Disclaimer – These blogs are really just a means for me to try and sort through my grief. This post is about the day my whole world turned upside down, the day Chris died. While writing is helpful for me, I don’t want anyone to be unnecessarily upset so PLEASE if you think it will be too much for you please don’t read ahead.

You wake up from most nightmares and they’re over. Mine was different. I was awake when it started and I’ve barely slept since. It was August 24th, 2017, a date when life, as I’d known it, stopped forever. It started out as it had hundreds of days before. I felt the familiar tickle of whiskers on my forehead as Chris kissed me goodbye on his way out the door to work. He had always been an early riser and so 6am starts suited him perfectly unlike me who was grateful to have a couple more hours of sleep before I was forced to face my working day. As Georgia and I headed out the door for school and work two or so hours later she reminded me for the hundredth time that it was her Book Week parade the next day and there were things I still had to get to complete her costume. Nagging was a trait she and Chris shared and between the two of them sometimes I thought they were going to send me to the brink of insanity. Still, having faithfully promised to have the costume complete by the time I picked her up that afternoon I continued on my way to work.

As it was, that particular Thursday not a usual day at work. We had four students from a church in Melbourne doing a placement with us for two weeks. They were a great crew and I had really enjoyed the week and a half they had already been there. The four of them planned to be in the city that morning to do some work at an organisation who provides meals for the homeless and I was going to catch up with them later. Knowing that’s what they were doing I had expected the office to be empty and was surprised to see my dad there when I rocked up a little after 9am. It was his and Mum’s 49th Wedding Anniversary and romantic that he is, he was organising a few lovely surprises for Mum.  In the end, I was incredibly glad he was there. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been there on my own.

It was around ten when I got the first phone call. It was from a number I didn’t recognise so I almost didn’t pick up. The person on the other end of the line introduced himself and said there had been an “incident” out at the Murrumbateman site, that they thought Chris had had a heart attack and asked if I wanted to go out there. I’m certain that this was probably the hardest phone call this man had ever had to make, and in the days, weeks and months that have followed I desperately hope that all of Chris’s workmates who were there and involved on the day have not been too adversely affected by what must have been a traumatic day for them as well.

I don’t think my reaction to the first phone call was what this man expected because I didn’t rush to go out there. In my nursing head, I thought, by the time I got out to Murrumbateman Chris would have been in the ambulance and well on his way to hospital.  At that time, in my mind, there was no way my big, larger than life husband was not going to be okay. He hadn’t had any chest pain in the past, no cardiac symptoms whatsoever, so this had to be just a small thing, it might even be a bit of a wake-up call in the same way his toe amputation had been a few years ago. So I thanked Chris’s workmate for letting me know and said that I would wait to hear from them to tell me when he was on his way to the hospital and what hospital it would be and I would meet them there.

Proving that you’re never too old to need your dad, I went into my Dad’s office to tell him what was happening and to get a reassuring “everything is going to be okay”, even though I was still confident that it was nothing too serious. I mean, how could it have been? Chris was in the best shape of his life. His weight on the scales was as low as it had ever been, he had been playing Oz Tag and football and for the most part, was eating a healthy diet. There was no way Chris was going to be anything other than okay.

My stomach didn’t start to churn and get knots in it until about fifteen minutes after the first phone call. Surely they should have called by now to tell me which hospital Chris was being transferred to. Mum, who had just happened to have called the office not long after the first phone call and could tell that I was starting to get anxious, suggested that I call Chris’s mobile which I did with no luck. From that moment on I was tossed between my normal optimistic self and a growing uneasiness that something was VERY wrong. My head was being bombarded with questions that were being fired at an alarming rate. Why hadn’t anyone called to tell me which hospital Chris was being taken to? Was he still in Murrumbateman? It couldn’t really be that serious, could it? Should I get in the car and go? WHAT WAS HAPPENING? And then, less than half an hour from the first phone call, the second call came. There was no hesitation this time, my hands could not move quickly enough to pick up the phone and answer the call. Of course, if I’d known then what I know now I would never have picked up the phone.

It was Nick Georgalis on the phone, the big boss of Geocon and someone Chris really admired and had a lot of time for. Once again, I have no doubt that it must have been one of the most difficult phone calls he had ever had to make, but I will remember exactly what he said for the rest of my life. “Hi Rachel, this is Nick Georgalis. I am really sorry to have to tell you but Chris is gone”. And with those twenty words, my world completely fell apart.

I remember screaming out at the top of my lungs “Noooooooo”. It was guttural, it was painful, it was utter disbelief and shock. I looked across the table at my Dad and the look on his face told me I didn’t have to say anymore. Dad picked up the phone I had dropped and left the room to finish the conversation with Nick, desperate to find out any details that would make sense of something that seemed so nonsensical it couldn’t be true. I remember hitting the wall over and over again, hoping that the pain in my hand would overtake the pain that had taken up residence in my heart. Such is grief, days later I looked down at the bruises on my hand and couldn’t figure out how they got there. With each blow, all I could say was “no”. Dad came back into the office and we hugged each other and sobbed, and still, the only words out of my mouth were “no”. It felt like someone had reached into my chest and ripped my heart out. Something they don’t tell you about the death of a loved one is that it is a complicated thing and that there was no time to be self-indulgent because even though I was still in shock and disbelief, there were people to notify and phone calls to be made.

I sat there, phone in hand trying to figure out how I was going to tell people that my big, handsome, wonderful husband had died. How was I going to tell Georgia, the other kids, Chris’s dad (who I also call Dad), his sisters, his extended family, my extended family, our friends? Through blurred eyes, I looked up numbers and made call after call between talking to family coming to the office. They were the hardest phone calls I have ever had to make and that, along with the trauma of seeing the grief on the faces of my children, in particular, will stay with me for the rest of my life. Each phone call had the same response, disbelief that a wondeful forty-year-old, loving and funny man who everyone just knew was ten foot tall and bulletproof was no longer here. Each phone call was punctuated with moments where neither party could speak because we were crying so hard, crying enough to fill an ocean. Each phone call ended with some version or another of “I just can’t believe this has happened.”

Each time someone new came to the office we would hug tightly, not willing to let go of each other. Each time someone new came to the office, the same shock and disbelief that was there in the phone calls manifested itself in the silence where words were not necessary. From the moment that second phone call came through the minutes felt like hours, the hours like days and at the same time, it felt like the time had just stopped completely.

In the middle of all of this were phone calls from medical staff letting me know that Chris had been taken to Goulburn Hospital. They explained what would be happening in the coming days, all necessary and yet it seemed cruel at the time. Because Chris had died in NSW they were not able to bring him to a hospital in the ACT. I know to some it may seem ridiculous but I didn’t want him to be there, I wanted him to be brought back here to Canberra. This was where he was living, it had been his home for 12 years. It would have meant that he was closer to his family and friends, not alone in an unfamiliar place. I totally understand that this was completely irrational but it was how I was feeling at the time. I hadn’t even had a chance to wrap my head around the fact that five thirty would come and go that day and Chris would not be coming home, and something that seemed like bureaucratic red tape was just adding to an incredibly stressful time. It seemed so unfair that even though Chris had only just gone, there were practicalities that needed to be made and even though they were necessary, it seemed absurd that these “necessities” had to be interjected into our grief. It was almost like things were being compartmentalised into, on one side the overwhelming grief and enormous loss and the other, those practicalities that had to be taken care of. On autopilot, I did what I had to as quickly as I could so I could give my time to what I considered to be more important, the people around me.

I had to go home at that point, people would be starting to arrive and I needed to be there. I was torn at the idea of going home. On the one hand, the thought of going to a house that would never be the same because Chris would not be there anymore to make it a home was overwhelming. On the other hand, the idea of being where he could at least be felt through photos and where memories were close won the day. As close family and friends began to arrive all we could do was hug each other and cry, words seemed so inadequate to express the unfathomable loss and sadness. I will be forever grateful for everyone who came that day.

Even though not much was said or done for the rest of that day, I was actually dreading people leaving, terrified of being alone with my thoughts. I was willing nighttime not to come because even though I was physically and emotionally exhausted I knew that the nighttime would not be my friend and sleep would not come. I also knew the battle that nighttime would be for Georgia, whose bedtime routine of being tucked in and kissed goodnight by her father would never be the same again. The night inevitably came of course and with it a darkness more than night descended. A darkness which came in the form of questions I will never know the answers to but which plagued me nevertheless. Things like, what were his last thoughts? Were they of us? Was he scared? Did he want me there with him?  Did he know how much I loved and needed him? How were we going to live without him? Why him? Why now? Why wasn’t I given the chance to say goodbye? But the biggest question which tormented me that night and continues to torment me is this – would he have fought harder to stay if he had heard my voice and knew I was there?

That day, the day Chris went away, the day that has changed my life irrevocably ended in the wee hours of the next morning when I eventually cried myself to sleep. When the next day arrived and I woke up the realisation of what had happened the day before hit me with such force that it felt like I had actually been physically punched in the stomach. I remember sitting up in bed and saw the sun peeking through the curtains and wondering how that could be. It seemed incredulous to me that the earth was still turning, that the sun was still able to shine and the birds able to sing when my world had completely shattered. How dare the rest of the world continue to act as if nothing had changed when EVERYTHING  had changed. As I forced myself to get up and out of bed I remembered a poem I had heard that hadn’t made sense before but now described so well how I was feeling that morning.

                               He was my North, my South, my East and West,
                               My working week and my Sunday rest,
                               My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
                               I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

                               The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
                               Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
                               Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
                               For nothing now can ever come to any good.

You wake up from most nightmares and they’re over. Mine was different. I was awake when it started and I’ve barely slept since. It was August 24th, 2017, a date when life, as I’d known it, stopped forever.

Always & forever….