The worst thing about living overseas

Some of the most poignant memories I have from the days just after you died are from people who weren't able to be here. Chaals. Jarkko, Sarah J. D and her "fuckoff big bunch of bright red roses" which we all heaped on your coffin.

Jonathan's email from Dublin, which began simply "The worst thing about living overseas..."
I'm reminded of these days just now because of the emotional farewell of our friend Nick, once of Islendinga, on the death this week of his great mate Raynes, whom you knew. You would appreciate Nick's tribute:"You were a true believer in all things viking and punk..."

Jonathan was right, you know. In the four and a half years I have lived in England and Italy, being away for marriages and even births is hard. You aren't there for some of the happiest moments in the lives of the people you love best. But eventually you go home, and meet the nieces and nephews, the new husbands and wives, see the new homes, the photos, or you follow unfolding adventures on blogs and facebook.

But the worst part is not being there to say goodbye, being unable to share in the final rituals, the making sure that people have the means to be okay... or at least to begin to cope. Sharing memories and laying the foundations of the mental tributes we will take forward, becoming the people we will be, because we knew you.

So if you see Raynes in Valhalla (for the gods know that some fall in battle against foes that wield weapons far more deadly than a mere blade, so we know that's where he's gone), have a drink with him, for us. Because I will have to wait a long time to tell those at home how much I wished I could have been there, for a final drink with them.

Birthday wishes

Today, you would be 38, and as always, I find myself wondering what you would look like. As the texts roll around through our little band of 'friends who remember', I wonder what kind of bash it would have been this year. I wonder where you would be working, would it be with wine, or food, or both? What gorgeous new look would you be sporting - a hat, a waistcoat, some new scarf... I wish, I wish we could see you now.

I figured out a long while ago that if Mikko could have found a way to reconcile the beautiful and terrible within (to say nothing of the way he experienced these forces in the world), he'd have done it. I have wished, more times than I can count, that I could have worked out how to bottle whatever it was that makes the difference between climbing out of a hole, and not.

He is not the only one of us to have sat alone in the dark at the bottom of that hole... but he is the one of us that is no longer here. I look at this circle of friends - all the people who leaned on one another during those terrible first few months - and even while I miss him, I am relieved - proud, even - that the rest of us are still here. I think he's a bit of an arse for missing it all. But more than that, I wish he was still here, because the more birthdays he doesn't have, the further away he drifts from the rest of us. He is falling behind.

Because whatever it is, there IS something that CAN keep rising in the face of darkness, even when the ground beneath our feet rumbles, shudders and disappears. There IS a capacity for Life, the Universe, Divine Intervention, the power of the human spirit or whatever you want to call it, to keep inspiring us to reach beyond ourselves and toward the stars.

I wish I could bottle that, and toast you with it every year, to keep you going til the next one.
But I can't, so I will toast you and drink it for me, and for all of us still here.

Happy birthday Mikko.

Blowing away cobwebs, and drying old tears

I'm back today from my first trip home in two years. I don't know how on earth you stayed away from Finland as long as you did... 9 years ... now I know why you shook as we were landing. I was a jumble of tears and excitement on the plane.

For Anthony, the break has been even longer - four years and a half. All his siblings have moved back home to Invercargill since we've been away and have been busily bringing forth the next generation.

So there was much rejoicing, but I also found myself contemplating a collision of past worlds and present that bears retelling here.

Anthony's dad has been sober for more than 29 years. On my first trip to meet Clan Cundall, it was his 25th 'birthday' (its an AA thing.... it wouldn't work for me, and I know you used to bag AA - but perhaps you were just afraid it might work? Anyway, it does work wonders for my father in law). So we had a party.

You had been gone a year and a week and a couple of days. I helped hand around food and stood with Hailey, my sister in law to the end of the speeches, blinking back tears of pride for this man I hardly knew, but whose struggle I can vividly imagine.

Then I quietly fled, overcome by a huge sense of 'if only' and a desperate desire to not cry at someone's party.

Anthony's family doesn't talk much, but nothing escapes their notice and after about 10 minutes, my father-in-law came looking for me. I could hardly speak through trying to hold back tears.... but eventually I managed to say that I hoped it was okay if I was enormously proud of his achievement, because I can imagine ... because I used to know someone, who never found his way.

I was embarrassed. I needn't have been. Next came a great big hug, from this man who still goes to meetings each week, still has hard times of his own, and still mentors others. On this latest visit, as I watched my father in law playing with his grandkids in the afternoon, pouring the rest of us a glass of wine at dinner then slipping out to his meeting, I felt an enormous bout of respect. He hasn't conquered his demons either - maybe you don't, in this life - but he is determined to take them on.... one day at a time.

Han...

I bought myself the West Wing on DVD for my birthday in February. All seven series, twenty-two episodes per season. Throughout seasons one and two I was flooded with memories of Tuesday nights in Abbotsford, evenings of popcorn and "doona on the couch", of red wine with biccies and cheese, of hours-in-the-making risotto. And the West Wing.

Tonight, I'm on Season 5. "Han" is the episode about a brilliant young North Korean pianist who wants to defect. Anti-nuclear negotations are underway with the "Dear Leader's" government so the president says no.

"Han" is presented as the Korean word for a feeling that has no direct english translation. "It's a state of mind, of the soul, really. A sadness so deep that no tears will come. But still there is hope".

I have known this feeling in both its parts.

It's the "But still there is hope" part that makes us able to overcome even the most aching loss, the most gasping grief, the deepest sorrow.

It's the part that makes us able to keep the best of someone in the world long after they themselves have lost the courage to remain, that teaches us to smile through our tears, to keep the remnants of dreams and evolve them into something wholly our own.

I'm changing. I think you'd be proud of who I am becoming, (even if your pride might be a little dented at the idea that I have, by necessity, learned to live without you)... but that's not why I am going through this. You will always be the greatest love of my twenties, and this great grief is still painful. But I am in my 30s now. And I am going through it for me.

Standing in someone else's shoes...

...living someone else's life. Sometimes I wonder if the life I am living is yours - the one you would have lived, if you had lived, and if you had learned to overthrow your fear.

For so many years I was in awe of your worldly upbringing: the new years' parties at ambassadorial residences (when you were 7), the grade 6 trip to Greece, to say nothing of the authentically egalitarian fundraising that went on for years beforehand, so that no kid could be excluded by their family's lack of means. Your travels around the world, the summer internship in Vienna, medic days in the navy, the radical parents (o how times have changed) who ignored local scorn for the single mum whose husband had committed suicide and left their only child with her to care for, and who made jokes about porn to embarrass your teenaged mates.... I was in awe of your education, your five languages, your latin, your encyclopaedic knowledge of history, your citizen-of-the-world view of life.

I was in awe... of you.

Now, I suddenly find I'm living a life I could never have imagined for that tongue tied, monolingual, clever-but-narrowly-educated, ardent-but-illogical, most-of-all shy girl from the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I am working for the UN. I am living in Rome. I go to the beach on friday nights and drink cocktails while the sun sets over the Mediterranean and talk about world politics and why WFP still sells bottled water. I work with women who have delivered aid programmes in Afghanistan and North Korea and get training on how to withstand hostage taking from a bloke (I kid you not, his name is Gordon Brown) who had his leg nearly blown off in Pakistan last June.

I wish you were here. You would love this. You would love just knowing that someone you know is doing this.

I find it humbling beyond words to realise that it is ME doing this.

And on the lonely weekends, where I have only my own four walls to talk to, I understand the constant pressure to succeed and shine and impress, the desire to ring home for hours on end and never mind the huge phone bills; the urge to go outside, anywhere, just to be out of the house... I understand the utter frustration of being the "dumb foreigner" who can't speak the language well enough to ask for even the most mundane things. And I understand, as I never did before, how sometimes the longer you're away the harder it is to go home, and how easy all that makes it to stay up too late at night and have one too many vinos.

I understand the fear of failure because I have seen it reflected in my own eyes. (Sometimes, this job is so hard. I wonder if I can bear it.)

But I also know the joy of finding a laneway whose crooked shadows reveal unexpected treasures; the old guy in a leather apron who repairs shoes for a pittance (he's just off the Piazza of the Trevi fountain, btw); the pure grinning joy of being on a bicycle in the sunshine, ignoring the faceful of windblown hair in eyes and mouth, of discovering the special places that do some signature dish, or a piece of clever recycling, or that flavour of icecream you've never found anywhere else in the world and may never again. (Fig, by the way, is my latest favorite.)

I know the frustration of making a million shallow acquaintances and the glow of wondering if perhaps this person might become a true friend.

Life is hard. Sometimes it's achingly, crushingly, lonely and sometimes bad things happen that make us want to weep. Sometimes - too often - in the wider world, those bad things are done by people, to other people. But there is always some little thing, waiting around the corner, in the smile of a child, the love in a friend's voice, the arm of a lover, or just the glitter of sunlight on the river, that makes it all worth while.

And yet.... in our quest for glory its so easy to forget those things... I wish I knew what it was about human nature that drives us to forget the good things and go diving into the darkness, following it all the way to the bottom of the glass.

It doesn't have to be this hard - this impossibility that we make for ourselves with the messages inside our heads. We may not be able to change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, but we can always choose how we respond to them. The truly hardest part is remembering that, even while sitting alone in the gloom.

Staying there can be so tempting.

And perhaps this is the thing, the "one thing" that we wish we could name and bottle....we battered and imperfect souls who have somehow climbed out of the abyss and wondered how we did it when others we have loved - people we thought were stronger than us - have fallen beside us.

I wish, more than ever, that I had had back then the insight I think I may be coming into now. But perhaps that's what makes it so precious, this hard won wisdom, that it requires hard times in order to win it, and few of us come through that are able to see past our own scars.

With or without Saint Nick...

Nick Riewoldt was the number one draft pick in 2000. An auspicious year in many respects.

Last year, I was up at 6.30am to haul my aching head and queasy belly down to the Scholars Lounge (oh how you would love and loathe it!) to watch the Saints vs Geelong in the grand final. The pub was packed by 7am.

In the end, I think I would have to back my dad's assessment of the thing... Geelong have been THE dominant AFL side for the past 3-4 years, and for them to win 2 out of three was somehow fitting. But Lady McLaughlan and I were texting one another "like mad things that texts alot" right through the final quarter, before the Saints finally went down by 12. We both shuddered to think how you would have faced the day. Probably at colquhouns, probably messsy.

Its a new season now, and I am hoping against hope that the boys finally figure out how to avoid "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory". Although with Riewoldt out for an unknown break with a torn hammy, the job just got a whole lot harder.

Still, if the Blues can do it after sacking Fev, surely a side like the Saints can learn that there's is much more to football glory than just one man up front. Even a freak with an amazing boot.

The Saints will always have a special place in my heart... right beside my very own blueboys.

And its all your fault ;-)

Proof...

Italy has given me more than a new home, new job, and new haircut.

Against all odds, and to what I am sure would be your endless amusement, Italy has taught me to enjoy coffee.

Only ever "normale" (I tried caffe macchiato, or 'baby capuccino', but it's somehow not right), taken with almost as much sugar as my engineering colleagues put in theirs, and NEVER ever 'americano'. The proof is in the piccy above.

For the record, anchovies (fresh ones, or marinated, not those fuzzy hairballs they put on pizzas in Aus), possibly artichokes and even the occasional eggplant also make the culinary radar from time to time.

Just don't expect any revolutions on olives. Or tripe. And that goes double for herrings.

Purple people unite against Berlusconi

I can't retell most of the Mikko stories about Italian politics - Berlusconi Corp would be all over this blog like a rash if I did. But after less than a year living in this country, I believe every last one. The man who last year famously commented that he had "spent a fortune on judges, I mean, lawyers" had even the Economist screaming for him to step down by the end of last year.

Now people power is starting to speak. In purple. And people are wearing it everywhere.

I was travelling around Umbria at the weekend (this is Spoleto duomo, above, and near the Rocca below), having just been brought up to speed by my travelling chum Kate, the two of us exchanging constant knowing glances. It took 2 seconds for me to start rummaging around my luggage for something appropriate to wear. Not hard, being me.

And the "viola" in my wardrobe will be on high rotation in the coming weeks and months.

Your dust from a distant sun....

Tell me all the things you would change
I don't pretend to know what you want
when you come around and spin my top
time and again, time and again

No fire where I lit my spark
I am not afraid of the dark
Where your words devour my heart
And put me to shame, put me to shame

When your seven worlds collide
Whenever I'm by your side
Dust from a distant sun
will shower over everyone

Still so young to travel so far
Old enough to know who you are
Wise enough to carry the scars
Without any blame, there's no one to blame

It's easy to forget what you learned
Waiting for the thrill to return
Feeling your desire burn
And drawn to the flame

When your seven worlds collide
Whenever I'm by your side
Dust from a distant sun
will shower over everyone
Dust from a distant sun
will shower over everyone

And I'm lying on the table
Washed out in a flood
Like a Christian feeling vengeance from above
I don't pretend to know what you want
But I offer love

Seven worlds will collide
Whenever I'm by your side
Dust from a distant sun

Will shower over everyone