29 September 2009: The children

The children’s names, their age.

Those of us who were there under the water but were lucky to survive, will never forget them. Never.

Eliza Taamilo 2

Sio Taufua 11 months

Dmitry Kikhtiev 1

Clea Salavert Wykes 6

Teancum Schwalger 2

Abish Schwalger 1

Joseph Purcell 4

Pili Poo 4

Maupenei Tofilau 1

Nonumaifele Tofilau 3

Siliva Eteuati 1

Amataga Tiotio 11

Vaisigano Lauvai 3

Rosa Lafaua 3

Filisi Tavita 11 months

Hatonaina Lauvai 2

Siaea Areta 1

Sima Sepelini 3

Manino Faaaliga 2

Aloalo Sao 6

Ana Iulai 5

JayJay Ulugia 2

Pefata Sau 2

Aneti Lueafitu 2

Togafalea Alesana 3

Kapeneta Viiga 3

Alema Tofu 3

Precious Malaga 5

Rachel Leuelu 5

Marilyn Ulugia 3

Quezon Lesa 3

Junior Livigisitone 2

David Sootaga 7 months

Tapuloa Taimane 4

Satelite 1

Losivale Faapoi 10

Lutia Faapoi 2

Gwenlyn Taufua 4

Aleki Taumoe 1

Aliceann Meredith 4

Malo Mikaele 3

Siu Pritchard 2

Ardmore Meredith 3

Gardenia Meredith 1

Shanna Lanu 2

Moanalei Long 9

Jayson Siu 6

Nifo Siu 10

Tuese Peilua 1

Anesone Gali 3

Leuti Sio 8

Maliumai Anetone 5

Etimani Taufua 9 months

Sili Taufua 11 months

Frazer Faaleaga 2 months

Tiloni Sio Pati 3

Seea Peilua 3

Feagai Fatuesi 2

Pelesasa Etimani 4

Ronaldo Aleni 5

Falevalu Segifili 9

Malo Vai 4

Willie Leio Taamu 5

Aleki Vai 1

Savelio Taeao 3

Jamie Viliamu 3

Alfie Cunliffe 2

The Magpie

Spring in Canberra can be a beautiful time of year: flowers are blooming everywhere, the grass is greener than ever, and daytime temperatures are usually mild and pleasant. Yet springtime is also the magpie swooping season. Australian magpies are very curious, inquisitive birds. They are known to approach people with some confidence and easily accept a feed, but they are also extraordinarily territorial animals; so much, that for as long as their little ones remain in the nest, they will harass anyone who approaches.

I was walking back from school the other morning, reading a book as is my custom, when I was suddenly attacked from behind. The magpie gave me a bit of a fright; my sunglasses fell to the ground. Much more hassled was a girl who was riding her bike to school; she eventually had to dismount because the magpie would not stop attacking her.

It feels as if it were only last year when Clea came running into her grandparents’ house, crying and holding her head. She had been playing outside, in the paddocks near the hay shed, when a magpie swooped down from one of the old gum trees on the farm and scratched her, drawing a little blood. She was very upset. I recorded the episode in a poem I wrote more than a year ago, ‘Whisper Her Name in the Wind’.

The magpie was simply protecting their little ones, I tried to explain, and did not mean to hurt. All animals have developed a sense of protection in one way or another. It is in every parent’s nature and instinct to protect our little one. Like the magpie, I would have done anything to be able to protect my little one.

When you lose your little one, the world becomes meaningless, and perhaps it can regain some semblance of consequence and logic after a long time.

In the garage: A sonnet

In the garage

Tedious tasks bring these days brushes with sighs.

On each item a leaden shadow lurks

heavy, the air hints a frown as pain works

its ruthless certitude before his eyes.

Her pink bicycle, her scooter, her kite:

they’re but musings, shades of days masked by time

and sorrow, echoes of giggles, the rhyme

of memory; the grief he could recite.

Outside the winter rain pummels the pane.

The cruel void crunches and batters his heart;

a dense spectre of sadness hounds his brain.

Thus he retreats into this shrouded art.

The disguise beneath numb words keeps him sane.
For months ago her death tore him apart.

I wrote this sonnet in the early spring of 2010, and sent it to a local poetry competition; to the judges, it must have been a fairly unremarkable poem. And that’s fair enough, I must add.

With poetry, what some believe wonderful is rather unexceptional to others. Poetry is a very personal experience, for both the composer and the reader. At the time, I thought it was very fine poem: it tells a story – a father doing his everyday chores in the family garage – and describes the sort of thoughts and feelings grief prompts in the bereaved.

I still think this is quite an expressive sonnet. Poetry – or literature in general – affords me a space where I can express myself in words, rather than in tears. Tears are more visible, but they vanish once they stop flowing. Words remain, and may reach out to others in ways we do not fully comprehend.

The poem was inspired by the sight of Clea’s bicycle, abandoned in the garage. Only a Samoan girl, who happens to be from a village (Lepa) which is not far from where Clea drowned, has since ridden the bike. She was a member of the taekwondo team that visited Canberra two years ago; we invited them for a barbeque the night before they returned back to Apia. They all had a good time, playing table football (I beat them all, of course!).

Clea’s bike was a find. The bicycle had been left under a tree near outside a church where I used to park the car on my way to work. It wasn’t new, but Clea did not mind. Side wheels were duly attached to it for safety, and she was soon pedalling up and down the flat driveway of our home in Yass. Eventually she mastered the cycling and the little wheels were discarded.

Her scooter was a present she got from my mother during her visit in 2008. It had to be pink, of course. Clea was so excited about having her own scooter! It was something she truly enjoyed.

We used to go for rides around the neighbourhood, on bikes and scooters. For a fairly long time after Clea’s death, we stopped doing that. Her bicycle remains in the garage. The tyres are flat. A thick film of dust is slowly gathering on the seat and the handlebar.

Someone said to my wife the other day that three years have gone fast. I was baffled. Well, I say, it’s all relative, isn’t it? For me, some days feel like an intolerable eternity. Talk about time passing fast...

The passage of time does not - it will not - bring our child back; time does not fill the void, nor does it attenuate the pain.

There is always the poetry, though.

The Force of Nature

This is one of the last photographs of Clea. Our own camera was of course lost in the 29 September 2009 tsunami; all the photographs we took while we were in Samoa – and there quite a few of them – were gone with the wall of water.

This photograph was taken at the top of the Telstra Tower in Black Mountain, on the 24^th of September 2009, less than a week before she died. Clea went on a school excursion that day; she was so excited! It was going to be her last day of school for the term – it ended up being her last day of school ever. The next day we drove to Sydney and boarded our flight to Apia.

On the plane, Clea was sitting next to me during landing. In those days, you had to cross the dateline to go to Samoa, so we arrived the day before at night time. The dim lights we were able to glimpse through the window were those of Apia: little shiny specks amid the immense blackness the ocean is at night. The plane appeared to be shaking a lot while we approached the runway, far more than I am used to, to be honest, so the landing felt kind of bumpy. Clea got a little scared until the plane touched down and ran the length of the tarmac.

For some reason, this image of Clea haunts my imagination in ways I cannot describe – nor would I like anyone to have to imagine. I see a vulnerable little girl, recoiling, holding on to her hat (which, actually, she lost that day!) and grimacing against the very strong, cold winds that swept Canberra that early spring day. I see the image of my daughter against the force of nature; I don’t think anyone could argue that, the impression you get on seeing the image is that she was not having fun as her teacher took the photograph – by the way, I have cropped it so that other students are not seen. Her jumper is zipped up tight; her hair is a real mess, hardly held in place by the pink hair band I now wear on my left wrist every day, wherever I go.

No, her facial expression definitely says that at this moment she was not enjoying being up there, at the top of the Telstra Tower.

For a few months after our return to Canberra, I had frequent nightmares, reliving the tsunami. Even now, nearly three years later, I occasionally may wake up with a start in the middle of the night, and it may take me a long time to settle again into a normal rhythm of sleep, if or when I do at all. Normally, I have no idea of what is it that woke me up. Yet something wakes me up. Believe me: it’s neither the carbon tax nor the prospect of another boatload of asylum seekers approaching the very remote islands to the north of the very remote northern coasts of Australia. Those are not things I would lose any sleep over.

It’s not as if I were consciously trying to keep memories of those horrifying moments. In fact, I wish I could forever forget the panic and the terror; if only I could erase those from my memory for good… But the truth is I cannot. Our imperfect brains: We forget what we want to remember, but what we would like to forget keeps coming back to haunt us.

This is not too dissimilar from the widespread notion that with time we, the grieving parents, have to somehow “get over” our child’s death. I’m sorry if I disappoint somebody: we just don’t. We never will. We just cannot “get over” it, because we will never be able to retrieve such a big chunk of our future. yes, it is their future that we have lost forever. How can one get over the fact that your child’s future (which is also yours) suddenly snaps and then is gone? Does anybody know?

I do know, however, that my daughter Clea died a terrible death. She perished under the unstoppable violence of nature, the victim of an incredibly powerful, relentless natural force. It is almost impossible to comprehend – and even for us, who were there and survived, it seems unreal now.

After the Japanese tsunami happened more than a year ago, for a while I kind of expected people would ask me about it. For the first time in human history, a tsunami was broadcast live on TV. It was possible for people to gain a better understanding of what it is like to be there, so vulnerable, so small under the colossal force of nature.

Peladillas

In May 2009 I went to Spain for a brief visit, and among a few other things, I brought peladillas home. Peladillas [literally, little baldies] are sugar-coated almonds, and are still extremely popular in Spain, of course. Despite knowing that nuts are not allowed at school, Clea was so insistent that she should take a pair of them in her lunch box that I made her promise she would not share them with anyone. I can very well imagine her showing them off and explaining to her friends about the Spanish origin of the lollies she was eating, and carefully pronouncing peladillas for their benefit.

Lollies and children go together. Their faces light up when they see the sweet treats. In our house, the Easter chocolate egg-hunt used to be an incredibly exciting event, both in Yass and in Canberra.

Clea tasted chewing gum only once in her life. It happened on Lalomanu Beach (Samoa), in the late afternoon of September 28, 2009, the last day Clea lived to see the sun set. And what a sunset that was! Beautiful beyond description. Having spent almost all the afternoon on the beach, we took a walk towards the village; it was hot, so we were looking for an ice cream shop; no ice cream was to be found (it is a difficult product to sell in a country where blackouts are normal).

Not far from the beach and the resorts, we found a shop by the road, just around the bend, right on the seashore. We bought something: a few lollies and potato chips, probably (my memory might be failing me on these details). The lady who ran the shop chatted to us and then she insisted on giving the children some chewing gum. The children had never tasted chewing gum before, so we explained to them that it was not to be eaten, but chewed on and on until all flavour was gone, and then wrapped back and disposed of properly.

Now, I prepare Clea’s brothers’ lunch daily; sandwiches, rice crackers, cheese, fruit, dried fruit… and sometimes, more often than not, I will include one sweet treat, which I call the ‘surprise’. After all, I keep telling myself, why shouldn't they be allowed to enjoy all those lollies their sister will never be able to eat?

I fondly remember how special my grandparents would make me feel as a kid when I was given sweet treats. My maternal grandparents owned a groceries shop in the working-class barrio where I grew up, and invariably I would be given the choice of picking one thing to eat, every time I went there. They did not sell lollies, however, but those sugar-coated donuts or chocolate-filled croissants were amongst my faves.

On the morning of 29 September, that shop on the Main South Coast Road in Lalomanu was wiped out in seconds, just like everything else on the beach. Unlike the resorts on the beach, it was not rebuilt. These days, only the remains of the cement floor tell the visitor that there used to be a small building there. The rusty remnants of a crushed car nearby could prompt your imagination (if you tried) to create a mental picture of the terror of those minutes. I don’t know whether the lady who gave Clea her first and only chewing gum survived or died.

I wish we could all have a never-ending supply of peladillas, and so bring a smile to a few friendly faces.