Lonely road of grief after child’s death

to another man who had been through a similar experience helped him cope. ‘‘I thought, ‘there is someone else who has been through this horrific ordeal and pain and managed to come out, to get through it’,’’ says Toomer. ‘‘That was a really helpful moment actually. You just have to try to survive any way you can.’’

Guerin now co-ordinates the Bereaved Parents support group in Christchurch.

She describes it as a ‘‘privilege’’ but also says that it’s a group that ‘‘no-one wants to join’’. It aims to offer gentle support to those navigating the fog of grief that losing a much loved child brings. ‘‘Meeting with other bereaved parents has also brought hope and insight into my life,’’ she says. ‘‘The old ones tell our stories and help the new ones, it’s an environment for that. Sometimes people come along who have been involved with high profile events, they’ve lost their child, they’re dealing with media interest. We want them to feel safe.’’

Guerin believes that western society isn’t geared up to deal with grief.

‘‘It’s so abhorrent in our socalled civilised society,’’ Guerin says. ‘‘We build in buffers against negative stuff and when it happens I don’t know that we are geared up to offer sustained support. There is a lot of support around the actual event, and a few months after, then people slope back.’’

She recounts the recent experience of a person from the Bereaved Parents group.

‘‘It was just a few months after her daughter had died,’’ Guerin says.

‘‘A colleague said to her ‘why aren’t you back full time?’ Sadly that’s not unusual.’’

She folds her arms around herself when asked if she is a strong person.

‘‘I don’t feel particularly strong,’’ she says. ‘‘For the first few months for me the group was helpful, talking to people who are a few years down the track you think ‘that could be me’. Even though, of course, their child was a massive part of their lives, they were no longer defined by their grief and loss.’’

Guerin admits that if she wasn’t running the Bereaved Parents group she might be in a different place emotionally.

‘‘It’s not easy. In some ways it does leave me remembering... but it does mean, too, that the grief doesn’t reach up and grab me like it used to.’’

The couple actively memorialise and remember Annie in an ongoing way.

Walking around her kitchen, holding a plate of homemade bread, Guerin stops to look at a family photograph of Annie at her second birthday party in August 2000, just four months before she died.

‘‘She’d have been a stroppy teenager,’’ she says. Toomer smiles. ‘‘She was feisty,’’ he agrees. ‘‘She loved the Wiggles and would sing loudly.’’

Guerin knows that she and Toomer will grieve for their daughter for the rest of their lives.

‘‘Society is not geared up to continually remember what we’ve lost and the continuing effects of it,’’ she says.

‘‘Why have a close bond with your child and when they go it ends? It makes no sense at all. Society has a squeamishness... you’re a bit spooky if you keep talking about the dead person.’’

Annie’s death became a defining moment for Guerin in terms of her relationships with family and friends.

‘‘It’s like your whole life is a bucket of all types of people,’’ she says. ‘‘The bucket gets tipped upside down and you go back to the basics. What have we got here? What relationship adds to my life and what takes away?’’

She believes that the first two years after such a loss is a ‘‘sacred’’ time.

‘‘You can’t relate to people who take away or add to the burden that you’re coping with.’’

Her ‘‘amazing’’ parents moved to Christchurch from the North Island, helped with the couple’s eldest child, Rowan, and kept their household running for nearly a year.

In the months immediately after Annie’s death, Guerin actively avoided any social situations, noting that any situation involving other people was fraught.

A family wedding, mother’s day, father’s day, anniversaries, a friend’s new baby... such occasions are difficult, emotion-filled days no matter how many years pass by.

‘‘Not long after Annie died I remember seeing someone I hadn’t seen for a while. She knew nothing. There is that awful thing of ‘oh...’,’’ she says. ‘‘She was so happy and had a whole string of kids behind her. I didn’t want to ruin her day. I chose not to tell her.’’

A number of people rallied around and offered the couple support. But others ‘‘took to their scrapers and ran’’.

‘‘Especially those with small children. I guess it was scary for them,’’ Guerin says. ‘‘In some ways nothing helps because you won’t get your child back, but in some ways everything helps. A lot of people doing little thoughtful things can add up to be quite profound.’’

One person Guerin didn’t know well took her aside and the pair made art together regularly.

‘‘I made tiles and painted coffee cups, that’s my memory of the first year,’’ she says. ‘‘It was brave of her.’’

An important moment in her grieving process was a ceremony on the spot in the driveway where Annie died.

Guerin gestures to the spot out the window of their living room.

On the wall beside us is a portrait of Annie, painted by a friend. Guerin thinks the eyes in the picture are ‘‘just like Annie’s’’.

‘‘People came together, there was someone with a flute, petals,’’ she recalls. ‘‘Where Annie died was such a scary place for me. At the ceremony people held hands, my father prayed. It was just acknowledgement of facing... for me the garage was scary. To me the ritual helped.’’

When she heard the tragic news, Guerin was working at the neo-natal unit at Christchurch Hospital, caring for premature babies, something she enjoyed doing for 17 years.

‘‘I went back to work with Annie’s funeral notice,’’ she says.

Her work colleagues were supportive and sensitive.

‘‘I was working in the more intensive care part of it but I went back to a more intermediate nursery. I went back feeling vulnerable and I was able to step back into a workplace where they were incredibly aware of how it feels to lose a child.’’

Guerin runs a hand through her red hair and places a hand on her hip. She gazes out the window above my head with a knowing smile.

‘‘At Annie’s funeral we let go a pink helium balloon,’’ she says softly. ‘‘But it didn’t fly away, it just hovered there, then it moved around everyone slowly.’’

Before the 2011 earthquakes, Toomer worked at Canterbury University. ‘‘I was an English language teacher,’’ he says. ‘‘After the earthquakes a lot of the students stopped coming to Christchurch so the job ended. Now I amdoing a PhD in applied linguistics at Victoria University. I commute from Christchurch to Wellington; it’s a bit crazy but it’s interesting so I enjoy it.’’

Almost 10 years after Annie’s death, Toomer had a vivid dream.

In a previous dream, Annie had been walking down an unfamiliar driveway, with her back to him. It left him, he says, feeling empty.

‘‘In this later dream, Annie, still two years old, and I were on opposite sides of a wide pillar on the outside porch of an unknown house,’’ Toomer says, his eyes bright.

A thoughtful, intelligent, man, Toomer chooses his words carefully.

‘‘Although she was on the other side of the pillar – separated from me – at first, she then approached me and said something like, ‘I love you, Daddy’,’’ he says. ‘‘That was a breakthrough moment of selfforgiveness for me.’’

He turned it into a song, Dreaming, and recorded it, and other ‘‘grief songs’’ at Arnie van Bussel’s Nightshift Studio with Guerin singing and playing keyboards. The rock, pop and blues songs were released on Bandcamp.com under the name Sparse with Toomer on guitar, his friend David Harre on drums and Thomas Harre on bass guitar.

‘‘I’ve found singing the songs about her have been helpful for expressing some of my feelings about who she was and who we are now,’’ Guerin says. ‘‘It is sort of like a spiritual connection with Annie.’’

Writing songs about his daughter’s death, his brother’s suicide and the unexpected death of his father, from an asbestosrelated illness, was ‘‘immensely therapeutic’’ for Toomer.

‘‘A number of the songs are grief related.... it was an outlet to express grief. It was helpful therapy.’’

Less than a year after Annie’s death he penned the song Little Angel. It contains the lyrics: "My little angel / Baby, precious baby / You’re my baby, my precious baby / You’re gone but not forgotten."

One line repeated in the song came from one of her paintings, a multi-coloured swirl that she’d painted at her pre-school three days before her death.

The pre-school staff had the painting framed and added the title ‘Annie – gone but not forgotten’.

‘‘Gone but not forgotten is a cliche, I know,’’ Toomer says. ‘‘But somehow it sneaked its way into the song and became a key line.’’

Another song, You’ll Never Die, recounts Toomer’s struggles with his faith as a result of Annie’s death.

The few seconds of voice in the introduction of this song are taken from a tape recording made when Annie was 201⁄ months old.

‘‘I can’t remember the exact situation,’’ Toomer says. ‘‘It may have been dinner time, but Annie is asking me for ‘a little bit’ of drink. I liked the idea of having her voice on audio.’’

Toomer’s belief in an afterlife has offered him comfort.

‘‘Thinking that my daughter is in heaven, that probably is a big thing, that sense of hope,’’ he says. ‘‘If I didn’t have that I guess I still would have coped, it just adds that extra dimension...

‘‘I will see her again one day.’’

At Annie’s funeral we let go a pink helium balloon, but it didn’t fly away, it just hovered there, then it moved around everyone slowly.