Ok so summer is over, but that’s not what I mean. March is the month Sam died in last year so that means we are almost a full calendar year from his death. How does it feel this far down the track?

It actually doesn’t feel very ‘far down the track’ at all. When I ponder our live as it is right now i see something like this picture below

It’s a very happy family, all going well – except it looks like someone has defaced the image with an ugly black scrawl. Take away the scrawl and we probably would look as content and at peace with life as it’s possible to be – but the mess is there now – it’s in ‘super-permanent’ marker. One of us has died and the whole image is both beautiful and horrible at the same time – but it can be hard to see the beauty for the stain.

I had heard that one of the dangers of a significant grief experience is that other close relationships suffer. That hasn’t been our experience. Danelle, Ellie and I are as close as we have ever been and realise that we need each other, albeit in different ways at different times. At face value I think I would appear to be the one least affected by Sam’s death. I have been able to go to work, keep up my exercise schedule and cope with most of what is on my plate. I say ‘at face value’ because there isn’t a day goes by where my mind doesn’t return to bizarreness of our situation – to the permanence of death. Previously I used the image of looking at the sun as a way to describe how I interact with the grief experience. I can only look so long before I have to look away. Some days though I just sit and allow it to burn me up.

I’ve noticed that my capacity for writing poetry seems to have dialled back a notch, but that’s less about absence of struggle and more about an inability to really voice the current experience. But to think it’s been a year… I still remember the phone call and that day like it was yesterday. The whole thing is seared in my memory. For weeks after I would go cycling the bush tracks with Sam’s music playlists blasting in my ears – a way of staying in connection in some way I guess. Now when I play those songs they just transport me back to March 24th and the bewildering week that followed. i need to be in the right headspace.

I have used Facebook ‘memories’ as a balm most days, as it often throws up images of him or posts about the crazy things he had done. Some days it is balm and other days it is like salt. You can’t always tell what you are going to experience. This week has thrown up images of this time last year when life was sailing along so well. There are images of Sam and Cosi out on their kayak as well as pics of their catches each day they went spearfishing. They were really nailing this thing… Some of the happiest and funnest days of our lives.

I had this sign made for use when Danelle and I visited country towns. Our plan was to help out the smaller country churches and use the Caravan Weighing business to make some $$ along the way. We haven’t used the sign yet… And I don’t know when we will. Hopefully there will come a day when we can cheerfully head off and spend weekends in different places serving and helping as needed. But it isn’t looking like the near future.

In this middle of all of this Cosi (Sam’s partner) has taken up a job at an off grid youth camp in Victoria, so we feel the loss of her presence and her part in this whole experience. I feel like she has made a strong, positive move, but we miss her and that’s another hard experience to process.

I have set some goals and hopes for the year ahead, but I am holding them loosely. I know the emotional processing stuff is not my strong suit, but I do want to do it well, so filling the year with projects would probably be quite unhelpful. If for no other reason than it honours Sam, I want to leave space for regular ‘heart attacks’ where i stand still long enough to feel weak and panicky because my son is gone and isn’t coming home.

So for the rest of 2025 I will be ‘playing by ear’, and looking for the opportunities that i need to invest in, while also living with enough space to be there for Danelle & Ellie as well as myself when i need it.

We are 6 months into dog ownership now and still no regrets. I have spent time over summer hanging out with her as well as training her, although she is now a teenager and we are wrestling a little bit more for control. ‘Raise up a dog in the way she should go and when she is old she will not depart from it.’ (I know the Bible says something like that.) The truth is also that dogs have a free will just like I do and no matter what i do there are times when she plain ignores me when I call her, or runs right past me to chase a seagull. I’m hoping consistency and persistence will have the outcomes we are hoping for.

Recently I tried to take her SUPing up the Moore River and we managed to nail it on day 1. The hard part was figuring out how to get her on the board. I couldn’t do it while the board was stationary as it rocked too much with her weight but I discovered that if I simply paddled away from her she would follow me out into the water where i could grab her collar and help her climb aboard. I set out one day to paddle from the Rope swing into town – thinking it was about 2kms… Turns out it is 5kms and it took an hour so we were both ready to get off the board by then! Of course there was the trip back as well, so we both arrived home very weary and slept well.

So here we are almost one full year on and that’s where it’s at. In one sense our lives probably appear to be as enjoyable and fulfilling as you’d hope, but every part of them is tinged with sadness and the memories of what we had and the hopes now gone. If this whole mess has done nothing else it has left me longing more-so for eternity, for the coming of Jesus’ kingdom in it’s fullness and the restoration of all that is broken.