Both events helped me realise I was not completely invincible, I needed to make space for vulnerability as well.

Well, to be honest, it is not quite a phenomena, I have a sample population of one; me.

In the early days of grieving Suz, a friend and colleague, came to visit. Suz was a welcome visitor, she didn’t look to me for direction or conversation. She told me stories of the office and the things I hadn’t missed. She made us a cup of tea. She broke my teapot.

She was horrified, she had come to make things a little better not break something.

I assured her it was just a teapot, things were easy for me to put into perspective. A teapot would hardly be missed. She eventually laughed at the situation and told me that with what I had been through, nothing else would ever be as bad.

Suz suggested I could shake my fists at the sky and defy the world to bring it on…

I loved the idea, I identified with the brazenness of daring the world to hit me again. I did feel invincible, or at least audacious. That’s when I first knew I was going to get through. My own realisation, my own phenomena.

Bring it on world…

Baz had been counselling people in Mottsu’s workplace, since Mottsu’s death, he is familiar with the case. When we meet Baz gets my name wrong and can’t recall Mottsu’s name. He puts me off-side in the first two minutes, from there it gets steadily worse.

Baz reads a poem aloud, it is one I chose to include in the funeral service, I can’t help but wonder where this is leading. I find myself holding back, defensive, waiting to see what he’ll do next, the ensuing silence seems to make him nervous so he starts talking.

He explains the conscious and subconscious mind, inexplicably, writing those terms on a white-board. I watch…

Baz related the story of a young girl on a family picnic, she chased a ball into some low grass where she saw a snake. He said that she picked up the ball and carried it to the car. After putting the ball into the car her arm was caught in the door, which (as Baz told it) left her scared of snakes. Even today I am unsure of the point of the story, because he didn’t say.

It sounded like a stupid story with no relevance to my situation. I did try to mull over possible links as he rambled on.

Next, in my counselling session, Baz related the story of a man working in a manufacturing plant who lost his arm in an accident involving industrial machinery. On the anniversary of the dismemberment, apparently, the man would experience the sensation of a whole arm. Again, the connection to my own situation was not obvious to discern and being unsure of what to say I just nodded and stayed silent.

Baz hurried on to another story, this time about a man who was mugged at a Melbourne train station car park. The man was so shaken by the experience of being beaten and robbed he was unable to return to the car park. Baz had helped him by slowly bringing the man closer and closer to the site of the crime. First a few blocks away then, the next week, a little closer until they stood together, somehow triumphant, at having returned to the site.

Irreverently, I wondered if the consultation wan’t working, as I wanted to laugh. It wasn’t mirth, it would have been an expression of disbelief and despair. If this was professional care I might never recover.

After about an hour there was a temporary lull in Baz’s dissertation, but not before he informed me that expressing my grief would be important.

If only I could get a word in…

I had been expressing my grief at home and in the streets, my pillow wet with expressions of tears. This might have been the first dry eyed hour I’d lived through since Mottsu’s death.

I had to tell Baz how I was feeling and let him gently know that I wouldn’t be returning. I told him that he may have made some assumptions or drawn some conclusions about how articulate I was, or wasn’t, based on the little I had said during the session.

I informed Baz that I had failed to establish a rapport with him and that it might be better for me to see another counsellor. Strike one.

I thought help would help, and as self-sufficient as I like to be regarded, I needed help. It seemed only sensible to draw on some professional help. Navigating through grief on my own wasn’t something I felt capable of.

Counselling was also something I felt uncertain about. I hadn’t participated in counselling before. Mottsu saw a psychologist for a couple of weeks and, ultimately, that hadn’t gone so well. There was no blame to be laid. I don’t exactly know what went on for him, but counselling didn’t kill Mottsu.

Along with being self-sufficient, I knew myself as critical of others, particularly others who might have been trying to help me. Sharing with a stranger was going to be difficult for me and woe-betide the counsellor across from me in the client’s seat. I decided to try up to five counsellors, before giving up on that avenue of potential support. Five counsellors? It must have been me against the world back then. Fortunately I made a pact with myself to be patient with the process and find someone with whom I had rapport and could work with. I decided there was no better option than counselling. Did I have another option?

Bereft and almost disabled by grief I was unsure of where to turn mainly because I didn’t know where to look, how to start. I didn’t know anybody who was in therapy, not anyone who saw a counsellor – it later turned out I did know quite a few who had that type of support, we just hadn’t talked about it back then.

There is something in Australian psyche where we are expected to suck it up or toughen up and get over it. That is how we are, asking for help didn’t come easily for me.

After a rocky start, I now unreservedly (not entirely without reserve but that’s another post) recommend counselling, I prefer to call it therapy – for me it is the treatment.

Mottsu drove away on a Monday morning. I expected him home by lunch although he hadn’t stated an ETA. Lunch passed, the day slid into late afternoon. I rang his psychologist, the appointment he had left the house for. There had been no appointment.

From there everything unravelled. I contacted friends, reported him missing to the police, at night I sat up looking out the window case he drove by.

I rang his work. Debated with myself about when, if ever to share my concerns with his family, or my family. I wept and I answered the phone. Calls came in as concern spread, and there was no news of his whereabouts, it is difficult to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.

Friends wondered whether I was over-reacting, I’m grateful that the police treated my concerns seriously.

Wednesday, day 3, and C. Robin did a mercy dash from interstate. I had told him not to hurry and I was glad he hurried. He insisted I get out of the house and accompany him on a walk around the block.

I left a post-it note on the front door, so Mottsu would know I would be right back. Something told me it was futile, and I also could not bear him coming home, with me not there to embrace him.

I staggered around the block, one unsteady step at a time, almost needing the support of a walking frame. I had C. Robin’s support and the world at large was unfamiliar and swirling. I felt so lost. The police rang to check bank account details, to let me know they were doing all they could, and there was no news.

The newspaper he worked for considered printing a paragraph describing the car and saying that concerns were held for him. That’s when I contacted family, the distressing news would come from me, not another source.

The paper held off. Confident he would return? Not wanting to have created a fuss that Mottsu might have to live down when he returned. I only wanted him found. Fuss could be dealt with. It was unbearable to have Mottsu missing.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. C.S. Lewis

When police came to the door late on the evening of day 4, I was relieved. Mottsu’s body had been found and recovered from the river. There were no suspicious circumstances, police-speak for suicide. He was no longer missing, he was gone.

His wife said in interview “You just can’t imagine what it is like, it is just unbearable.”
I can imagine a little of what her distress might be like, I remember what it is like to wonder for four days where somebody is. It is unbearable.

‘‘…completely and utterly out of character’’, said the business man’s wife on the radio today. It was out of character for Mottsu as well, it happened only once.

Waiting and searching for someone who is not coming home is heartbreaking torture.

I watched the local news story with family last night.
I bit my lip as details were reported, and someone said “It must be foul play”.
I said “It might be suicide”
“No”, the other said, “he was just back from a business trip”
“People who travel on business trips die by suicide” I said.
“He had a nice car” the other said.
I said “People with nice cars die by suicide.”
“No” said the other, who may have forgotten Mottsu’s death, “it doesn’t make sense”.

Suicide does not make sense, and this case may not be suicide; the business man is missing. There are some similarities with Mottsu’s disappearance. I hope this man, who I don’t know, makes it home.

The story makes me sad.

Browsing around Powell’s, a great bookshop in Portland, a remnant of a song I didn’t really know was whispered by my inner, wanting to be known.

“I’ll stand in front of you and take the force of the blow…”

Book browsing abandoned, I tried music shops singing the only line I could recall of the song sung by artists I didn’t know. The listeners, the CD sellers, struggled to recognise the song. It took some days to track it down, not only due to the quality of my singing, the song was 10 years old.

“I’ll stand in front of you and take the force of the blow…”
I hummed the words about actions I’d failed to fulfill. I hadn’t taken the force of the blow.

Haunted by a partly remembered song line and unsure of what my inner needed the outer to know…

There’s another part of the song I take solace from. This might be what my inner was singing for my outer to know:

“Now I can’t change the way you feel
But I can put my arms around you
That’s just part of the deal
That’s the way I feel
I’ll put my arms around you…”

I couldn’t change the way Mottsu felt, I did put my arms around him.
My outer is still learning, that I can’t take the force of the blow on behalf of someone I love. I wish it were possible.

…but I can put my arms around you. I can sit by you. Hold your hand. Be close by, if you have to suffer the force of a blow, or dark forces unknown.

I became burdened by my own recent history. Like a little Greek Island donkey laden with baggage and plodding to somewhere with a stubborn donkey brain determined to make it to the destination; my own stubborn head was looking for normal.

In trying to get back to normal, I didn’t necessarily want to talk about what had happened, Mottsu’s suicide, and yet it was important to be able to tell chapters of my own story, have scraps of it witnessed. The traumatic needed to be integrated with the everyday. Normal couldn’t be attained by papering over or ignoring what had happened.

Returning to the office was distressing. Pleasantries exchanged while ignoring my recent history became unpleasant. When I knew that they knew and said nothing, it was a struggle to maintain a polite composure. I wasn’t always composed, it wasn’t possible. The steeliness of others in not acknowledging any of what I had been though was unendurable at times.

The workplace can be tough, tougher than it is supposed to be, or is typically regarded as being…

At the same time I loved my colleagues how didn’t know what to say, those who were taken beyond the “edge” of what is possible to perceive and respond to, and then said “I don’t what to say…”

Those words were a great gift, gratefully received.

I’m not sure I knew what to say. I do remember sitting at my desk and quietly weeping when words were both too much and not enough.

A chorus of school children who’d filled the aisles with unwieldy backpacks loudly discussed their emerging interests in the other gender. The ubiquitous talker took up a soap box stance and berated the Prime Minister, our political system, and humanity in general. There was also the extra, the one that no-one else would sit near or make eye contact with. The soundtrack was underscored by one-sided mobile phone conversations that predictably opened with the line “I’m on the tram” and then went on to share more than the talker realised about themselves.

From my seat in the stalls I saw a woman teetering on stilt like heels almost unable to balance as she negotiated a transaction with a machine to secure a ticket, she tripped clumsily before heavily landing in a seat. I smiled inwardly.

Mottsu would have enjoyed these displays of humaness. I looked out of the window missing the intimacy of his company.

Involuntary tears welled and gently spilled, responding to the pull of gravity and leaving a tiny pools of longing on the empty vinyl seat next to me. I was conscious that by crying I became one of the players in the vignette of tram theatre, a part of the drama. I resisted wiping my cheek not wanting to draw attention to the overflow of emotion. The tears liberated themselves from somewhere within and continued to gently flow and I felt a little liberated too, free to cry or maybe just unable not to.

I also felt conspicuous, becoming a member of the cast on the tram carriage stage. The audience were watching from behind a façade of disinterest secretly spellbound, perhaps imagining what might be unfolding in front of them and all the possible reasons for the quiet sorrow of a fellow commuter. I sensed the scrutiny of their questioning looks and focused on my lines “keep it together, keep it together…”

*lines borrowed from Memories – Andrew Lloyd Webber

There’s a tension between the internal, and self imposed, solitary confinement and the real or imagined external judges scrutinising every move while you’re trying to function, look after oneself, in public.

Facing up to the challenge I felt a pressure to “keep it together, keep it together…”. It became my mantra, told to me by my friend Lena who borrowed it from Hollywood.

In the 1999 film, Bowfinger, a desperate movie producer tries to make a cheap film without paying for a big name lead actor. The producer decides to shoot the film secretly around a famous actor filming him in public places. The actor has no idea what is happening as other characters play out a sci-fi script around him. The actor can’t discern what is happening and becomes convinced that he is being visited by aliens, or cracking up, he admonishes himself to “keep it together, keep it together…”.

I tried so hard to keep it together at all times. I had some extraordinary lapses (i.e. collapses) in the first few months,mostly while working in overseas cities. It didn’t count if unobserved by a local audience.

While, ostensibly, keeping it together I cried, in the office, in the street, in the supermarket, at the park, in the airport, on planes, into my coffee, soup, salad, sandwich, and pillow. I kept it together while unashamedly crying. Tears were part of my soggy version of keeping it together.

Maybe I would do it differently now, let myself fall apart more. I wonder what that might have looked like. I wonder if my version of keeping it together looked like falling apart. I couldn’t say…however it was, was how it was.