"“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” ― Aristotle

 

It's 10 years this week since we said goodbye to your earthly presence. But the great breadth of your mind, the depths of your compassion and the boundlessness of your enthusiasm for a million tiny moments ... all these things beat on in the hearts of those whose lives you touched.

More than once, I've been told I hold on too tight to those things, that it's time to end my 'obsession' with 'trying to behave like some guardian' of your memory, to 'let go' of my grief. Would that I could. I might as well cut off my arms and legs, as try to somehow 'unmake' all the parts of me that were made, or grown, or some other way changed through knowing you. Because they are as much a part of me as all the years of childhood, of adolescence and all the joys and sorrows I have known since.

 And if a handful of posts and fervent conversations every year makes me 'obsessed', then I'm prepared to wear that badge, and embrace my little touch of madness. I'm more than happy to live with that. All the best minds have it somewhere, apparently. And mine could have grown into something so, so much worse. (And maybe, just maybe, even now, talking about you is so much easier than acknowledging that in myself. Even now.)

Besides, to remember where I've come from - to celebrate, from time to time, the things I've learned, and overcome... none of this stops me moving forward. Mikko, you will always be the most defining character of my 20s. Yes, I spent a goodly part of my 30s rebuilding when so much of my world imploded on November 11 2004. But I am not ashamed of my occasional tears in my 40s, and they do not stand in the way of  this full and loving life I lead, or the lifelong learning I am pledged to pursue.

I will go on learning from all the great minds that have gone before me, and I will embrace the madness as I seek to define my own wisdom. On my terms. Always.

10 years on...

10 years ago today, one of the brightest stars in the firmament dimmed and went out. Countless adventures have come and gone since then, for all the folk you loved... and yet memories of that day are etched as clearly as this morning. The uniquely 'you-shaped' hole left in the sky is still visible if folk pause to look for it, and your absence at those times looms as large as once did your presence. There are times when I think you are an arse for leaving, because - despite surging extremism, the advent of sexting, and the appalling rise of Tony Abbott - mostly you've missed out on so much good in the world. And you've missed out on the chance to keep making new stories, to be making a difference, in all ways big and small.And that's what's so infuriating to me about you being gone. You bugger.

Oh Captain, my captain!

"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it" - Robin Williams

The world lost another great mind on Monday. As the world woke this morning to news that Robin Williams, eternal funny man and imparter of some of the greatest onscreen wisdom (think Good Will Hunting, or the Dead Poets' Society) has died by suicide, people shook their heads in disbelief.

"But he was SO full of LIFE", we all said.

But there's the catch, isn't it? It seems the brightest stars are the ones most at risk of burning out; the people who see the beauty, appreciate the wit and perceive the greatest insights in this world, are the ones most at risk of succumbing to the weight of sorrow and helplessness inflicted by greed, cruelty and injustice.

There's so much in his death that reminds me of the day we all lost Mikko. I've cried for this famous funny man, who  I never knew, in ways I haven't in years, and an old grief that i increasingly recognise has never really been processed, is again never very far from the surface.

At the same time, I have been warmed and encouraged by the beautiful response of his daughter Zelda, which reminds me so very much of the way so many people responded in the wake of Mikko.

"My family has always been private about our time spent together. It was our way of keeping one thing that was ours, with a man we shared with an entire world. But now that's gone, and I feel stripped bare. My last day with him was his birthday, and I will forever be grateful that my brothers and I got to spend that time alone with him, sharing gifts and laughter. He was always warm, even in his darkest moments. While Ill never, ever understand how he could be loved so deeply and not find it in his heart to stay, theres minor comfort in knowing our grief and loss, in some small way, is shared with millions. It doesn't help the pain, but at least its a burden countless others now know we carry, and so many have offered to help lighten the load. Thank you for that.

To those he touched who are sending kind words, know that one of his favorite things in the world was to make you all laugh. As for those who are sending negativity, know that some small, giggling part of him is sending a flock of pigeons to your house to poop on your car. Right after youve had it washed. After all, he loved to laugh too

Dad was, is and always will be one of the kindest, most generous, gentlest souls Ive ever known, and while there are few things I know for certain right now, one of them is that not just my world, but the entire world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence. Well just have to work twice as hard to fill it back up again."

To hold memories of someone close as we learn to live with this gaping hole suddenly ripped in our lives, to hold our living friends and family even closer: and to turn an indifferent yet gracious shoulder to those who would judge, or criticise, or blame. This is a rare state of grace. And I hope and pray with all my heart and knowing that through this togetherness, his family finds the same comfort we did, as we learn to live with an absence that can never entirely go away.

Vale Robin Williams. I wish you didn't feel you had to leave. Thank you for a million laughs and a handful of tears. Both are part of your gift to us all. 

A man of our time, for all time: and for all humanity.

I deliberately didn't write here last week - although it seemed once more as though the world must surely have to stop for more than just Remembrance day... I still can't believe you've been gone 9 years. But I was determined that if I was going to write, it had to be something positive. And today, I've found the very thing.

More than once, since March, I've sat back and imagined your triumphant shout of laughter, followed by a gleeful chuckle as I've read about the latest adventures and edicts of Pope Francis. Here is a man who is a living embodiment of the plea to "be the change you want to see in the world". This is the man who said that if a gay person "seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge", and who personally telephoned a pregnant single mother to tell her that if her local priests would not baptise her illegitimate child, he would do it himself.

When I first moved to Italy, I spent hours in rapt fascination learning about the gory matyrdoms of the early saints. But the Saint I've come to love best is Saint Francis, who to me represents what the church was always supposed to be: the church that people like you and I wanted to believe in when we were young and didn't know each other, and that by the time we met we had both turned away from - irrevocably in your case - because the institution that existed before us bore too little resemblance to the things we thought the powers that be would want us to hold dear. And in the absence of strong leaders, the truly good men and women - from Mother Teresa to Archbishop Tutu, from the hardworking Don Mauro of Morimondo to my football-reffing, film-festival founding Anglican vicar grandfather - seemed like anomalies rather than the rule.

And yet, their hard work persists. You'd have appreciated - like no-one else I know - the moment I shared with my cousin Denise a few weeks ago, outside the Villa d'Este at Tivoli. Here, outside this epic monument to cardinal excess, stands a statue of that other Francis, a perfect symbol of humble service. Dee stopped to take endless pictures because "it's so rare to see him depicted like this, looking like the Saint that I know".

That this pope chose that name said much about his intentions. It's thrilling now to see him translating ideals into action for a thoroughly modern world. He's more popular than Obama on the Internet, and his twitter tag (yes, he has one! @pontifex. Get in!) is the 4th most used in that particular fly by night universe. He has already become one of the great liberals of our time. 

Now all we need is for him to make a quick call to Tony Abbott, to tell him to stop being a knobend, and that his policies on refugees, on climate change and a host of other things, are offensive to God.

And if a call from him could bring you back, I'd write to him, and pray.

Because there are moments in life...

And never have regrets...

It's been a while since your birthday, or any other kind of 'Mikko-significant' day, has triggered this much mental exercise for me. I promise you I'm okay, you're just on my mind a lot. Anyway, I saw this and it made me think of you. Rakkain terveisin, Gigiltasi xo

I read his words, I hear your voice

We saw 'Wilde' together at a cinema in South Yarra and sat in awe of Stephen Fry's utterly authentic bringing to life of one of English literature's greatest wits. Your respect for him would have deepened immeasurably - as mine did - when in 2006 he released "The secret life of the Manic Depressive". It was a brave and honest window into his life and mind, and it made many people we know think of you. They wondered what I knew - how much of his thoughts had echoed in your head.

Today, I'm reading another brave offering from this brilliant man with a sometimes broken mind: blunt and sometimes brutal details of a suicide attempt in 2012. You'd have preferred the drama of Hunter S Thompson, who also took his own life around the time you died. But I want to stand up and embrace Stephen Fry for living through such a painful moment (albeit accidentally) and then having the guts to write it down and publish it in all its unglamorous truth.

But some truths don't have to be dramatic to have impact. Parts of Stephen Fry's words go like this:

I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.

Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.

I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.

In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…

I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.
Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.
I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.
In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-lonely/#sthash.oEsJ8Dr4.dpuf

I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.
Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.
I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.
In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-lonely/#sthash.oEsJ8Dr4.dpuf

I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.
Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.
I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.
In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-lonely/#sthash.oEsJ8Dr4.dpuf

I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.
Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.
I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.
In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-lonely/#sthash.oEsJ8Dr4.dpuf

I can be sad for personal reasons because I am often forlorn, unhappy and lonely. These are qualities all humans suffer from and do not qualify (except in their worst extremes) as mental illnesses.
Lonely? I get invitation cards through the post almost every day. I shall be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon and I have serious and generous offers from friends asking me to join them in the South of France, Italy, Sicily, South Africa, British Columbia and America this summer. I have two months to start a book before I go off to Broadway for a run of Twelfth Night there.
I can read back that last sentence and see that, bipolar or not, if I’m under treatment and not actually depressed, what the fuck right do I have to be lonely, unhappy or forlorn? I don’t have the right. But there again I don’t have the right not to have those feelings. Feelings are not something to which one does or does not have rights.
In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…
- See more at: http://www.stephenfry.com/2013/06/24/only-the-lonely/#sthash.oEsJ8Dr4.dpuf

I read this post, and I hear your words, spoken in your voice in my head. Only unlike you, and mercifully for the legions who love him personally and we millions who love his work, he is still here. 

After you died, there were SO many people who had heard you say, just once, "I'm so lonely". We didn't know to get together and tally all those moments of loneliness up until after you were gone. And - maddeningly - it mightn't have made a moment of difference if we had.

Many of us - including more than a few folk with degrees in psychology - have surmised that probably YOU were an undiagnosed 'manic-depressive'. Jarkko and I talked about it in the 24 hours after you died.. "Here was a man," he said from your phone at my ear, "who could go from soaring through clouds, a million miles high, to lying on the ground - in a nanosecond".

I wonder if you thought it too, with your fear of medication and your outright refusal to ever go see a doctor, even for bog-standard medical issues like chest infections and bronchitis. I can't tell you how often I've wondered if medication could have helped you stay - if only you'd been prepared to countenance taking it. I KNOW how scared you were - of the thoughts in your head, and the fear that medication would take away all your highs but do nothing to curb the darkest lows, and leave you alone at midnight with nothing left of yourself except your fears.

For all your brilliance, your charisma and charm, you lacked the wit to realise that YOU CHOSE to embrace the darkness, just as you chose to be an anarchist, humanist, citizen-of-the-world, medievalist; a music-loving, slow-bowling expat-Finn and honorary Australian; a husband, son, brother-in-arms, lover, friend. I'm sorry that none of us could reach deep enough into your loneliness to keep all the rest of that to the fore for you. I'm sorry you felt like you had only one choice left.

I still miss you, and wish you were here. You'd have been so proud of the efforts of a very brave man this week. And, perhaps, the words that express his loneliness might have been enough to reach across your void and touch yours...

If only it weren't too late for you to know. About all of it.
Love you always,
Georgiltasi x

Rakas Mikko,
I can't help wondering what manner of man you'd be if you were actually turning 41 today. What other choices might you have faced, deeds done, maybe demons mastered and probably mistakes made, in all the days since you were 32. It still feels impossible sometimes, that someone who brought so much inspiration, love, laughter and self-belief into the lives of others isn't still out there in the universe, somewhere, doing Mikko-shaped things. 

Wherever you went when you left, today there will be prosecco to toast you here. 

Hyvää syntymäpäivää.

A thousand thoughts span 15 years
A million miles and countless tears
Gone now for more of them than you were here

All your smells and your tailored clothes
Your axe, your sword, your books, your bow
Long gone, still leave a you-shaped hole

Your love of mad friends, good food and wine,
Your high ideals, your dreams divine
Even on dark days, these still shine.

A planet-sized heart, a mind so swift,
"Love and respect" your greatest gifts
The world is richer because you lived.

"A thousand hugs , a million kisses"
A wealth of memories, deep and delicious
Eternal 40th birthday wishes.

Love out of time, across time, for all time...

I'm watching The Time Traveller's Wife. Again. You'd have loved this film. You'd have loved the book. You'd have loved Kathryn, the work colleague turned band-mate turned friend who first loaned it to me, and her muso man Jimmy. You'd have loved those balmy, insane nights where I'd race down to London for band practice and stay up late in Sevenoaks drinking wine, knowing that I had to have a clear head for client meetings the next morning...

Naturally, the damn film makes me cry, every time. Uncontrolled, uncontrollable hot tears of loss and missing you, of confusion and parallel universes and perfect clarity all at once. First and foremost, because there are a stack of us here who give an arm, an eye, or more, if just one of us could have, just once, the fairy tale ending in this film... the joy of one more visit after you know someone is supposed to be gone.

I've dreamed of it - so many times, and long before I'd ever heard of this particular story. I've dreamed you appearing out of nowhere, on a trip home, in my flat, in a restaurant in the middle of could-be-anyhere. Every time, I figure that I absolutely must be dreaming, because you're supposed to be dead and you're not supposed to be able to come back and you say 'I know, but here I am' in that charming voice you always used when you knew you were challenging something that's supposed to be impossible but you dared to anyway, because to you it was important. And I remember how, on the days where you had hope, nothing was impossible, so I listen to that voice, and I believe...

There's always so much I want to tell you, and sometimes you know it and sometimes you don't. Music - from Oxford to Roma and what a shithole disappointment the Dan has become. The things I've done with work since finishing my masters. Chloe. Ants. And all the other important people stories... the people who've found each other, the births, the deaths, the bustups, the Big Life Events.

Hearing about Ants always makes you sad, but it's not like you and I have been together in a long, long time, and I like to think that you understand. I like to think  that if you really were here to stay, you'd like the man I am married to today. I promise you in any case that he's someone you could respect - not least, because he understands that I can love two husbands, all at once but in two very different ways, and he's man enough to give me the space and trust to do that. He doesn't always like that sometimes you still have the power to make me cry, but it doesn't threaten him or his place in my life, which is rock solid and absolute and has the blessing of something that you and I never had... the sense of a shared future for all time.

So how many different ways do you want me to find affinity with the notion in a movie of a love that spans time, spans worlds, spans from here to the Hereafter, and moves forward and backward in time to pull together a million threads and somehow weaves them into warmth and balm for the soul? To live with multiple simultaneous truths - a life that Was and a life that Is, and those two lives peopled with so many common threads and overlapping moments... and yet somehow, they all weave together to form a cradle for my crazy messed up mind, so that I find myself without regret, without confusion, without anger or bitterness. What is, just is. I'm not sure where the grace to accept that has come from, but I think if you could see it you'd  be bloody proud...

Hey Mikko, yr da is on Facebook!

And it seems he has a beard...

I've often wondered how long you would have held out before getting your mug on BookFace. And what other offbeat names you would have come up with for it. But I didn't expect to find Matti online. Strange days eh?  Your dad has been much on my mind since I heard about your mum - and on the minds of others who know how much we still miss you, and can scarcely imagine how it might be for him to miss you both. 

He looks well, at any rate. It's my sincere hope that he has figured out how to be okay, even amid what must have been massive change. I also hope he is no longer ashamed of you and the way you left - I'm sorry we never figured out how to show him that he had no need to be. I hope now he understands you were always brilliant, even when you were broken. And that even after being gone for 7 years and 7 days, you are still making the world a better place, because the people who have loved you are stronger, wiser and braver for having known you.

Remembering "9/11"

It's 10 years today since that evening watching the West Wing in Abbotsford, the sofabed folded out so we could cosy up under the doona, when we went to the loo during an ad break and came back and on the show some crazy hijacker had flown a plane into the World Trade Centre tower... only then we realised the newsreader had an Australian accent and it was Channel 9 news. And it was real.

You were frantic trying to call your parents but the lines were jam packed and it was maybe 4 in the morning before you could get through. And it was, I sometimes think, the beginning of the end for you.

I will never really know what it was like growing up in Finland during the 70s and 80s. I still marvel at the awareness you seemed to have even as a little kid of being from a 'western' country growing up just over the fence from the 'eastern' superpower, with about 30 minutes to live if ever Ronald Regan or any other jerk politician decided to press the button. (After accidentally ending up on the wrong side in WWII, purely because the Germans were the only ones would help to keep the Russians out, the poor old Finns must've wondered what they'd ever have to do to win a trick?!)

What WAS it that made your mind take all that to heart? Was it really so common, that kids our age didn't actually believe they had a future until they were 18, and watched the Wall come down in '89?

That era of hope was too shortlived. You felt a shadow descend again in 2001 and I watched it smother you, little by little snuffing out hope. You tore your hair out over racial hatred, got hopping mad at Bush Jr and, after being so proud to carry banners with me down Swanston St, after a while you couldn't even see the point in going to peace rallies any more.

This was not the same man who'd gone down to the docks with Liam to support the stevedores, or linked arms with my cousin, a nurse, in solidarity.

Yes, the world changed that day. And some terrible things happened, so that it did get worse before it got better. And it's not fixed yet. But you've missed some pretty cool stuff. The US got a black man as president (and if they hadn't had him, they might just have ended up with a woman!). John Howard got voted out eventually - in a landslide. You'd probably still be bemoaning the way Julia Gillard beat me to the title of 'first woman PM' - I have you pegged as a K.Rudd fan. But we got maternity leave, and a carbon tax, and a Green in the lower house (my brother Luke helped put him there!). And an African woman environmentalist won the nobel peace prize...

I wish you were here to celebrate all these things, but most of all, "history is made by those who show up". And you can't do nearly as much by being perpetually AWOL.

happy birthday... wish you were here

You would be 39 today, and as with every year that June 15 rolls around, I can't help wondering about the man you would be today, if you were still here... I can only speculate on what you would be doing in work, in love... I imagine you would be in Melbourne, cheffing or making wine and food work in ways that left others gasping... weekends away wielding a sword, late midweek evenings when you know you should be abed (much as I should be... It's 3.35am on a 'school night')... would it really be that nothing has changed?? Somethings yes, somethings no.


I wish I could know.


I still wish you were here.


The years pass, the seasons cycle, and my life has moved in ways I could never have guessed at when you were still in it... but though I think of you now as one of my much loved friends rather than the life partner that once you were, i still miss you. Sometimes, every day for a time, sometimes not for weeks, but then you leap out of the corner of some ancient building, or from the face of a stranger, and you're as real as every walk we ever took, down any street...


I miss you, at times like these. Is it somehow wrong, that I don't miss you all the time, when n ce up on a time you were my every thought? Should I now be letting you go? Where, exactly, doest the middle ground lie? I love to think that if you could see me now, you would be SO proud of the girl I am today... but it's been so long since you were part of my journey...


Mikko I love you. And a part of me will always love you. And I miss you, like a king misses his greatest councillor, like an elbow misses its hinge...I wish... but you are not here, and cannot be more than a ghost who guides my happy thoughts, and steers me away from the saddest times. I hope you found a happy place to rest, amid the bears, the snow, and the lake...


happy birthday, you bastard, I love you. xo

Shining a light on mental health

You would love GetUp! I wish it had been around in 2004. It's one of those community campaign things that might have helped restore a Certain Someone's faith in the ability of ordinary people to make a difference to the chaos that surrounds us in the world. It was Margaret Mead who exhorted us to ""Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." GetUp! helps bring such people together, online and face to face, to write messages, send petitions and from time to time, to raise cash, for campaigns ranging from saving Tasmanian forests to ending mandatory detention for refugees, paid parental leave and an end to the insane unfairnesses of the Howard Government's Work Choices legislation. I imagine it would have been one of his most commonly bookmarked sites.

Now they're turning their focus on mental health. In lobbying the government for extra funding, by asking people to pay for a candle with their personal message on it, they're also giving people a voice: for their fears as carers or people who are hurting, or for the grief of those left behind after the ultimate agony: when suicide claims another soul who was lost in a darkness they despaired of ever escaping. The messages below are from the GetUp! campaign. There are some acutely personal tales here, each told in a mere handful of words. I hope they are read by our politicians - but I also hope that they are read by people everywhere who suffer depression in some form, and by the people who care for them. Please know that you are never as alone as you think you are, and there is always another option. Always.

• "This for all those who bravely face each new day not knowing when the present struggles will subside, but always believing in a brighter tomorrow. Believing that this too, will pass."



• "For everyone affected, but particularly my husband. My hope is that he realises how beautiful a person he is and that he feels hope for the future"



• " I am buying my candle for my eldest daughter who has bipolar disorder. She has also anxiety."



• " For anyone in need... and those who love them"



• "a light of hope for those in the shadows - you do not walk alone"



• " My friend Mal and my cousin's son Andrew both suffered years of depression before they took their lives. With better mental health support services they might both be alive today."



• " I was one of the lucky ones that was treated with respect and care when I went to the hospital, suicidal because of depression. I hope that one day, everyone in the same situation can share the same story. "



• " for my mum and for all who are suffering or have suffered from debilitating mental health issues"



• "Not just for the sufferers but also the carers; without these wonderful people no amount of money would fix our mental health system. "



• "This is for my mother who has suffered for years with depression and for those, less fortunate than her, who don't have the support of family and friends or private health cover to pay for what the public system doesn't provide"



• " For our son and for all young people who are not receiving the help which they desperately need. We want our government to provide them with the support they need to lead full, happy lives."



• "The black dog runs wild in rural Australia. You can only imagine the hightened sense of loneliness of those living in remote communities and farms. We need to reach out and let them know they aren't alone."

And last but not least: For Mikko, who was so afraid of our mental health system that he felt he had only one choice left.



You are still much missed, Rakkani

Meri

Various friends have been to visit Mikko recently and have seen that he has company.
Meri Sikstrom was a brave and outgoing woman in her youth - Mikko loved telling stories about how his mum used to try to freak his friends out by telling them how pissweak modern day porn was. She was successful in business, running a series of fashion stores until the recession of the early 90s that plunged Finland into years of economic strife.
It seems something changed after that, and Mikko never understood what or why, but he was confused by the woman who, in later life, refused to learn new languages as she moved around Europe, and began to 'hate' everything: Russians, Swedes, people who drink alcohol, her diabetes, the terrible pains in her stomach that no doctor seemed able to diagnose or cure. Her failing eyesight. The vitamin-laden diet and rigorous exercise that doctors said might help.
When he died, something in her inevitably died too. Perhaps it's no surprise that she is already no longer here.
We often didn't see eye to eye, but I have always felt far more sorrow for her than anger. Parents are never supposed to bury their children. And she had, I think, so few resources to draw on in her struggle to carry what she felt was a great burden these last 6 years.
I hope with all my heart that she, like Mikko, has found peace, knowledge and acceptance now that her spirit is freed of the ravages of a body too broken for it to find balance while so confined.
I can scarcely imagine Matti's daily existance. I hope he has the love and support of family and friends.
For all that our shared journey was often awkward, some of the most powerful moments of my 20s I owe to this broken family, and I will always wish that their way in the world had been easier.

Governments still don't get it on Mental Health

Don't even start me on the fact that a manifestly inadequate system leaves paranoid and vulnerable people so scared of what they might experience in the system that they outright refuse to seek help from it... As family and friends we love and adore them, but we lack the skills to give them what they need, and sometimes, the price of failure is unspeakable.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/we-have-waited-much-too-long-for-adequate-mental-healthcare-20110105-19g62.html

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.