A record of having lived

My grandma used to write in the front of every journal:

“A birth certificate proves you were born, a journal proves you have lived.”

I remember being about eight years old, going through her journals with her. That sentence stayed with me through all the decades that followed. I understood something of it then. I understand much more of it now.

When my dad died suddenly during Covid, from something unrelated to Covid, I did not know how my heart would recover.

The grief was physical. I remember the excruciating pain every time I took a breath, and ending up in emergency while the world was already frightened and unfamiliar. At the hospital, they put it down to a “broken heart”.

I had heard the expression all my life. I had also been told that my grandma, Dad’s mum, had died of a broken heart.

Until I lost him, I had never understood how physical that pain could feel.

I carry the loss of Dad every day. Since my own diagnosis, I also carry the anticipation of what grief might one day ask of the people I love.

Especially Brad and our boys.

Having known that pain, I find it difficult to imagine them having to find their way through it. I know I cannot arrange a life for them in which they never hurt. Even so, a mother’s instinct to protect her children does not become quieter simply because something is beyond her control.

So I write.

I take photographs. I share stories of my life lived. I try to leave a record of the ordinary things that might otherwise disappear with time.

The things I remember. What I believe. What makes me laugh. The people I love, and the reasons I love them.

There is a long history of journal writing in my family. Grandma was an avid writer, as is Mum. Dad kept journals too, although his were much more factual. He was a policeman, after all. Mum’s are emotionally driven.

I love that their different ways of seeing the world are there on the page. The same family, the same years, remembered through different eyes.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of a journal. Our children may know what happened in our lives, but our words can help them understand how we experienced it.

And there is so much I want mine to know.

This photograph holds a little of what I would want them to understand about their grandfather.

You can see the joy Dad brought into my life.

I did not get the strict policeman Dad. By the time I came along, I got the retired Dad who could not really be bothered with quite so much discipline, and who would happily take us out for dinner instead of Mum cooking a meal.

They were fairly over raising children by then.

There were, however, some things he still had plenty of energy for.

My clothes, for instance.

Dad hated me wearing all black.

We had a ripper of a fight when I was about seventeen. I was dressed in black and received a lecture about looking gothic and like a druggie, which was very far from who I was.

My style and his clean cut hopes for me were thoroughly “discussed”.

Before I was born, he had been head of the drug squad in the Federal Police. He certainly made it known when he thought we were treading a “dangerous path”.

Apparently my wardrobe warranted an intervention.

Which is part of why this photograph makes me laugh. There I am, all in black, and there we are having the time of our lives.

All black aside.

I treasure memories like this. Grief can make the ending loom so large that, for a while, it becomes difficult to see the years before it. But Dad’s life with me was full of dinners, laughter, disagreements and affection. I want to remember the whole of him.

The father who loved me. The retired policeman who still had opinions. The man whose joy I can recognise immediately in a photograph.

I wore yellow to his funeral.

He loved yellow. He also loved a good pink tie.

I daren’t wear black.

It was a small decision, but it felt like a way of bringing him into the day. A little acknowledgement between Dad and me, in the middle of something unbearably sad.

I cannot know exactly what my words and photographs will mean to my family in years to come. I hope they will give them somewhere to find me. A familiar voice. A story they had forgotten. Something that makes them laugh.

I want there to be plenty of laughter.

I want my boys to know my life in its fullness, just as I want to remember Dad’s. There has been illness and fear, but there have also been beautiful days, ridiculous conversations, strong opinions and a great deal of love.

I hope I live long enough to receive a cure. I hope these journals become something we read together when I am old, rather than something my family turns to in my absence.

But I live with one foot in reality and one in hope.

Grandma understood the value of keeping a record.

“A birth certificate proves you were born, a journal proves you have lived.”

So I keep writing.

There is a life here I want them to know.