If you looked at her, she would look just like any other girl. Happy, laughing and freaking out over university assessment. Her hair is a golden brown, she has big brown eyes and a huge smile - one of those smiles that you can’t help but smile at. Her name is Anna and she is a nineteen year old university student studying law and international relations. But less than two short years ago she experienced something that nothing could have prepared her for.
It was 2010 and November was coming to a close. Anna had
graduated from high school and had just attended her valedictory dinner. The
night ended with much excitement and a sense of freedom was spreading fast through
her body. Excitement for schoolies to start the next day, excitement for the
future, excitement because she had just completed a major part of her life. But
early the next morning she would wake up to what would be the most terrible day
of her life.
Anna woke up at her usual early hour and went downstairs to make
herself breakfast and her mum, Linda, came and joined her. They were chatting
about the previous night when Anna’s mum turned to look out the window at
their view of the Gold Coast skyline, like she did every morning. But this morning she was faced with a heart-wrenching
view – her husband, Jim, lying face down on the grass. Her face drained of
colour, Linda let out a scream and sprinted outside with Anna close behind, her
heart pumping at what she had just seen. Once at Jim’s side, they turned him
over. His face was purple. His breath, non-existent. Linda immediately attempted
CPR, frantically trying to get Jim to breathe, while Anna fled to the phone and
called the ambulance. The operator on the phone started asking her questions
about her dad’s lifestyle and health – all of which were more than fine because
he exercised daily and ate healthily. The operator then taught the two of them
how to appropriately perform CPR. Anna was still quite calm, despite the shock
of seeing her dad like this, because she thought he would eventually be fine.
She had hope.
By this stage, Anna’s older brother, James, and their family
friend staying with them, Rosanna, had heard Anna and her mum screams and had
rushed outside. Rosanna, a nurse, attempted to perform CPR on Jim but was too
weak, so James took over doing compression after compression. After what felt
like an eternity, the ambulance finally arrived. The paramedics hooked Jim up
to machines and tubes and started using defibrillators on him. The paramedics then
started joking about something, probably trying to ease the atmosphere of the
situation but this only infuriated Anna. They should have been putting all
their efforts into trying to save her dad’s life, not joking about something
stupid. Jim’s body jerked up and down
from the shocks. Again and again the paramedics tried, but Jim remained
lifeless and his heart remained silent. They had to give up. They had to let
him go. Anna’s dad was pronounced dead early that morning from cardiac arrest.
What should have been the happiest and freest moment in her life suddenly
turned into the most painful and heartbreaking moment.
For ages, Anna and her family sat together in shock, not
saying a word. Unable to take it anymore, Anna ran to her room and locked herself in and the first
person she called was someone she was friends with, but not particularly close
to. Sometimes talking to someone you don’t know well is easier than talking to
a close friend. After she hung up the phone, she just sat in her room for a
very long time, still unbelieving of what had just happened. How could her dad
be dead? He was healthy, fit and the best person she knew. He had done nothing
to deserve this. How could this have happened to him? To her? Over the day, people
started to arrive at her house to expressing their sorrow and surprise at Jim’s
passing. Saying how ironic it was that a heart attack claimed his life because
he had been so fit and so healthy. And for a long time this consumed Anna’s
thoughts, angering her even more at why it was her dad who died. Emotionally
drained, she took a long walk with Rosanna that evening, trying to clear her
head because the fact that her dad was gone was still not a reality.
So many emotions were still coursing through her. Guilt for
thinking it might have been better if her mum had died instead of her dad
because her dad was a much stronger person and would have been able to cope
better without Linda. But she felt so terrible for even thinking this in the
first place. Her mum is still always so sad. She detested how many people
suddenly cared so much - people who had never made an effort to talk to her or
even say hello to her before. She hated how carefully everyone started to treat
her, as though she would break down at any second and couldn’t just have a
normal conversation. She just wanted people to treat her normally. But what she
loathed the most were the friends that didn’t do anything, who practically
ignored the whole thing - the friends who just didn’t say a word. Perhaps they
didn’t know what to say, but something is always better than nothing and they
should have known that. But at Jim’s funeral, quite a number showed up and Anna
appreciated this more than she could express. The feeling that people were
there for her was especially comforting.
After trying to block it out for more than a year, Anna
finds it harder to keep doing so, perhaps because she pushed it out of her mind
for so long. Her dad’s death is now a reality and she has been dealing with it.
She still talks about him to her close friends, even just casually in passing
and though she doesn’t show it, they know it still pains her. Nowadays she prefers
not to tell people about her dad’s death because she finds that they treat her
differently afterwards and pity her. But from her dad’s death, the thing she found that
she appreciated the most were how some people she really didn’t know at all,
reached out to her and shared their own losses with her. The fact that other
people knew exactly what she was going through, not just imagining how it would
feel, was reassuring. Because nobody could imagine what she had gone through
unless they had been through it themselves. You don’t know how to let go until
you have to.
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