Still not coping

When Kayleigh passed away (it's been over 3 years now) lots of people said how time would make it easier, and in some ways they were right, but on some days it's like it only happened yesterday and you are left struggling with your feelings and trying to go on with your day all the time feeling like you are drowning under feelings of grief. I know Terence has put up some serious walls to help him cope, both emotionally and mentally. He has trouble remembering even the smallest details from the moment that we found Kayleigh until after the funeral, and emotionally this has resulted in him having a few too many scotches when feeling down and this resulted in him punching a wall (and managing to get the stud) and breaking two bones in hand.

My issues are that I remember too much in vivid detail. I still remember clearly doing CPR and telling Terence that she would be OK. Waiting for the ambulance, the paramedic telling us that they had gotten a response, waiting at the hospital, turning off the machines and waiting for her heart to stop. I remember it all and sometimes I just can't get the pictures out of my head and it sends me into a downwards spiral.

Having Kayl has helped - we feel that the universe hasn't taken everything from us. He looks so much like her it's uncanny. And even personality wise, he is very similar. It's like he's been here before.

Kayl (in Blue) and Kayleigh - both aged 12 months

Games we played

This post was written by Natassja - Kayleigh's closest in age sister and the one person that spent most of their time with Kayleigh. Kayleigh was only 11 months old when Natassja was born so they grew up together, had the same friends and played together. _________________________________

 When Kayleigh and I were younger we both had very large imaginations and created games - some strange, others really really strange

 The least strange one was 'kraken'.
 When Kayleigh, Alexandra, Tayla and I were in junior primary school every lunch and recess we would pretend we were pirates and the playground our ship the tanbark underneath was the ocean and lurking in the waters was a kraken and it would pull us down to drown us and someone would have to jump in and rescue the captive crew member but in order to get to the person in time we had to travel from the deck all the way to an opening in the base of the ship (the deck is nearby the slide, the base by the monkey bars was where the opening) once we were all safe one would go to look out for the kraken by hanging off the side of the playground. Places kraken would attack Steps, near the monkey bars, bottom of the slide, any where that was close to the ground.

ANIMAL GAMES
Tortoise Run 
Tortoise Run was a game we created because our room was clean and for some reason the mattress was on the floor and so we stood it up vertically to make room and it fell on us and that created a game where we stood up the mattress and would crawl slowly away from it pretending we are tortoises and the falling mattress the jaws of a crocodile.
 Boing Boing and lion
(For everyone's information a boing boing is a gazelle) boing boing and lion formally known as boing boing was created after we watched a bit of a documentary about animals and it showed a gazelle being chased by a cheetah and then he got the gazelle, this game usually played with three included to people bouncing on all fours being a gazelle and someone being a lion (because lions are much cooler than cheetahs at that age) the 'lion' has to chase the gazelle 's and eat them and I mean bite. The bed was the lions territory and the carpet is the fields of grass, any ' gazelle' who went close to the bed would be a target.

 SPY GAMES
 Secret agents
Kayleigh and I, and sometimes terry, after our bed time we would sneak into the backyard via the laundry door and our mission to get around the garden without being spotted by mum or dad. First stay close to the wall and get to the clothes line area Second scuttle along the ground staying lower than the level of concrete Thirdly make a run for it and get down to the bottom corner of the garden (one of the tricky parts) Then go one tree at a time checking the back window for any parents at each one Next once reached the silk tree run as fast as you can to the apple tree Hardest part stay low to the retaining wall till you get to precisely in front of the laundry door then bolt and hope you don't get caught to the laundry door.

 Spys
We are spy's and have our own bases and we have to plan to shoot the other team we would have our own code names and ' 'guns' (golf clubs) and the team left standing wins

CARDBOARD BOX GAMES
Every kid loves cardboard boxes (who doesn't), especially the big ones that you get from washing machines and fridges. In which all of these used

 Jump in the box
the name basically gives it away - we basically have the box vertically cover the bottom of the box with pillows climb on top of the bunk bed and jump in then rock the box till it falls over and you climb out, and lift it up for the next person.
 Earthquake
Same as above only people shake the box violently until they tip it one way too far and they can no longer hold it and it falls and hurts the person inside.
 Rollercoaster
This time it's horizontal and everyone except one person crams inside the box the other shuts the opening and starts lifting, rolling and tumbling the box in all directions until they run out if energy. No name The box is a cave, tent or a house in which we live in.

 BED GAMES
 Cat and mouse 
When we are meant to be asleep we would pull our doonas out of our covers and our top sheets of our beds created many levels we would put one on top of the other and they would be levels one of us was the cat the other a mouse. The mouse runs the cats chases, we would have to be on the same level to be able to catch the mouse the game ends when one becomes tired or mum and dad have a go at us for us being awake at a ridiculous time.

 Cubbies 
Our beds had a mesh thing underneath and we would go on the bottom bunk and rap our doonas around them in a shape and that would be our cubby another type we would tuck the doona under the mattress of the top bunk and allow it to hang down over the bottom blocking all light from there.

 The gap
There was a gap between the wall and our bed big enough to fit both of us down at the same time this could be used as a secret passage way to each others bed or... A place to do flips we would hang upside down in the gap hold onto the frame and flip down or just hang until the blood rushes to your head while the other tickles you until you fall, I was terrible at this and fell at one touch.

 WATER GAMES
 Water tips
 On really hot days we would be allowed to water the lawn and a way to cool down was to use the hose and get wet. One person would run after us with the hose and squirt us with water if it hit us we were in and behind the trees at the bottom of the garden was safe. Another version the one who didn't wont to get wet wet everyone but the whole chasing thing was still part of it
 Water snake
Whilst watering the lawn we would hold and three meters away from the head or put it on the ground and of course it would go crazy everywhere and get everything wet including us.

 What dad does...(literally that's what we referred it as) 
Dad puts stuff on the hose to stop it from moving and he would turn on the hose to be a stream of water and we would run through trying not to get wet as possible but of course we would end up soaked.

its been so long......

It's now been over two and a half years since Kayleigh passed away. So much has happened - we have had another baby whose almost a year old. Natassja is staring yr10 and little Terry is going to high school. Thee are days I wonder hat you would be like now, the year you were going to start college. I always thought that you would go to Erindale fir their sports program or maybe Lake Tuggeranong to be with your friends. Either way I know you would be learning to drive and probably your dad's car. I wonder what you would have made about your dad's new business, where you would b working and what you wanted for last Christmas. Even last week I found that I couldn't listen to a delta goodram song as it made me think of you and the way that you did and his much I missed you. Your dad and I still struggle daily with missing and and someday all I want to do is hide under my Poona and cry.

Too skinny?

Kayleigh was always slender - well maybe not as a baby - but as she got older and get taller, her weight didn't seem to keep up. I know it was genetics as Terence and Kayleigh's nanny are both very slender and Kayleigh took after her dad more than me. At the time of her passing, Kayleigh only weighed 37kgs, which put on right on the edge of 'underweight' for her size.

I know I always kept on at her to eat more. I used Wii Fit to keep an eye on her, and I told her if she fell into the underweight category for too long I would take her to the doctor. Kayleigh wanted to eat healthy as well which probably compounded the problem - trying to ensure she ate her lunch at school was difficult under Mr Haidon spoke to her and found out that she didn't want to eat jam sandwiched as jam has lots of sugar in it. So it was salad sandwiches from then on.

Because of her weight, Kayleigh did get sick quite often, and it took her longer to get over it than her sister. She just didn't have the energy to fight off the viruses as fast. She had lots of days off school, which I didn't like. She had the taken the Tuesday off sick with the flu and we made her go to school on the last day she was properly 'alive' because she was missing too much school. I sometimes wonder if I should have forced her to eat more, to have more 'fat' on her, that maybe that might have helped her fight off the flu that eventually compounded into her being too sick and her heart failing. Maybe we should have kept her at home that day, and she would still be here - I don't know.

This photo was taken in May, at an angle that I used to show Kayleigh how skinny she actually was - it was genetically skinny though, she certainly didn't starve herself. and this pic certainly shows her in the worst angle possible.

Helping with building the wall

Terence has been gardening lately, digging up the backyard and re-sowing the lawn. Around the end part of garden there is a wood sleeper retaining wall which I was standing on when I remembered Kayleigh helping build it.

Originally the wood was part of a cubby house/fort that Terence was building for the kids, but we had to take it down. The wood that we were using become the retaining wall. Kayleigh helped her dad with moving all the wood into position. I remember her excitement in drilling guiding holes for the coaching bolts and then bashing them in. I remember her smile as it came together and helping her dad push all the soil behind them before helping her dad lay the Canturf that made the lawn and plant the Japanese Maples that went around the edge. 

When Terence was re-doing the backyard, you could see that he was remembering those times by his body language - it's hard sometimes doing some thing because we miss her so much.

Mother's day

As I am celebrating Mother's day for the second time without Kayleigh, but for the first time with her new brother Kayl, it is hard not to feel slightly guilty for the sense of contentment I have at the moment. Although I miss Kayleigh alot, having Kayl has somewhat filled the hole left in my soul that losing Kayleigh created. Little Kayl cna never replace Kayleigh (of course) but it has started a new chapter in my life. The last almost two years I have felt a little lost and Kayl is making look forward to the future again. I still cry on occasion, missing my special girl, and there are moments in the days where I still feel her passing as if it was yesterday.

Mother's day - Kayleigh was my first baby, and so my first mother's day was because of her. She was only 5 months old at the time and I was given . . . . .  .a food processor!!!!!! I actually wanted that machine, it was a Kenwood and it lasted me years and years. at the time is was a practical present as Kayleigh had just started on solids so I used to it make all of her baby food, from apples and pears to mulching up whatever Terence and I had for dinner (how many pork chops and veges were ground up in that thing I'll never know). As Kayleigh grew up, she wanted to make Mother's Day special. She always made a card and presented it to me with a cup of tea first thing in the morning, along with a huge hug and snuggle on the bed.

The very last mother's day I had with her we spent 2 hours at the Coffee Club in Tuggeranong just waiting for some pancakes (which were cold by the time we got them). Kayleigh spent alot of that time attempting to get the other kids to behave - they were getting restless, and playing on the car ride on thing that they had there. She was wearing her 'Stig' shirt and she was talking about her friends and the work she was doing in her wood work and sewing class. It's days like these that I miss her more than usual as it reminds me of the things she did to try and get a smile from me and make me happy.

Mother's Day 2010

Our mini vacuum cleaner

Kayleigh started crawling when she was about 7 months old. At this stage we were renting a house in Banks. Kayleigh had a habit of waking up quite early in the morning- around 6am and we all had to be up with her. It was this time that we did the majority of the cleaning/vacuuming/mopping of the floors. You may wonder why we didn't do it the night before - we did, but because of Kayleigh we always did it again the next morning.

Why???? because I would get up, change Kayleigh and feed her for the morning while her daddy had a shower, then put her on the floor where she would immediately crawl around. Now this child must have had eagle eyes, because every small tiny little piece of dirt or something, Kayleigh would find, pick up and put it straight into her mouth. Now to prevent her doing that, Terence and I would be crawling behind her, grabbing anything she picked up before it made it into her mouth, and quickly vacuuming the area she was in just in case there was more. Now image, two grown adults crawling around on their hands and knees, chasing a very fast little 7 month old who is determined to put anything and everything in her mouth.

Kayleigh was great as a vacuum, she managed to get under the heater, under the lounge suit and even in the window sills. We must have had the cleanest carpet and windows in Canberra, all because of our mini vacuum cleaner.

Baby Kayleigh

I have to apologise for not writing anything for a while - but I have an excuse, Kayleigh just had a new baby brother - it was an exciting day, but also a sad day as little Kayl will never know his big sister. This has had me reflecting on what sort of baby Kayleigh was.

Kayleigh, on the whole, was quite a good baby, she suffered a little from colic, but nothing that kept us awake at night. as my first baby, and since I was only 19 at the time, were were pretty relaxed on the whole baby thing, and this made for a relaxed baby. Kayleigh had a room to herself (for the only time in her whole life). She started sleeping through the night at 12 weeks old on the dot. She had a big brown Kmart xmas teddy that played christmas carols and I used to sing her to sleep in her cot with them playing.

When she had her 6 month immunisation, they still did the polio immunisation as three drops in the mouth. I'm told they tasted horrible, which is probably why Kayleigh screwed up her face and spit it straight into the nurses eyes and mouth - quite funny at the time, but it meant she had to have more.

I can't help but compare Kayleigh to Kayl - I think we all compare our children in some way, but since Kayleigh is no longer here, it seems we may be doing it a little more than we previously did, just because we miss her so much. Having Kayl has brought a lot of memories to the surface.

Wandering off at 2 and a half

This story Terence never knew, I didn't tell him when it happened, but I gues once he reads this he will know.

WE had just moved in to our current house, which means that Kayleigh was around 2 1/2 years old. I had woken up one morning and found we didn't have enough milk for breakfast. Terence and Natassja were still asleep, but Kayleigh was already up. It must have been Autumn because Kayleigh was only wearing her nappy and a pair of socks. I told Kayleigh to stay inside, play with her toys (or something) or go snuggle in with her Dad while I went to the local shops to get some milk for breakfast. Kayleigh seemed to understand and toddled off to the bedroom. I went down to the shop, grabbed the milk and went home. I put Kayleigh's breakfast together and went to get her. It was then that I realised that she wasn't in the house, so I went outside in the backyard and looked around (the backyard was a jungle of weeds and concrete at that stage) and realised that the back gate was slightly opened. I freaked, ran out the front and then a young boy (around 9 or 10) walked down the driveway with Kayleigh in tow. He told me she was down at the shops walking up and down the aisle looking for 'Mummy'. The shop owner (such a responsible adult!!) told the boy where we lived and to take her home. I thanked the boy and took Kayleigh inside, freaking out still.

I didn't pass Kayleigh on the way back from the shops (it's only two doors down), so she must not have realised I had come home and gone out the back gate after I was inside. I told Kayleigh never ever go out the front without mummy or Daddy. I still remember the panic I felt when I couldn't find her.

10 things you might not have known

I was thinking about some things Kayleigh did that wouldn't make a whole post by themselves:

1. Kayleigh used to wake me up by shaking my hand. She didn't want to wake her dad so she would sneak into the room, kneel down on the floor and start shaking my hand until I woke up. I didn't realise until after she was gone that she was the only one who did it.

2. Kayleigh once gave herself a bald spot on the crown of her head. She said her head was really itchy and she scratched it until I noticed she had a bald spot bigger than a 50c piece. She wore her hair in a pony tail for 3 months straight after that.

3. Kayleigh went through 6 school bags in year 7 because she used to take EVERYTHING to school.

4. Kayleigh always insisted that we got strawberry plants for our vege patch each year, although I don't think we ever got any strawberries.

5. Kayleigh always wanted to help her dad out, no matter how messy or dirty the job was. Digging in the garden, playing with the cars, moving turf or building things, Kayleigh was always there to help.

6. Kayleigh never slept much. She was always the last to bed and the first awake. She always got up in the middle of the night, and sometimes even stayed up and didn't go back to bed.

7. Her favourite saying before she passed away (at least at home) was' Stop back chatting'.

8. Her sneakers, which she was cremated in, she called her bubblegum shoes - they were ASIACS that had blue and green stripes on them.

9. IF there was a perfect tomato in the vege patch, Kayleigh would eat it before anyone else saw it.

10. Kayleigh was scared of spiders, until she figured out that the vacuum cleaner was the best way to get rid of them. After that, she was never scared of spiders in the house.

Bushwalking around Theodore

At one stage, Terence was walking up and down and around the hills around Theodore, and several times Kayleigh went with him. The most memorable (at least for Terence) was attempting to walk to Mt Rob Roy from our house (it's one  of the big ones behind Banks). Terence unfortunately wasn't feeling the best, so really should have not gone. They set off, Kayleigh all excited as it was one of the first times she went with her Dad. They made it from our house, and probably 1/2 way up My Rob Roy, when I got a phone call. Terence was rather ill, and there was no way to get to them. Kayleigh pushed her dad to keep going, telling him it was OK and that he only had to go a little bit longer and they'd be back to civilisation. She kept him going for the 30 minutes it took to walk back. Terence said he was so relieved to see the power lines near the back of Theodore but was so proud of Kayleigh for keeping his spirits going.

Another time, we went up the hills directly behind Theodore. Terence, being Terence, decided we were all going up the steep side, not around the back were the hill wasn't so steep. This was a test for Terence's anxiety and at some stages Kayleigh practically dragged him up the hill, when she wasn't helping Kiara up. about half way up, Terence turned around and said that his anxiety was getting too much and Kayleigh told him that the top was only up there and he could do it. Then right up at the top (like a metre from it) Terence did the same. Kayleigh laughed her head off. 'Dad, you ARE at the top.' she said. She though it was really funny. We probably didn't climb the hills as much as she wanted. She loved the views from the top of the hills, you can see a long way.

Family pic at the top of the hills behind Theodore

Losing Daddys wedding ring

Terence stopped wearing his wedding ring as his knuckles in his hands became swollen after eczema. In year 5, Kayleigh took to wearing the ring on her thumb. She thought that is was pretty good wearing her dads ring. She did try to wear my ring, but since it had diamonds in it, it was a no go - she did however tell Natassja that when I passed away, my ring was hers!.

Anyhow, one day her friend Alexandra was playing with her own ring, and for some reason threw it. They searched around for it and couldn't find it. Kayleigh then thought she would 'help' by standing in the same spot and throwing her dad's ring to see if they could find the other ring. They managed to loose both.

Needless to say, Terence was not happy. They went down the to school together and had a good hunt, but Terence's wedding ring was never found. Alexandra got her ring back when someone handed it in the next day. Kayleigh was upset about losing her dad's ring and she promised to buy him a new one when she was old enough to get a job.

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.

Slamming on her guitar

When Kayleigh was in Year 6, the music teacher entered all the year 5 and 6 students in a competition - they had to write why music was important to them and school. Kayleigh wrote that 'Music helps me relax and concentrate in the classroom. Music helps me learn.' The entries were sent away and a couple fo months later the school rang me to tell us that Kayleigh had won -- a guitar. They were going to pick them up the next day.

We didn't tell Kayleigh that night as it was a surprise, so when they turned up at the music shop, they were all in for a big surprise (5 children had won, Kayleigh was the only one in Year 6). Each student was given an acoustic guitar, which made Kayleigh very excited, but we couldn't help noticing that she kept looking at the electric guitars in the shops. That night we asked Kayleigh how she felt. She said she was sooooo happy that she'd won, all the other kids in her class were jealous. I then asked her if she really had wanted an electric guitar. She ummmed and arrrr'ed and then said yes - I think she was trying not to be ungrateful for the prize she'd won.

The next day we took Kayleigh back tot he music shop, the guy recognised us from the previous day. We explained that Kayleigh wanted an electric guitar if he could help. The guy was really helpful, he accepted the return for full retail price and then Kayleigh chose her guitar - -she wandered around a bit but kept coming back to the Washborn 'Anarchy' and in the end thats the one she chose.

Kayleigh played with her guitar almost every day, but never really got the hang of it. We bought her an Avril Lavinge song book to try and learn and she was OK at one of the songs, but her favourite song to play was of course 'My heart will go on' by Celine Dion. Over and over and over again.



Kayleigh's Guitar



Losing teeth

Kayleigh was our oldest child and as the oldest it meant that some things she did she had never seen happen to anyone else in the family before. A classic example was when she got her first loose tooth.

Now we had always stressed the importance of cleaning her teeth so imagine her complete shock when one day, in kindergarten, one of her bottom teeth had become wobbly. Kayleigh asked her dad and I what was happening - she looked really really worried. We told her that her teeth were going to come out and she would grow new ones. Kayleigh looked at us horrified - and then started crying. I had to give her hugs until she calmed down enough to tell us what was wrong. Kayleigh told us she didn't want her teeth to fall out, it actually scared her and she thought ALL of her teeth were going to fall out all at once. Maybe we explained it badly? I had to talk slowly through it and that only the woobly tooth would come out and then a new tooth would replace it. She was still a little apprehensive until the tooth fairy gave her $2 for it, then she couldn't wait to lose the next one :-)

On your birthday

On this day, 15 years ago, I was in labour, and finally saw you for the first time at 23:23 (11:23 pm). The first thing you did was sneeze. Today, looking back on your life I remember the little thing we did together and the little thing you did by yourself that made you the person that you were.
I remember laying down next to you when you were little and over tired, hugging you and singing to you until you finally stop struggling and eventually went to sleep.
I remember sitting with you reading a book and you being more interested in what your dad was doing than the pictures on the page.
I remember you playing with your dad's tools and playing golf in the backyard.
I remember you grinning at me when you had done the wrong thing.
I remember you trying to tell a lie, me looking straight at you and you breaking out laughing and admitting the truth.
I remember talking to you every night as you went to bed about the people you spoke to at school and what your friends talked about.
I remember fighting with you and you trying to see if you were physically stronger than me (you never were) , and trying to find the boundaries and I remember holding you down on your bed, hugging you until you calmed down.
Most of all I remember you smiles, your laugh and the love you gave. I remember the hugs you gave me every afternoon when I got home from work. And I remember you saying 'I Love you' and I listen to you say it each week on the message you left on my phone.

The turnip play

In either Kindergarten or year one, Kayleigh had the lead role in a play at the year assembly.  She was the only one that had to speak and she was chosen because she had a nice loud voice that would carry through the hall. The play was based on the story of the farmer who wanted to pull out a turnip from the ground, and it was too hard so got help (by his wife, the horse, the cat, the dog etc). Each time a new 'helper' was added Kayleigh had to yell '1,2,3'. The funny thing was that the (rather large cardboard) turnip - which was velcro'ed onto the back of a table on a sheet - kept falling off, so Kayleigh basically had to hold it steady and pretend that it wasn't about the hit the floor. Then when it was supposed to be 'pulled' out of the ground, the turnip finally stuck and Kayleigh pulled it up sheet and all. She then had to wrestled with the sheet to get the turnip off. It was all rather funny. Kayleigh took it all in her stride (some young kids would have been devastated) and laughed as well. I was proud of her.

Fundraising Chocolates - please never again

Kayleigh had lots of times where she had to sell fundraising chocolates for school, In preschool we sold 3 boxes of freddo frogs to people at my work -it seemed to go OK and I didn't mind.

However - - - in year 2, Kayleigh and Natassja were given a mixed box of malteasers, starburst sankes etc to sell at $4 a box - a total of 20 boxes in all (or $80 worth). Somehow they brought them home without Terence noticing them, and Kayleigh did not tell me that they had them to sell. I didn't find out until a week later when I was cleaning their room and found 20 EMPTY boxes of malteasers/starburst under the bed, at the back of the cupboard and in their clothes. Kayleigh and Natassja managed to eat ALL the boxes. I was horrified because now we were in debt to the school for $80 with nothing to show for it.

The school was really good about it - the poor front counter staff member was in tears of laughter when we told her, and they allowed us to pay them off. I must say, from that point on it was 'Fundraising chocolates - not thinks. Please, never again!!!!'

Things to be grateful for

Although Kayleigh has passed away, I can't help feeling a little grateful about things, even though I want her back more than anything in the world.

1. I know that she is no longer here
I am grateful that I know what happened - think about the high profile stories like Daniel Morcombe and the hundreds of families each year that have children and teenagers go missing. They don't know if their kids are alive or dead. They don't know what was happened to them. I can grieve over my lost girl, they can't. They have a sense of loss, but not knowing what has happened means they can't grieve properly or really move on - they have a hole in their lives that had huge question marks around it.

2. She wasn't in pain when she passed.
By all accounts, because Kayleigh heart failed, she would have been completely unaware that she was dying. and if she was it would have been less than 10 seconds of possible awareness - to her it was probably like going to sleep. For all the kids that have died in horrible car accidents, house fires, beaten up by others - they would have been scared, frightened and in pain - maybe for hours before they died. I am grateful in a way that Kayleigh did not suffer before she died.

3. We got to say goodbye
Those 36 hours that Kayleigh was on life support was hard, but it give give us, the other kids and the family a chance to say good bye, to be there when she breathed her last breath and to listen to her fading heart beat. So many people do not get that chance, they go to bed at night and find their beloved child gone in the morning.

4. We got to know her
So many people that I know have lost children as an infant - some a couple of days after birth, some a little later. We had Kayleigh for 13 1/2 years and am I grateful that we knew her that long. Yes I would have preferred that I was old and grey before she died, but we saw her grow and got to know her personality and watch her as she struggled to make friends and be happy with herself. So many people don't even get this opportunity.

5. She was happy
Kayleigh did not want to die. She had finally got to a place in her life where she was happy at home and at school. She had friends that cared, she felt like things were finally on track for her. There are many suicides each year by teenagers that are depressed and not coping. Suicide is a tragic horrible loss for everyone. Kayleigh had been depressed in year 6, she struggled daily to be happy, but she found what she was missing when she went to high school. I am grateful that Kayleigh wanted to live, wanted to experience life - she didn't want to die.

What frustrated me the most after Kayleigh passed away

When Kayleigh passed away, the first week was very difficult - won't go into it now. After that I started getting very frustrated and in fact angry at one group of people - the religious pushy people. Now don't get me wrong, I respect people with religious beliefs and have many friends that attend church regularly and none of them were an issue. They all know that I am not religious in any way (I would class myself as atheist / agnostic) but there were people on the fringes, and even people that we didn't know who would push their religion on us, at a time where it was not wanted or liked.

The first came a couple of days after Kayleigh died - before the funeral. I don't know who sent it, but I got a whole wad of pamphlets and information about God and the afterlife and how children are chosen to be angels in heaven. I took one look at it and saw red. I think that wad of paper was put in the fire that night. I was so angry that people would use my grief to push their ''message''. The weeks after saw a parade of people, some that we sort of knew through our children and some that we did not know at all, approach us. Most gave their condolences, which was appreciated, but there were the few that couldn't help themselves. We were barraged with many versions of the following:

1. 'She's with her god now, she's in a better place'.
2. 'God needed another angel and she was chosen'
3. 'I've spoken to my priest and he would love to meet with you and discuss gods way'
4. 'Although you are sad, she is with god now and she's happy, so you should be happy too'

I'm sorry to say that many times I wanted to punch these 'well meaning' people in the face. I'm sorry - 'her god???' Kayleigh wasn't religious. 'She's happy now????' Ummmmm, please explain........ and 'you're discussing me and my family personally, with your priest and I don't even know you'. I was polite and thanked them and moved on, but inside I was seething. I didn't want their religious crap (sorry, that's how I felt) and I knew that in some way that these people thought they were doing to right thing, to give us......something. But it made me stop wanting to go to places where people would know us and want to talk because I didn't want another well meaning religious discussion about how Kayleigh and god were going.

A word of advice, if someone you know experiences a tragedy like this, and you don't know if they are religious, or what religion they may follow - don't mention your religion, because you are not helping. Not at all.