She's Gone and I Have Nothing to Wear

Though I'm still no style icon, back in my teens and twenties (and, er, thirties) I really had no idea how to dress. I tried, but I constantly got it wrong - you know, the right pants with the wrong top, or the right dress with the wrong shoes, or the right shoes with the wrong everything else.

My sister, on the other hand, always looked great. She had a very particular style - sort of casual, just-thrown-together cool. She wore a lot of cargo pants and brightly coloured singlets and little skirts and the occasional gorgeous patterned dress or top. She loved purple. She had so many purple singlets we all lost count.

I remember her wardrobe; it was basically a portarobe in the sunroom off her bedroom, absolutely chock full of clothes in no particular order.

Tanya laughed at my fashion choices. She laughed at a lot of my choices. I recall her once going through my CD collection which, admittedly, was rather woeful - lots of  Michael Jackson and Madonna and Smiths and Kate Bush (to represent both my upbeat and contemplative sides). And then she noticed one rogue, totally hip album, and pointed and cried out, "Oh look! You have some Massive Attack by mistake!"

Anyhow... every now and then she would let me go through her extensive wardrobe and pick out things I liked that she no longer needed. It was the best fun. I know she was the younger sister but it felt very much like a kid raiding her mother's wardrobe. Tanya bought a lot of stuff and discarded a lot of stuff and so I always came away with some new things to wear. Sometimes I'd want one of her newer outfits and she'd protest, but I nearly always got what I wanted. I'm persuasive that way.

And the thing about Tanya was.... She loved giving me her clothes. She loved it when I looked nice. She genuinely wanted the best for me.

She would have been so proud of all I've achieved, and she would have loved my youngest daughter so much. SO much. My baby turns eight on the 26th of November, three weeks to the day after Tanya will have been dead for eight years.

Today. The 5th of November. It's been eight years.

She was awesome. You would have liked her. All of you. You would have liked her. Most everyone did.

Eight years today. I miss her. And I miss her wardrobe.

I have nothing to wear.

Dreams of the Dead

Shortly after my sister died I had a dream. It was unlike any dream I’d had before, or have had since. It was crystal clear and in full colour, with none of the sepia fuzz or blurred edges of regular dreams. It was absolutely indistinguishable from real life.

I was in a corridor at a party, surrounded by people, with music blaring. I looked up and I saw my sister dancing toward me. Tanya had been ill for years before she died, but in the dream she was healthy, beautiful, and radiantly happy.

She smiled at me, and we had a brief conversation, too intimate to be repeated here. But I said what I needed to say to her, and her reply was just what I needed to hear.

I woke up with an absolutely overpowering sense of having just had a conversation with my sister. Her voice rang in my ear, as real as the sounds you can hear now. It was odd and unsettling, but incredibly comforting to me.

I am not a spiritual person. I have never believed in the spirit world, or in life after death. I never for a moment imagined that I could communicate with my sister, and I’m still not sure that I did. But the dream felt like I had communicated with her, and it gave me the closure that I so desperately needed. It gave me a final conversation with my sister that I did not get a chance to have in real life.

Tanya has appeared in my dreams many times since, but never again in that same way. My dreams of her are often distressing; she is there, but I know that she shouldn’t be there because she is dead, and my dream self is confused trying to work it all out.

I asked friends if they ever dreamed of their lost loved ones and, overwhelmingly, they do. Some like D, whose husband died suddenly last year, have profoundly upsetting dreams in which their loved one is lost over and over again.  

“I'm always chasing him, begging him to come back, to stay with me and our three sons. He never answers my questions, never looks at me in these dreams. He just walks away and ignores my pleading. I hope to one day have a comforting dream with him in it.”

Others find their dreams to be uplifting, offering another glimpse of that deeply missed person.

“I recently renovated and moved into my late parents’ home,” says M, “and they visited me in a dream – they were so happy to be at my housewarming. I believe they were just letting me know they approve.”

And C, who dreamed of her late father when she was pregnant. “He came and sat next to me in his favourite tennis shorts, put his hand on my belly and told me we're having a girl and she will be fine. Two weeks later we found out we were having a girl and she is now almost seven. I believe dreaming of our departed is them coming to say hello.”

And yet many others, like me, feel bereft when they wake, as their conscious mind remembers what their dream state did not.

“It is comforting during the dream,” said S, who lost a parent, “but achingly sad when I wake and have to process the loss again.”

Of course it is sad. There is always going to be sadness in death. And I wouldn’t wish my dreams of Tanya away, not even the ones that cause me pain. It is okay for me to feel pain when I remember my sister, or when I conjure her in my dreaming. She was in my life for 37 years, and she will always be part of the fabric of who I am, whether or not she is still alive.

I’ve long since stopped wondering whether my initial, hyper realistic dream was anything more significant than just my brain grieving a loss. I know now that it really doesn’t matter. Whether it was my sister visiting me from beyond, or my subconscious being super kind to my conscious, is irrelevant. It helped me more than any grief counselling or sympathy. At the time it was just what I needed.

My sister is gone, but she lives on in my dreams. And I cherish that. It means she is still with me, that she is not forgotten. I hope that I dream of her for the rest of my life.

This column first appeared in Sunday Life magazine

How we came to be

When I was 38 weeks pregnant with my third child, and my sister suddenly died, I was a mess, as you can imagine. I was having all sorts of health problems and suddenly plunged into grief and I had two young children to care for, and it was without a doubt the darkest, most oppressively difficult time in my life.

Friends rallied around, of course, and I will be forever grateful. But in that hideous period, the kindness of two near strangers stood out. One, a teacher, volunteered to bring both my kids to the school gates for the remainder of the term so that I wouldn't have to walk into the school. She knew how difficult it was for me to face people, and I will never forget her sensitivity and generosity.

The other, the class parent for my daughter's year, arranged a food roster for me. Every single night for weeks I had a hot meal on the table for my family thanks to her. I'd never met her, but that woman made a profound difference to my ability to cope.

Fast forward eighteen months, and I am sitting on the grass at a class picnic with my now toddler on my lap. I am chatting to that class parent, properly thanking her for all she did to help me. The conversation segues into a discussion of social media. I explain that I'm on Twitter (I'm feeling quite proud because I already have a couple of hundred followers) and wonder if she's ever heard of it.
"Kerri, we've been chatting on Twitter for months. I'm Sharpest Pencil."

The woman was Lana Hirschowitz. Until that point I had no idea that the hysterically funny person I'd been tweeting online was the very same woman who arranged meals for me after my sister died.

My worlds collided.

Since then, Lana and I have spent a ridiculous time communicating, across every medium one can imagine. We talk on Twitter, in public and (far less politically correctly) in DMs. We talk on Facebook, on Instagram, in emails, and in texts. We talk on the phone and we catch up in person. I have many friends who I adore, but Lana is the only friend who lives in all of my communities - the online, the Jewish, the school, and the anxious.

Of course, being South African, Lana is as different to me as cheese is to a polar bear. Her accent is irritating and she's bossy and she doesn't like most of my clothes. She is a dog person and I am a cat person. She is also a cat person, but whatever. And we disagree on nearly everything, which is weird because we also agree on nearly everything.

But our conversations are hilarious, and often bizarre, and for fun, we thought we'd share them with you.

This is the second in our serious of #5minutes with Kerri and Lana. We are in bed. Don't ask why. Just go with it and look at those ginormous pills.

Enjoy.

On My Sister's Birthday...

Today was a significant day for two completely different reasons. Firstly, it was my sister's birthday. June 18th. She would have been 43. I thought of Tanya all day, but then again, I think of her every day anyway.

And today was significant for another reason. It was my first time on a new TV show, The Daily Edition. I am going to be a regular on a weekly panel called The Debrief with two fabulous bloggers, Mrs Woog from Woogsworld and Beth from BabyMac.

I had a great time before the panel began. A stylist looked at our clothes and suggested I wear the other scarf, not that scarf, which was terribly exciting, because she was a stylist, and she said "Yes, that works," and not "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE SHOCKING TASTE" which is what I had feared she'd say. (Although to be fair, the brief for the panel was possibly 'two stylish bloggers and one with shocking taste', so that could have been her reasoning.)

A ridiculously good looking man. And a happy woman.

I had fun with Woog and Beth practising saying key phrases such as "Well, I'm glad you asked me that," and "Let me elaborate for your elucidation," and "What a fascinating point. May I respectfully repudiate?"

And then a very tall and very handsome and very.... broad shouldered man walked into the room.

It was Kris Smith, one of the co-hosts of the show.

The man is good looking. Like, movie-star good looking. Like, slightly luminescent-with-a-hint-of-fairydust good looking. I felt shy, so I didn't approach him. And if you believed that, you've never met me, because I am SHAMELESS around celebrities and immediately pounced on him and asked for a photo.

And then I thought, I have to call Tanya. Because Kris Smith was married to Dannii Minogue who was one of our favourite Young Talent Time stars. And Tanya and I LOVED Young Talent Time. She would be so excited!

And then I remembered. I can't. She died five years ago.

I miss Tanya on her birthday. But it's in moments like these - those everyday moments that are part of the fabric of life - that I miss her the most.

A Terrible Story of Grief, Inappropriate Laughter, and Sophie Mirabella

By now most of you will have seen the footage of Simon Sheikh collapsing at the Q&A desk as Sophie Mirabella looks on in disgust. (If not, you will find it here.) By now, many of you will have judged Sophie Mirabella and expressed your own disgust at her reaction.

Well, I watched the footage yesterday, four separate times, and I'm not proud at all of my reaction, either.

Because do you know what I did when I watched the video?

I laughed. Every single time.

I didn't laugh because I found it funny. It's not funny. I have fainted, and it's the most horrible feeling. I've also been on television several times, and the idea of fainting on live TV is absolutely horrendous. I laughed because that's what I always do when I'm nervous or feeling uncomfortable. I can't help it. It's an instinctive reaction.

Before you judge me, let me reassure you - I'm not one of those people who stand by and do nothing when someone needs assistance. I have called for an ambulance on three different occasions when I've seen strangers in trouble. I've assisted elderly people who've fallen in the street. I've helped get kids out of an overturned car (truly - I'm starting to sound like Tom Cruise here). But I also have a terrible problem with inappropriate reactions.

Take, for example, a memorial service for my late sister. She was a psychologist of some repute, and my parents set up a university scholarship in her honor after she died. At the ceremony to mark the establishment of the scholarship, I became completely distracted by the minor twitching of the eye of one of the speakers. Sitting in the very front row of the university hall, I began to laugh uncontrollably. It was a matter of months since my sister's death, the speech was deeply moving, and I was laughing myself stupid. My shoulders shook and tears began to leak from my eyes.

Matters rapidly became worse. The woman sitting behind me assumed (naturally) that I was grief stricken and crying, and laid a hand soothingly on my shoulder. This did me in. I was overcome with guilt, which made me even more uncomfortable, which made me laugh even more. I considered leaving the room but didn't want to disrespect the speaker even further. So I grabbed a handful of tissues, buried my face in them, and conntinued to heave until the proceedings drew to a close.

So the moral of the story is this: don't judge people on their reactions to emotive situations. It doesn't mean they're bad or unfeeling, it just means they're uncomfortable and human.

And if you ever see me laughing in a sad situation, do not lay your kind hand on my shoulder. Just pass me the tissues and let me be.

Happy Birthday Tun

Tomorrow is my sister's birthday. She would have been 41, except of course she will be forever frozen at 37. Tanya was only 20 months younger than me, so she always enjoyed the time between June and October, as it was the only four months of the year she could claim we were just a year apart in age.

It's a cliche, and I'm sure you've heard it before, but you never get over losing someone you love. It's not like a wound that heals over. It's more like losing a limb. You learn to live without the limb, but it never grows back, and you never, ever forget that it's gone.

What's more, grief is not at all as you'd expect it to be. My sister had been sick for many years and her death, though shocking, wasn't entirely unexpected. I had actually visualised myself at her funeral many times before. I assumed that I would wail; I'm a very emotional person and it seemed like the logical response. But I didn't wail. I didn't cry. I didn't even shed a tear for weeks.

And in the months and years afterwards, though I would break down on occasion in the privacy of my own home, I found that a wall built up around me in relation to my sister. I could talk about her with friends or my parents and stay completely devoid of emotion. Worse. I became guarded, defensive, almost hostile. I didn't want to visit her grave and I didn't want to meet with her friends to remember her. I'm sure the psychological explanation is that I was protecting myself from overwhelming emotion, but I still felt guilty for not opening up more. It seemed disloyal to Tanya not to demonstrate to the world how profoundly I missed her.

Strangely, though, the nature of my grief has changed over time. It's been three and a half years now, and the bodily tension I feel whenever I think or speak about my sister is starting to dissipate. And she's popping up in my sleep. Over the past several nights I've had recurring dreams about trying to contact Tanya - I have her phone, or I've lost mine, or I can't dial the number - and I wake up feeling like I've lost her all over again.

This morning my husband asked me if I'd like to visit Tanya's grave tomorrow, on her birthday. We could take the kids - they are young and unburdened by adult hang-ups, and always love to visit their auntie. I automatically said no, as I always do. I don't want to visit her grave. I don't want to see a headstone reminding me that my sister has died.

But then, suddenly, I started to cry. And I realised that I do want to go. I want to connect with my sister. I want to leave purple flowers, and Werther's Original Caramels, and Cote D'Or Bouchee chocolates. I want to acknowledge her life, and how much she is still with me. I want to demonstrate, in some small way, how much I still adore her.

Which is also the reason I am writing this post.

Happy Birthday Tun.

Something Slightly Magical

Yesterday I took just-turned-three year old Boo to her orientation day at pre-school. It's the same pre-school attended by her big brother and sister many years ago, the same pre-school in which I sat on a teeny tiny chair and sobbed uncontrollably for a full hour when my Pinkela 'graduated' in mini robes and a hat. Back then, four years ago, I didn't think I was going to have any more children, and my Pinkela, my baby, was all grown up.

Incredibly, just over a year after Pinkela moved to big school, my baby Boo was born. As many of you will know, it was a time of tremendous sadness as well as great joy, because my beloved sister had died only three weeks earlier. Tanya was very close to my big kids - her precious niece and nephew - and they loved their only Auntie deeply. But she never got to meet her youngest niece. Tanya never got to see Boo's huge dark eyes, or the fact that she has the only 'outy' belly-button in the family. She never got to discover Boo's ecclectic taste in music (everything from 'Incy Wincy Spider' to pretty much anything by the Black Eyed Peas), or her preference for 'tuna-from-a-can' and 'freddo-frog-the-head-AND-body!'. She never got to attend Boo's first birthday party, or see her first steps, or watch as she sat proudly on the toilet for the first time.

And of course, she wasn't there to hear about her orientation day at pre-school.

Or was she?

Because something slightly magical happened yesterday. We adults were sitting in a circle listening to a talk from the director whilst our children had morning tea with the teachers in the room next door. The director discussed opening hours, protocols, naptime arrangements, food, and all the minutia of daily life at pre-school. Then she handed out a few of the 'weekend books' to pass around and look at. The weekend books are scrapbooks, taken home by each child in each class once a year, and returned to pre-school to be shared and discussed. They detail what the child did on their weekend, and include pictures and drawings and various other details that paint a picture of each child's family life. Given that the pre-school has three classes per year, and each class has their own book, there have been many books over the years.

So what were the chances that the book that happened to land on my lap - the book helpfully passed to me by a mother I've never met - was from my daughter's last year at pre-school? And what were the chances that the particular weekend we'd documented in the book (a weekend I'd completely forgotten) was the weekend we'd all gone to Auntie Tanya's house for dinner to celebrate my birthday?

Chances or not, that's the book I got. And in some small way, it was like Tanya popping her head in, making her enduring presence known. It reminded me that I still have a relationship with my sister, even if it's not the relationship it was. I may not be able to call Tanya about Boo's first day at pre-school, or about Pinkela's dance concert, or my son's presentation ceremony at school, but I can still talk to her about them, and I believe she will hear.

As for little Boo, well, her Auntie Tanya is at pre-school with her, and always will be. And for some reason, I find this very comforting.

My Sister

It is exactly three years to the day since my beautiful sister died at the age of 37. I've cried so that my eyes are swollen slits. I've even tried haemorrhoid cream to bring them back to normal (and I have included that line quite deliberately; Tanya would have loved the reference to grief and bottoms in the one paragraph).

I'm not going to talk about my sister's death, but I will tell you a bit about her life. Tanya was awesome. She was a lot like me (the awesome parts of me only), but funnier, smarter, prettier, kinder, and with much bigger boobs (which I always envied) and long, long corkscrew curls (which she twirled endlessly in her fingers, driving us all to distraction). On the other hand, she was judgemental, ruminative and had utterly shocking taste in music, unless you like Heavy Metal, in which case she rocked big time.

Tun was 20 months younger than me and was the cutest baby ever. We were always very close, and used to laugh about my parents behind their backs and bitch together about our friends. We got on well even as kids, although obviously we had our fights. I recall hitting her once, when we must have been about seven and five. She cried big tears from her huge eyes, and I was so distraught with remorse that I ended up crying even harder and begging her forgiveness.

Tanya was a shy child but grew up to be hugely popular with both the girls and boys alike. Even though I was older, I often felt like her daggy little sister. She was much more adventurous than me and did exciting things like dating lots of guys and attending rave parties and travelling that I never would have been brave enough to do. And she thought I was hilariously conservative. I got a tattoo in part to prove to her that I wasn't, but sadly by the time I got it I disovered that she'd already got two. And they were much bigger than mine. Cow.

I was always a good girl, and she was the naughty one, but on occasion she inspired me to acts of great badness. I remember vividly my Year 12 concert, where we put on a little show for the rest of the school. Tanya, then in Year 10, had been put on detention for some transgression or another and wasn't allowed to watch. I was outraged. It was MY shiow and there was NO WAY my sister was going to miss it (remember, we didn't have digital cameras then) and I STORMED into the vice principal's office and DEMANDED that he let Tanya attend. It didn't work, of course, but I felt rather proud of my rebellion, and now I can't remember what the hell the show was about anyway.

Tanya was addicted to clothes. She loved singlets, cargos, hoodies, and purple everything. She had closets full. She had far better dress sense than me for most of our lives, but generously (or out of shame that her older sister was wearing green flared pants) would let me come over and look through her wardrobe and choose things to take home. And inevitably, every time I did my husband would look at me up and down, say 'You look great, Tanya gave that to you, right?' and I'd know who was the fashion queen in our family.

Tanya had a series of boyfriends, all handsome, and all absolutely devoted to her. They were all also linked to each other by friendship, like a human man chain. She would date X, then move straight to X's best friend Y, then on to Y's mate Z, before meeting P, who she met at X's party. But the guys all stayed friends, and they all still loved Tanya even after she broke up with them (which, usually, she did). I don't know what she did, but it must have been good.

I could go on and on and on. The time we pierced each other's ears (for a second time) in the bathroom at my Nana's house. The time Tanya encouraged me to ring a boy I liked, and he rejected me, and we got drunk together afterwards. The time we got stoned with some friends on the balcony of a unit in Surfers Paradise and decided that 'Life In A Northern Town' was the all time greatest song EVER, until the next morning. The day my son was born and Tanya was so excited to hear the news she reversed into her gate. The time she exclaimed, when browsing through my tragic collection of CD's, "Oh look, how cute! She has Massive Attack by accident!"

Tanya, BB, I miss you every single day. The kids and I love you so much.

To Those Who Have Lost Someone - Happy New Year

I was going to begin this post with an apology - an apology for not being funny. All the other posts on this blog are humorous. I hope...

But then I realised: life isn't always funny. I'm not always funny. My life is often hysterically ridiculous, but can also be tough, painful, desperately sad, confusing and mundane. And your life, no doubt, is the same.

Last year was a very difficult year for me and I was thrilled to see in the new decade. I celebrated with a small group of very close friends, and enjoyed every minute of our little party. The kids played, the adults ate and drank, and we all gathered together in the wind to watch the fireworks explode.

And then at midnight, I thought of my sister.

2010, I thought. She will never see 2010.

My sister didn't see 2009, either, or 2008. She died at the end of 2007, just before my daughter was born. But every year is another year she will never see. And this is the first decade I have welcomed in without her.

My sister will never see my new house. She won't see my son start his new school. She won't see my daughter go to creche, or my big girl play the violin. She won't laugh or sing or cry or watch TV or travel or get outraged at some injustice or argue over the dinner table ever again.

I miss my sister. Whenever anything happens that I normally would share with her, my first instinct is still to call her. When Michael Jackson died. When Joe Perrone came onto Twitter. When a highly non-maternal acquaintance of ours became pregnant. My reflex is to reach for the phone, to gossip with her about it. Then I remember she's not around.

Then there is the guilt, the guilt that accompanies all my happiness. Why should I experience such good fortune, such bounty, when she is unable to? I got the children, the husband, the home, the friends, the life. Why me? Why did I get so lucky and she lost it all?

A friend once advised me to be happy for both of us, to grasp for myself all the joy my sister will never be able to have. That, said my friend, is what my sister would have wanted. But it doesn't work like that. You can't live for someone else, any more than you can give them your own life.

We all have just one life to live. I have mine, you have yours. Whatever good fortune, or grief, comes our way, we have to move through it, and move forward. We're here for such a short time, and anything can happen. And we all deserve to be as happy as we possibly can.

So for anyone who has lost someone, have a beautifully happy new year.

And for those who have not, good. Hug your loved ones, have a great new year, and enjoy.