NAIDOC Week, Grief & A Very Inconvenient Calendar

Dear diary...

Grief Has Absolutely No Manners !

It's NAIDOC Week.

Normally this is one of my favourite weeks of the year.

The week I get to see mob everywhere. Art. Stories. Language. Pride. Kids learning who they are. Deadly businesses absolutely thriving. The feeling that, despite everything, culture keeps showing up.

It fills my cup.

Except this year, it's carrying something else.

Because at the end of NAIDOC Week...

...comes my birthday.

And this birthday isn't really my birthday anymore.

It's the first anniversary of my Dad dying.

Honestly...

Bit of a shit move if I'm being honest.

I know, I know. He didn't exactly choose it. But if you've lost someone, you'll know you still have conversations with them. Mine generally involve telling him he's incredibly inconvenient whilst cherishing that last day at the same time.

Then I laugh.

Then I cry.

Then I wonder if arguing with dead people is normal.

I'm choosing to believe it is.

I've been thinking a lot about last NAIDOC Week.

I was so full of hope. I genuinely thought life was starting to settle.

I had absolutely no idea what was about to happen.

One phone call.

It's incredible how one phone call can split your life into a before and an after.

Everything before that call feels like another lifetime.

Everything after it became survival.

I got one more day with my Dad. One day.

People sometimes imagine those last days as beautiful movie scenes where everyone says exactly what they need to say.

It wasn't like that.

It was hard, brutally hard.

It was knowing what was coming but not knowing exactly when.

Watching Dad sleep. Watching the clock.

Watching people quietly come and go.

Listening to conversations I never wanted to hear.

Every minute felt like an hour. Every hour disappeared in seconds.

I don't know how both can be true, but they are.

I remember eating his ice cream while he was asleep.

I laughed and said it was only fair because it was my birthday. It was one of those vanilla dixie cups soooo good right!

That's one of the memories my brain decided to keep.

Not because it was important, because truth is grief doesn't ask your permission before deciding what you'll remember forever.

I remember staring at his chest.

Counting breaths.

Wondering how many were left.

There's a particular kind of pain that comes from knowing someone is dying even if its just one day.

You're grieving them while they're still here.

You find yourself bargaining with time.

Please wake up. Please give me another hour.

Please let them be wrong. You watch a clock you've never hated more.

You don't want the next minute to come...

...but you also can't bear living inside the waiting.

I don't think people talk enough about that part.

The waiting.

The dread.

The helplessness.

I honestly think part of me broke before my Dad even took his last breath.

Then he died...

...and the rest of me broke too.

People often ask if creating helped.

No. Not then. Creating disappeared. I disappeared.

There wasn't some magical moment where grief turned into inspiration.

It turned into survival.

Some days surviving looked like showering.

Some days it looked like getting out of bed.

Some days it looked like staring at a wall because my brain couldn't process another single thing.

Creativity didn't rescue me. It waited, quietly and patiently.

Months later I realised I wanted to make some candles. Something different, to capture perhaps memories in jars. 

Then I made something else. Not because I suddenly felt okay.

But simply because for twenty minutes my brain wasn't drowning.

Sometimes that's enough.

Actually...

Maybe that's what creating has become.

Not an escape, not healing just breathing.

Twenty minutes at a time.

People see the reels now.

The launches, the pieces I've created.

What they don't always see is the woman behind the camera who still has days where she can't believe this is her life.

The one who still randomly holds back tears in Woolies because someone laughs like her dad.

Or because she catches herself thinking, "I should ring Dad."

Or because she remembers stealing his bloody ice cream.

I don't share this because I'm looking for sympathy. Truthfully, sympathy makes me uncomfortable.

I share it because I spent so long believing everyone else knew how to keep living after something impossible happened.

Social media is really good at showing the comeback.

It's terrible at showing the middle.

The bit where you're exhausted. The bit where you're angry. 

The bit where you feel guilty because you laughed today.

The bit where you wonder if you'll ever feel like yourself again.

Maybe someone reading this is sitting in that middle.

Maybe they haven't picked up the paintbrush.

Or gone back to the gym.

Or opened the sewing machine.

Or written the first sentence.

Maybe they're still surviving.

If that's you...

Please know you're not behind.

There's no timeline for finding your way back to yourself or even your new self.

I'm certainly still finding mine.

So this NAIDOC Week I'll celebrate culture.

I'll celebrate community. I'll celebrate creating again.

I'll probably cry over something completely random.

I'll definitely laugh at myself for crying over something completely random.

Both things can exist.

I've learnt that joy and grief don't take turns.

They sit beside each other. Some days grief is louder. Some days joy gets a word in.

I don't know what this birthday will feel like.

I know it'll hurt.

I know I'll miss him with every fibre of my being.

I know I'll probably tell him he's still an arsehole for making my birthday permanently awkward.

And I also know I'd give absolutely anything to steal one more spoonful of his ice cream but this time it would be with him telling me to bugger off.

Anyway...

Happy NAIDOC Week.

Hold your people close. Take the photo. Make the phone call.

Eat the bloody ice cream.

One ordinary moment can become the memory that carries you for the rest of your life.

Love always,

Nikki x