The dawning of grief, By Tracey Vale

On a mild summer’s day, the faded blue-grey Holden station wagon pulled up behind the oval. My three brothers and I stood at the edge of the gravel car-park, set between the Primary and Junior Primary Schools in Belair, waiting for the old blue Volkswagon, with its two big peeling flowers decorating the bonnet, to pull up, Mum at the wheel. But it wasn’t Mum at the wheel and it wasn’t the Volkswagon, or ‘Bonkswagon’ as my little brother, Ricky called it.

Dad leaned his lanky frame over to open the rear door. I slid across the red vinyl seat and waited for an explanation as my brothers settled in also.

I don’t remember the actual telling of my little cousin’s sudden death. I’m not sure if he told us in the car in the school car-park, or if he waited until we got home, or if it was Mum who told us. What I do remember is returning home that day, coming through the back door and standing in the kitchen to hear an unfamiliar sound. Down the passage, in their bedroom, Mum was sobbing.

I had only heard that sound once before—when Grandad died, my father’s father. I recall thinking this, at the sound, and associating it with the event of something terrible. A death. It is with the recollection of this thought, this realisation that something serious was afoot, that I believe we were not told until we were home and Mum could be there as well. I remember seeing her there, sitting hunched on the edge of the bed.

Although I can’t recall the telling, I can recall the details. I can still picture the playing out of events in the same way I’d pictured it then. I saw Jeanie, dressed in a short skirt and white cardigan, socks and brown shoes, as she passed through the gate in the side fence that separated them from their neighbours. I saw my Aunt waving her goodbye, Jeanie’s little sister, Laurie, leaning against her leg.

The next view is of Jeanie sitting behind the front passenger seat, her seatbelt unattached beside her.

In the front seat was a boy, though I can’t recall his name, with a box on his lap. It is his mother who is driving them to kindergarten. It made sense for the neighbours, who were also good friends, to take turns at delivering their same-age children to the centre.

I can see the scenery as Jeanie would have seen it. Country roads and slanting sun through properties studded with stately gums. The road they are on now falls away at the edge. The ground is dry with straw-coloured, long, fine grass and dappled with light filtering easily through the gum trees.

The boy lifts the lid on his box to check on its contents. He had found and caught a frog from the creek and was excited at the prospect of showing it off at kindy. The frog leapt from the box toward the driver. She screamed in fright and waved an arm, agitated and in an attempt to keep it away. As the car hit the edge of the road, she lost control. It rose up on its two side wheels, as though in slow motion, over-balanced and barrelled down the siding.

Jeanie had been thrown from the car at the first force of the roll. I can picture the side window shattering with the impact, the blood on tiny bits of broken glass. Her body landing on the grass, as though she was sleeping on her side, and the car continuing it’s roll over her tiny body.

I understood she was crushed but I didn’t picture her like that. I saw her in that sleeping position on the grass, scratched and a little bruised, her hair messed up with bits of twigs and leaves.

In the background I can see the ambulance crew, a passer-by and the police. The driver and her son have been pulled from the car, unscathed. The boy looks shell-shocked and terrified, believing, perhaps, that this is all his fault. The boy’s mother is screaming and stretching one arm out toward Jeanie’s unmoving body. An ambulance officer has an arm firmly around her bent form, preventing her from moving toward the girl. The other hand is swiping at her face, up and down as she weeps, her mouth malformed in its shock and thoughts of Jeanie’s mother. Thoughts of what this meant. The unreality of it. The finality.

I didn’t cry when Jeanie died. I don’t think I cried when Grandad died either. I was too young. I remember being curious about how it had happened. I was told he’d suffered a heart attack just as he sat down to the evening meal. I remember asking Grandma, visualising the meal of peas, mashed potato and a lamb chop, if his face had landed in the peas. I think now that I could recall that question because I realised afterwards that I shouldn’t have asked it. Mum had gently admonished me as she stood to one side of Grandma’s kitchen door, and Grandma, standing in the doorway, simply looked at me. I can’t recall if she answered.

This is not to say I didn’t care or feel sad. I did feel these things and I understood the sadness and solemnity of death—I was always a very caring, deeply feeling and empathetic child but I was simply too young to fully comprehend. I understood that there was grief and loss and that a gaping hole remained in the lives of those left behind, especially for the parents of a child. But I think deeper feelings of grief and loss come only with an older child.

I was in high school when my Grandmother died. I felt crushed and overwhelmingly grieved. I didn’t know how I would ever get over never being able to see her again. The finality.

As has happened often, at various stages in my life, it brought back Jeanie’s death and how my aunt and uncle must have felt. How deep their grief must have been and continues to be. But still, I didn’t have the complete comprehension of this—and couldn’t have until I was a parent.

I thought of Jeanie when I had my first daughter. I thought of her again when I had my second daughter. I thought about Laurie and what she had missed without her older sister by her side, through the good or the bad.

Mostly, though, I thought about the sadness of that loss for her parents. 

I had a friend who lived in Gould Creek, just near where Jeanie had lived in One Tree Hill. When I visited this friend, I drove past the One Tree Hill Cemetery where Jeanie is laid to rest. I remember the funeral and, later, posing by her grave. My aunt had asked for this symbol of sadness and contemplation—a child considering the loss of another child. The photograph shows me kneeling by the grave, my head bent in solemnity.

With my two daughters safely buckled in to the backseat of my car, I cried then, as I passed those cemetery gates. I can’t imagine picking myself up after the loss of a child. How was it ever possible to cope with that? I recall the newspaper article with a picture of my aunt and uncle, heads bent over the framed pictures of Jeanie’s kindergarten artwork. I have great respect for those who have been forced to overcome such adversity. To get to the other side of great pain and loss and move forward, despite that gaping hole still being there and despite the fact that they can never truly get over such loss.

R.I.P. Jeanie Marie Talbot