Coping with grief

Everybody copes differently with major changes in their lives. The lose of Kayleigh affected everyone that knew her, and in someway changed people.

For Terence, myself and our other children, we all coped in different way, coming to realisation that Kayleigh was no longer going to be in our lives, but only in our memories. For me, I spent the first week probably in a state of shock, I really didn't cry until after the funeral. I had so much to do in that first week, arranging the funeral, deciding on flower colour (thank you Virginia for doing the flower arrangement), talking with the funeral directors, the endless stream of visitors that I had to explain again and again what had happened, yet still having to function. After the funeral, I completely lost it and cried for at least a day. After a week, Terence looked at me and told me that I better not be getting depressed (I have had issues with post-natal depression previously) because Kayleigh had always hated it when I was sad. I realise then that when you lose someone really close to you there are two choices : (1) wallow in your grief and give up, or (2) choose life, remember the person but learn to enjoy life again,even without them. I made the conscious decision to choose life, as that is what Kayleigh would have done, and Kayleigh would have wanted for me. In the time between then and now I have had many moments that I have felt such despair and loss that I wonder what the hell I am still doing here. Not a good thought. After a particularly bad day at work I exceeded the speed limit down Monaro Highway thinking that a convenient tree would do fine. The thought of my other kids stopped me from doing anything stupid

Terence felt his grief straight away. We even had to call an ambulance for him because he felt he couldn't breathe, his whole body had clamped up and he just couldn't cope. Terence dealt with his grief early on by crying in the shower, purging himself of the emotions before starting the new day.

Natassja never cried, or if she did, she did it in private. This is a common response from teenagers. I think Natassja was trying to be the strong one for all of us. Her older sister was gone, leaving her as the oldest child Her Mum and Dad were falling apart around her and her younger siblings weren't doing so well. It also didn't help her that she was the last one to talk to Kayleigh, that she was the one that noticed Kayleigh wasn't breathing anymore and she was the one that attempted CPR when she called out to us. She tried to save her sister and failed. Over the long term, Natassja has probably become more self reflective. She spends a lot of time with books and her drawings. She has drawn many pictures of Kayleigh and wrote things in her school books. But she doesn't talk about Kayleigh unless I ask her. She has never spoken about Kayleigh with her dad, but I do know she has spoken about her with her friends.

Little Terry cried on and off for about a month. Kids are resilient and terry was the one that seemed to vocalise his grief the most - maybe it's an age and maturity thing - he was 9 at the time, Lucas was 6 and Kiara was only 4. He was the one that seemed to cope the best. He likes to talk about the fun things that Kayleigh and he did and the ways that Kayleigh annoyed him. Lucas on the other hand has become more difficult. He was always a little stubborn and gets frustrated easily at things when they go wrong or he can't do what he wanted to do. His way of coping was lashing out and getting moody and withdrawn. Even now he can be difficult to get him to do anything he doesn't want to do.

Kiara is the one that still is sad - you can still see it in her face. She was only 4 1/2 when Kayleigh passed away,  but she was really close to Kayleigh. Kayleigh did everything for her little sister, got her a drink, made her lunch, read her books, sung her to sleep, played ponies with her. Every couple of weeks Kiara will sit there, on her bed or on the lounge, her eyes far away and such sadness in her face. She turns around to you and says  'I miss Kayleigh' and you know there is nothing you can do to cheer her up. Eventually she does something else and the sadness passes but it is heartbreaking to see such a little girl trying to deal with her sadness.