Ten years without Jack

Ten years ago today, sometime in the early morning, our son Jack died. Ten years ago today our world shattered, and a Jack shaped hole was left in our hearts. 

Ten years have passed, and that hole is still there, but it was once explained to me that although our grief doesn’t get smaller, the life around it gets bigger.  There have been joyous occasions, birthdays, reunions and weddings. And tragedy, funerals of friends and children of friends lost all too soon potential lives of promise that will never blossom. 

Jack’s brothers are thriving. Mikey is still making music, and has been able to turn his Sonic Arts degree into a job doing sound design for computer games. Unknown Entity completed a Cert III in bakery at TAFE and is now doing an apprenticeship at a bakery, he is loving it. 

In Terry Pratchett’s “Reaper Man”: he writes,  ‘No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…’ Jack is still causing ripples in the world. 

 The biggest ripple is his writing.  His posthumous story “my Bung Leg and Me” was published in  published in  Voiceworks no. 106 Summer 2016-2017 periodical issue pg. 55-61 , his first paid writing work, is a semi-autobiographical history of talipes. If this story helps even one person cope better with disability, it will be a fitting legacy. Also you can find Jacks other writing here where he made Satan a warbling magpie, rhapsodised over Paralympic fencing, took weightlifting to absurd heights, explored pie floaters, weirdly rhapsodized the Olympics, did cult interviews and made a persimmon tree a dark harbinger of fate.

Jack was also mentioned at a funeral service for one of our aunts, a haunting reminder that he touched many lives. Another set of lives he touched was this fencing comrades, we were just recently contacted by the Melbourne University Fencing Club who want to mention him in a history of the club. Jack loved fencing and mentoring fellow fencers, and he was legendary for his pink socks. He also was devoted to wheel chair fencing. Unknown Entity, sadly, has abandoned fencing, claiming work and study makes it too difficult.  

I worry that I will forget Jack, not forget as such, but I worry that my memories will just be constructed from the photos we have, brief flashes of a luminous life. But I cannot truly forget him while we hve his stories, and the memories of his friends and cousins to weave a more complete tapestry of this life. 

Jack is buried under a Moona tree near his beloved grandparents place, with the sound of the waves and bird song for company. We visit him regularly and listen to the magpies song.  The Persimmon tree planted in honour of one of his stories has grown and taken over a corner of the front garden and is laden with fruit.  

On this 10 year  anniversary, we have arranged for a magpie sculpture, honoring his magpie story, to be placed on his grave. bureaucracy being what is its it has taken a while to get it all together, but soon the real (non-satanic) warblers will have a sculpture to help them keep Jack company. 

This may be the last time I publicly write about Jack.  You can read my previous anniversary posts  counting up the years and five years since Jacks death. 

We will continue to remember him and keep his memory close, we don’t cry as often but still on occasion the grey swirls in and the tears come. But I don’t think I have it in me to write again.