Childhood & The Gift of Death

My Mum and Dad's marriage was a love story.  They met on a blind date, married soon afterwards.  Not a cent between them.  They had a beautiful boy, then another beautiful boy.  My Dad won a car which they sold and used as a deposit on their first home in Woolooware, Sydney.

My brothers were apparently quite spirited and wild.  My eldest brother was diagnosed with deafness as a toddler which brought challenges.

A few years later I arrived.  When I was 4 years old,  my Mum saw a For Sale ad in the newspaper for a General Store in a small country town in Central Western NSW.  So when Dad arrived home from work, my Mum informed him that we were moving. That was it.  My earliest childhood memory is me clutching my Teddy Bear in the back of the Ford Falcon and waving goodbye to our Sydney house which was to be rented.  Not Goodbye forever, just off on an adventure.

After a year or so, they bought the house next door to the General Store which happened to be a derelict hotel. 26 rooms. Spooky.  What an adventure this was turning out to be.

My childhood was quite solitary in many ways, but beautiful.  Hours, days and weeks spent playing alone in the backyard and in our treehouse.   It was also filled with friends and relatives, fun, laughter and love. When I was nine, my sister was born and was a source of pure joy for all of us.

Then disaster struck.  I lost my beautiful gentle charming Dad to cancer when I was just 11.  He died a slow and painful death. My Mum never really regained her confidence and put all her energies into raising her four children.

I've never really been one to take things for granted.  As a child I went without lots of things. And none of them mattered to me. Maybe it would have been nice to have a Barbie doll rather than a Cindy imitation, but my Mum said Barbie was overpriced and a ridiculous thing for a girl to play with.  In hindsight, she was right.  

When I was 14, we moved to Sydney.  Being a bit different felt awkward as a teenager.  All you want to do is fit in. The fashion in a country town was about 5 years behind Sydney so my new desert boots or "Dessies" just made me a target for torment so I developed resilience by the truckload.  

My Mum had sold the shop and house and began building a new house in Woolooware whilst we lived in the partially demolished house in two rooms with builders plastic for walls.  On the day the property transfer was being processed, the buyers were declared bankrupt and Mum got nothing for her assets.  After years of fighting she received a small sum of money.  Nowhere near what she was owed. She battled on and raised us anyway and gave us everything she possibly could.

Last year, I lost my kind and caring Mum to Motor Neurone Disease. I was 43.  I never dreamt I would wake up one day at the age of 44 and have no parents.  The hole they left in my life is profound.  I have lots of wonderful memories and renewed determination to live a full and inspired life.