Those of you who live in New Orleans, in Pakistan, in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Timor, India, Aceh………all of the countries that have suffered from devastating natural disasters in the past few years will understand.

Those from New York, Washington, London, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Oklahoma, Madrid, Tokyo and all of those other countries where death and destruction have been caused by terrorist attacks will understand.

Closer to home for me, the victims of the Port Arthur massacre, the Hoddle Street killings and the tragedy at Mount Hotham will understand.

What is she going on about????? I hear you say???

This week in a close rural community in my home state of Victoria we are burying six young people, all from the same school, who died when they were hit by a car waiting to go to a party. Between the ages of 15 and 17, these kids had their lives ahead of them…………………and their community is in a state of shock and disbelief.

In rural communities, even relatively large ones, like Mildura, everyone knows everyone. So not only do the parents of the kids who died grieve, but so do the parents of the other kids who were with them, but survived……………..and these parents live with the guilt associated with the relief that their kids are ok…………so called “survivor guilt”.

The local police, who knew the kids and had to attend the accident scene. The local paramedics who also knew them and had to attend the accident, the guys from the State Emergency Service, the school teachers, the local doctors and nurses, the local shop keepers, the ministers and priests who are conducting one funeral after another, the neighbors, friends and school mates, the kids who played basketball, footy and netball with them ………………..and the list goes on……….are all shocked, angry, sad…….all trying to come to terms with the death of six kids who won’t reach their 21st birthdays.

How does a rural community, where all relationships are interconnected, move on from here? What happens when the funerals are all over? When life for the survivors goes back to ‘normal’ and the grieving parents, siblings and relatives are left to make sense of what has happened to the children they love?

Those of you who have experienced a natural, accidental or intentional incident that has caused multiple deaths will understand. Multiple deaths leave a mark on a community that is never erased. Multiple deaths of a group of young people with so much potential is a crippling experience for any community, particularly when that community is a close knit, rural community where people have long memories.

Those of you from countries who have experienced these types of mulitple deaths will understand. You know that life will never return to ‘normal’. That sometimes it’s extremely hard to make ‘meaning’ out of the pain of grief you live with day after day. You know what it’s like when people ‘go on’ with their lives and yours will NEVER be the same. You know how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning……………to walk outside and feel the sun on your face when your heart feels ‘black’, to do the shopping, to go to work, to care for your other children or your partner…………..all the things you have to do eventually.

Any death is devastating for the people who love the person who died. No death is worse than another. Death is death and grief is the cost we pay for loving someone……………as communities we need to acknowledge this. To treat each grieving member of our community individually and understand that each of them will experience their grief in their own way and it may be different to how you do it.

I’m reminded of something that Bob Geldolf once said about grief, (and this is how I remember it, it’s not an accurate quote) “Every day I had to remind myself to breathe in and breathe out and then one day I realised that I had been breathing without consciously having to remind myself to do it……….I knew something had altered”

I hope that one day, the people of Mildura will realise that they have been breathing without consciously having to remind themselves to do it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 12:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.