intertwined jungle vines that I swing through, swing from, swing to, when I have the courage, or when I’m searching desperately for the sunshine through the trees. The best way out is through.

To reminisce like this is kind of like pouring hot candle wax onto my finger tips. Hot damn, it hurts, but it’s wild to see what shape it takes when it hardens; the beauty in the mess, and how, if I wanted to, I could melt it back to where it came from, and start again, fresh, but never having forgotten what it was before. That history in its being. Even when it’s something different.
….

Today I did something I’ve never done before. I picked up a hitch hiker. And before you start screaming at me and throwing thine flame throwers, listen here: I saw the girl, my age, giant backpack, heavier than just its contents, and I saw a little part of myself. I’ve been that lost, that desperate. I’ve never hitch-hiked, but I’ve been far from home, no idea where I’m going, who to talk to, who not to talk to, where to go. So I went back around and I picked her up. We chatted. German girl, Lisa (or do Germans spell it differently? will research), nice. She was a little younger than me; 20. She just finished school. She’s not going home until August, and when she does, it’s to surprise her sister for her sister’s eighteenth birthday. Maybe we will do something like take her first visit to the casino, she said. I took her to the bus station. I’ll never see her again, but I hope she made it to where she was going.

I had to, though. I had to pick her up, if for nothing else than to thank the people who have helped me in my travels. Some kind of full-circle thing.

…

That was my life.

The Not-Really-Tasmanian Tassie girl periodically goes abroad, skipping on to trains that go UNDERWATER, UNDERGROUND, to New York City, and back. And riding in the back of a car into New York City’s Chinatown in the middle of the night. Eating in adorable patisseries in the Village, swooning, cosy. Laying in the grass, adored and adoring, on the edge of the Hudson River.

I mean, shit. It sounds like a movie. Plenty of common themes to plenty of common movies. I see these movies, you know? And that’s my comment, my disbelief, my knowing, my… something. That was my life. I loved it, and him. Oh, and him. So much. Too much. I didn’t think there was such a thing as ‘too much’, but in this moment, I do.

…

What happens to people when the urgency is gone? When the urgency is gone from their love and they’re just kind of left to… like each other, if that. When no one knows where it went, or how, or why, or if it’ll come back. There’s a fine line between Stay and Go in those moments of realisation; a place with more crying, more begging, more crashing down, more hope and less hope, than anyone would ever care to admit.

That’s breaking up. The act of it is messy and complicated, kinda like pin boning a fish. Only a few people know how to do it right, maybe because they’ve done it before, or maybe for something else, like growing up, watching it happen, maybe. I knew for certain that I wasn’t getting it right; that I couldn’t look after myself and him at the same time. I chose to cater to him, and maybe that wasn’t deserved, or maybe it was the Noble Thing, or maybe it wasn’t anything but foolish. Or maybe it was all of that. Or none.

…

Optimism is lovely, sometimes. Every so often, we need it. We need it to be the grappling hook that we throw out of the trench. And some people never need the grappling hooks because they never let themselves fall far enough. Or because nothing hard ever happens.

But you know what I think the thing about optimism is, though? Even with its finest traits, optimism doesn’t let anyone feel anything but guilt when all they want to do is look at their pain straight in the face, and say HEY HOW COULD YOU? GIVE ME A BREAK. GIVE ME A MOTHERFU…. (breathe in) (breathe out)… I need a break.

I boil with rage some days. And optimism? The grappling hook? It’s not enough; not even the imagery of it, the glory of unaccompanied rescue, it’s not enough.

…

Sometimes I stop and I clutch my chest. I wonder if anyone’s looking; if they notice that I’m in a moment so heavy. Generally not. ‘Girl Hugs Her Right Arm Across Her Chest and Rests Her Thumb on Her Left Collarbone’? That’s about as unassuming as anything else, isn’t it? So why would they?

I clutch my chest because I forget and then I remember. And that’s heavy.

I forget. I skip up Ella and Ronnie’s back steps and for a split second, I’m excited to see him, breathe him in, charm his socks off. He’s not there. He died. Forever.

I forget. Someone calls me on Skype, and the ringtone immediately makes me think you’re receiving a wakeup call from your sweet boyfriend, and I half expect to hear him: “hey!” You know, I used to be able to hear the smile in his voice, and there’s a lot I don’t miss now but I miss the smile in his voice. I do. That’s gone. It’s okay, but it’s gone.

I forget. I spend Sundays or Mondays with fleeting excitement about how it’s nearly Tuesday, my favourite day for seeing Noah. The most privileged day of my week; to be in the presence of a spirit like that. He’s gone too. That’s significantly less okay. It’s not real, not yet. I feel like I could walk into their house and go about my jobs, everything I’d do with Noah, as though nothing had ever happened. Muscle memory. It wouldn’t be clumsy or difficult or conscious. It would just be what it always was. An honour. Something I’d do for free. Precious.

…

I imagine Noah. I imagine his shape and the way he sat, the way he lay on the floor, the way he winced his face, or rolled his eyes at silly things. The way he told people things without telling them. Most people don’t have so much depth in their peace. Not like Noah. I’ve never known anyone like him.

I’m on edge a lot, and I wonder sometimes if that’s because Noah died or if it’s because I don’t get to dwell in his presence anymore. It’s probably a combination of both. I feel him sometimes. I visit his grave really early in the morning as the sun comes up and the dew melts off the grass. There’s a stillness over the land and that captures a snippet of Noah, but not all of him. It couldn’t.

The more difficult part is how I’ve unintentionally bunched him in this list of 2011 SUCKS. Where is the acceptance in ‘it was his time to go’? And how do I get away with putting his death on the 2011 SUCKS list if it was just his time? Certainly I oughta let him go, not burden his freedom with where his leaving fell on the calendar; during Annus Horribilis. There is nothing I want less than to burden Noah and his brand new freedom, with my selfishness, and with my angsty categorisin’. There’s not a more eloquent way of saying this: Noah was, and is, amazing. And it really, really sucks that he died. But he’s free. He can do all kinds of totally rad things that he could never do on earth. Just plain free. And I love that for him. It brings tears, and smiles.

…

I stood, stunned, when I saw Ronnie, covered in tubes and wires and in a neck brace. His mouth and nose, pried open. He looked vulnerable. He was already gone, then, but not. I stood at his bedside and found a patch of body that wasn’t covered with apparatuses, touched him, and looked. Stunned. No one is immune. Even the strongest grow weak. I sniffled. My eyes brimmed with tears, and a very sweet nurse put her arm around me and I said it’s just… and somehow, she knew exactly what I couldn’t say. It’s just not him…? she said. Nope. It’s just not him. I had to turn around and leave. I’ll let you get back to saving his life, I said.

19 days later, he was really gone. His funeral was on April 1st, most fitting for a prankster. And I spoke. I unglued my ass from the seat, forced myself to stand in front of a hundred people, and I reminisced and doted on him, and I wish he’d have been there to hear it because he would have liked it. Except I said ‘shit’ in front of my grandmother. I would have been in trouble for that. But I’ve never felt braver. I like to think that he gave me that bravery.

And he visited us this Christmas.

…

I still believe in love, kinda. I just don’t remember what it feels like. I’ll do something arbitrary like walk up our driveway and shut the gate, and remember how it’d be in idle moments like that when I’d dwell in the essence of being in love. The I wonder what he’s doing right now. The idleness of it. The everyday. Of course, I recall the moments of fireworks and being giddy and silly and knowing and grown, but, between those and the in-between, the ‘this-is-just-something-I-know-that-I-feel-all-day-without-feeling-spastic’ of it: it’s messy. I remember in a detached way, knowing it happened, but I don’t remember what it feels like, not as such. This is the most senseless explanation I’ve given of anything in a long time, but I can’t explain. If it’s happened to you, maybe you know what I mean.

I stood stationary on a travelator in Phoenix with my bags on my shoulders. Everything is drenched in yellow in Phoenix. I don’t have to see a picture of myself to know exactly what I looked like in that moment. Sunglasses on. Slumped. Tired. I was on my way back to California after a very short-lived and incredibly painful trip to the East coast. I didn’t believe anything. I couldn’t believe anything. A lady from Los Gatos shared her pizza with me and made me cry with a very motherly pep talk after I told her what I was doing. She was sad too. Her daughter just moved to Philadelphia for college. Fellow passengers are perhaps the hardest people to lie to. ‘So what are you doing in the States? Are you having a good trip?’ Oh, you’re going to wish you didn’t ask. They’re on their way too. It’s such a fleeting experience, to meet someone on a plane or in an airport, to talk, laugh, share, chit-chat. I’ve wondered if she has thought about me since, that broken Australian girl who I convinced to eat my pizza, and to give up on her dummy ex-boyfriend and see how brave she is.

…

You’re going home, aren’t you baby? Aaron whispered to his son, rubbing Noah’s hands and arms, kissing his face, stroking his hair. It was over for me at that point. There was no joke or wisdom or perspective that could have changed the course of the waterworks. It was on. I sobbed at this child’s bedside, and his father took my hand. We stood on either side of Noah’s bed, my hand grasped by the father of a dying boy, our other hands with Noah. We looked at him so fondly, so broken. There has never been anything more profound, not ever in my life. There might be, one day, if love haunts these halls again, or if I have babies of my own. But even in those moments, there’ll be a benchmark for all of it; having stood at the bedside of a child who was ready to leave this world and take on The Next, to be comforted by his father, joined by his mother, and through snot and tears, attempt to thank them for the privilege of having him in my life. I wouldn’t be honouring Noah if I said that there won’t ever be anything more profound, for I know that he sparks a desire and a responsibility to live with joy and stillness and love and patience, and all of these things bring the presence of The Profound. But this: he started something when he left. Of course, I had inklings of it in the time I spent with him during our time together, a peace in his presence, the patience of his spirit, but that moment is a marker. Amidst the debilitating sadness of his passing was a stillness in his readiness to go, rendering me here: we don’t know how bad it will get, and we don’t know how good it will get. This is both. May there be beauty and patience and joy and acceptance in all things. And tissues. Always have tissues.

I stood at Noah’s bedside for what would have never seemed to be long enough. I battled with ‘How Long is Too Long?’, because after all, I was standing with his mother, his father, his brothers. They needed and deserved this time more than I did, but I’d have stayed with him forever just the same. For the third time this year, I had to saw my own arm off; break myself away from the only person I wanted to be with in that moment, and go.

…

I lost two to death, and one to the Departure of Urgency. Believe me when I say: I’ve had enough. But believe this too: I’m in exceptional company. With pain and grief and misery brings closeness, mutual understanding, outreach, nodding, sweetness. It’s often unsaid, all in the eyes, and I feel comforted by people who know.

It’s the last day of December, 2011. Something new starts tomorrow, and I don’t know what it is, but I can feel a breeze and I know that this time next year, I’ll have figured something out.

This time last year, I naively declared that a year’s worth was measured so simply by one’s willingness to give it back, and today: I redact that. Good grief, it’s so not that.

Because how detailed can we get in the takebacks? What do we get to change, erase, keep, adapt? Do I wish Ronnie hadn’t died? Of course. But he was facing a very painful death to an evil, evil disease, if he’d not had a stroke. So how much of that do I get to doctor if I want to take it back? Do I wish Joey and I hadn’t gone our separate ways? I don’t even have an answer for that. I loved him. We had a great time. I learned so much about myself, about communication, about patience, about love. I don’t take that back. But it’s so much more complicated than yes or no. And Noah? Oh, that boy. I wish he was here. His parents and brothers miss him so much. I miss him so much. Lots of people all over the world miss him so much. But he was tired, and I don’t think he’d have left if he wasn’t ready. I wouldn’t take back his freedom, because I know how long he waited for it, so patiently. But I wish he was here. A very complicated combination of both.

So, no, January 2, 2011 Alison. It’s so, so, so not that. Because regardless of whether or not I would give it back: I can’t.

Hi, 2012. I greet you with ridiculously high expectations, a warm and too-long hug, and a readiness. For something. For gains and adventures and stories and people. Hi.

With equal parts pain, humour, and twinkle in my eyes, Happy New Year, folks.

…

Well, lookie here. This here is my mama. You see her commenting (pseudonym ‘Mum’), all her affirmations and compliments. I see her mostly every day, unless I’m doing a Rachel Rafter and heading off.

She picks a mean banjo and makes terrific fried rice (though I prefer it cold, the next day). She’s funny and she laughs at my jokes.

2011 hasn’t been particularly kind to her either. Let’s have a better one in 2012, eh mummy-mama-mam-mum-mum-mama-memo-babe? (this is a string of names, the length of which is directly proportional with the number of seconds she ignores me when I’m pestering talking to her).

…

That’s it, folks. These daily snapshots of my life, finito. Tomorrow is The Post. It’s not finished. Maybe I’ll win the lottery tomorrow night and change the course of 2011 in the last minute. I won’t say ‘bloodbath’, but I will say: it’s messy. It’s been the hardest, most emotional, most horrific, profound, confusing, beautiful, ugly, insane year. And I want to be able to get it out. Breathing. Typing. On and on.

I (somewhat) (okay, quite) drunkenly gave my grandmother a birthday kiss (she’s a Christmas Day baby). She is not a fan of physical affection.

Then Gareth and I put MooseHead wax in her hair and gave her a mohawk. Yep. Happy Birthday Ella.

Please don’t take this too seriously. I mean, yep, beautiful song, beautiful cover, but, I don’t sing this into a wine bottle every night, or any night. I’m only marginally tragic, but not enough to do that. Boy oh boy, though, Adele does a great job of this.

Be gentle, okay? I’m so unsure.

I danced to this song with my cousins on their porch on our warm Christmas night and was reminded of this sentiment; life goes on.