by Leigh Sales
Even so, at the start of this process I wondered if I were making a mistake; if meeting the people in these pages and asking about the deep blows they’d sustained would finally tip me over the edge. I thought that perhaps all these tragic stories might crush me under their weight and I’d never get out of bed again.
Instead the opposite happened. They’ve given me hope. What people can get through is truly amazing. I have been stunned and inspired by the people in this book.
So often we refer to people like James Scott and Stuart Diver as ‘survivors’. I’m not sure that’s the best word. Survival implies an experience over which you triumphed, as if it’s in the past. In the aftermath of something life-changing, it’s not one event that you must survive, it’s thousands of moments every day. It’s going to the supermarket and seeing everything you don’t need to buy anymore. It’s having to comfort people, fear etched on their faces, when they don’t know what to say to you because being you is the worst thing they could imagine. It’s waking up every morning and knowing that you will never again hear the sound of your little girls’ feet pattering down the hallway or feel their warm bodies squirming next to you in bed. To keep living life after such loss is not survival, it’s endurance. We endure.
Many years ago, the American singer Patti Smith lost her husband suddenly. In 2016 she wrote in The New Yorker that her father had told her soon afterwards that time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does give the tools to endure them. ‘I’ve found this to be true in the greatest and smallest of matters,’ she wrote. I, too, am finding it to be true. I now know what some of those tools are. I believe in the power of ‘being in the moment’ and no longer dismiss it as a cliché worthy of an eye roll. I understand that the sight of the ocean meeting the horizon, or the sound of a champagne cork popping at the start of a dinner party, or the feeling of trying to stifle uncontrollable laughter at an inappropriate moment are some of the greatest joys life holds. They are the moments you remember and for which you yearn when times are not so good.
When I was in hospital after the birth of my second son, a friend sent me a beautiful shiny red box. Inside, wrapped carefully in paper and ribbons, were exquisite baby clothes and products. I asked somebody to close the box and put it on the windowsill where I could see it. My room was drab and sterile and there was little comforting about it. I was often alone, worrying whether my baby had brain damage and if I could cope as the mother of a disabled child. But every day, I looked at that red box and I thought, There is still beauty in this world. It meant everything. Sometimes, at the worst of moments, one small, beautiful thing to look at – a smooth stone, a flower, a beautifully crafted chocolate – gives the tiniest glimmer of hope.
I realised while writing this book that I’d been stuck on the question of how much truth lives in religion. I don’t believe God exists and I’d therefore been subconsciously judgemental of those who do. Through meeting Louisa, Michael and James, I came to see that I’d been fixated on something pointless. It doesn’t really matter so much if religion is ‘true’ or not when it so clearly gives people hope, like the shiny red box gave me. Religion is an extraordinarily helpful tool at times of grief and loss because it offers both an explanation for the inexplicable and a supportive community. I find it incredible now to think that not one, but many religions have been able to devise frameworks with sufficient meaning to comfort billions of people. For me, it has been equally heartening to meet many people who’ve had the courage to face the worst that life can throw at them without faith.
While things didn’t go swimmingly once I left the hospital, there was also joy and happiness amidst the worry and stress. This I found mostly in the kindness of others. If you had asked me before the events of 2014 which of my friends were my favourites, I would have said the funny, charismatic ones: the ones who take you to dinner and make you howl so hard with laughter that it fills your emotional tank. Even when you wake up the next day, fuzzy-headed from lack of sleep and too much wine, you feel great. While I still love company like that, I’ve realised that by far the most valuable friends are the kind ones. They may not be the most sparkling guests at the dinner table or the most memorable makers of wedding speeches. But my god, they are the ones you want to sit with you at the worst of times. They are the ones who know the right things to say and do, because their hearts are empathetic. I’ve come to believe that amongst all the good human qualities, there is none greater than kindness.
On my youngest son’s second and third birthdays, my eldest son was in hospital. For the second birthday, my friend Ping told me not to worry about a thing and she showed up with a giant birthday cake designed as a construction site with little trucks and bulldozers driving on the icing tracks. Then for the third birthday, a group of friends came around at 8 am on a Sunday so the little one wouldn’t miss out on a party. Melanie made a delicious chocolate cake with a number three on top in hundreds and thousands. Andrea organised lolly bags. It was just like a regular birthday party except for the hour. And when we wrapped it up around 9 am so that I could head back to hospital, Cathy took the birthday boy over to her house to play for the day.
George and Derek brought over curries for the freezer. Annabel took my little boy for a day so I could get some rest, even though she has three kids of her own to juggle. Ben dropped over a care package overflowing with homemade bread, pastries, trashy magazines and fruit. Mia and Caroline showed up with a week’s worth of dinners, all labelled in ways to make me laugh. I assure you that ‘Trump’s “Grab ’em By the Pussy” Chicken and Vegies’ was scrumptious. My colleagues at 7.30 sent a giant box of Lego to my house. Selina and Juliana made enough bolognaise to feed the entire cast of The Sopranos. Pam sewed hospital outfits for all the toy bunnies and bought them tiny suitcases to take to hospital. Sharon kept me sane by always being ready with practical help, any time, no questions asked. I asked friends to send some ‘get well’ videos that I could play to my son in hospital to help pass the time and cheer him up. Within an hour there were a dozen, and within a day, more than four dozen, even from friends to whom I’d not spoken much in recent times. Nadine somehow made her cat sing via Snapchat, something that was played over and over in hospital and caused a very miserable boy to laugh. When people show you kindness like that, it’s hard to stew in self-pity, or any feeling that life is unfair.
The question of life being fair or unfair is one of the first things to drop away once you truly understand that you’re as vulnerable as the next person to life’s vagaries. The random distribution of misfortune is perhaps the only thing in life that is fair. No amount of money, fame, power or beauty can save you from tragedy, illness or death if they’re coming for your family. I have a heaping plate of things in life that aren’t fair – nice parents, a peaceful country, a good brain, sound health and caring friends. I didn’t do anything to deserve any of that.
If you can see that much of what you have is due to chance, it becomes very easy to have empathy. It’s like Michael Spence’s son looking at all those people coming down the escalator in the opposite direction and wondering what the secret sorrow of their lives is. Understanding comes from experience, and so you may not necessarily understand what it’s like to be Stuart Diver or Walter Mikac or any of the others. Empathy comes from imagination and so if you can envisage how readily your situation and theirs could be reversed, then suddenly it’s easier to know what to do and how to act – that is, how you yourself would want to be treated in their position.
Of all the wisdom the people in this book shared with me, nothing has stayed with me more strongly than Steve Sinn’s comments about accompanying. You may worry that accompanying people who are grief-stricken or suffering will be too hard, that it will be too upsetting to sit with somebody facing unimaginable pain or loss. And it will be hard, you can be assured of that. You may not want to do it. You may be terrified of saying the wrong thing, of making the situation worse. But in fact the only thing that will make it worse is your not being
there. As Steve Sinn said, it’s not about you, not about how inadequate or scared you feel. There have been times in my life when I’ve stepped back because I was afraid to step up. Now that I see that how I feel is irrelevant, I know I can be there.
During my writing, one of my close friends was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I heard Steve Sinn’s voice saying, ‘You have to accompany,’ and I knew I had to, no matter how awful things became. I was scared; I worried about what I would see, about having to witness Mark in pain. But I had been there when we sat around at the pub laughing uproariously. I had been there in the passenger seat of his car when he dropped me home and we sat out the front talking with the engine running because we’d not yet run out of things to discuss. I had been there at dinners when he arrived with a lemon tart and a bottle of red. I had been there when he brought my children birthday gifts and I had been there when he texted me words of encouragement late at night when I was caring for my son in hospital. I had been there for those moments, and he had been there for me, so I had to be there when things weren’t good for him.
It was not easy. I’d always text before I arrived, but sometimes I still appeared at awkward moments. Once, a nurse wanted to empty the bag that was draining fluid from Mark’s lungs and she asked me to hand her various pieces of equipment while she did it. At these times, my natural inclination was to look away or to walk away. I really wanted to leave. But I didn’t because Mark couldn’t. If he had a cry, I had a cry. If he wanted to read poetry aloud, I’d listen (even though I’m not a poetry person). When I’d ask if he needed anything, sometimes he’d say a coffee or a cup of soup, but mostly he said, ‘Just company.’ I bumbled around at times, saying and doing the wrong things. I didn’t go to the hospital often enough. I could have done more, no doubt, but the one thing of which I am certain is that I was there regularly, whether in person or on the phone. Just accompanying.
Every generation probably feels that it’s living in a time of global uncertainty and existential threats. Things are perhaps no different now, yet something feels different to me. The world seems less safe than at any other time during my career in journalism, including right after 9/11. The news is more upsetting than ever – the indiscriminate, regular terrorist attacks that brutalise the hearts of cities; the fact that the Oval Office hosts an unpredictable bully; the way social media amplifies hate and shallowness. It feels that the ugliness of the world is front and centre all day, every day.
Watching or reading a lot of current affairs is probably always going to leave a sense of despair and fear. While I knew all too well beforehand that the news is highly selective in what it presents, I’ve become more aware through writing this book that what we see about shocking blindsides doesn’t tell anything remotely like the whole story. Being struck by something awful is not the end of every good part of life.
Daniel Gilbert explained it well in his book Stumbling on Happiness by using the example of blindness: ‘Blind people do most of the things that sighted people do and thus, they are just as happy as sighted people are. Whatever a blind person’s life is, it is about much more than blindness. And yet when sighted people imagine being blind, they fail to imagine all the other things that such a life might be about.’ Stuart Diver is not just the guy who was pulled from the rubble at Thredbo. Walter Mikac is not just the man who lost his entire family, and nor are Juliet Darling, Michael Spence, James Scott, Louisa Hope or Hannah Richell the sum total of the terrible things that happened to them. None of them is living a life they would have chosen but they’re okay. They’re better than okay. As Michael and Juliet pointed out, life isn’t all one thing, it’s not all happiness or all grief. These people are not frozen in time, they’re not the people you might remember from the news. Life is much more complicated and beautiful than that.
What we see on the news is often the worst that life dishes up, but what happens next can sometimes be the best. We ran a story on 7.30 a couple of years ago about a woman who was the victim of a domestic violence assault with a hammer. Her teeth had been ruined and she said she didn’t like smiling anymore because she felt ugly. After the program had gone to air, a dentist contacted us to say he would fix her teeth for free. It was hours and hours of work. Our reporter went back to see her when it was done and now her smile is beautiful and she flashes it all the time.
More recently, we aired a story about a shortage of rental housing in northern New South Wales after serious floods. It featured a struggling single mother who was about to have to move with her five children into a tent. A prominent Australian businessman rang after the program and organised to pay three-quarters of her rent for twelve months to help her get back on her feet.
Another night, we had a piece about disabled kids who were having a hard time meeting potential romantic partners, or finding fun, safe places to go without their parents. One of the mothers had paid for a disco out of her own pocket. The kids had an absolute ball, but there was only enough money for the one event. The Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, who was in Los Angeles in the middle of a run of serious career success, happened to watch 7.30 online. He was so touched by the story that he contacted us and organised to pay every last cent for a second disco.
Acts of kindness are all around. They are often the reason why people endure the worst thing they could ever imagine. Not every individual life includes such a stark yin and yang of cruelty and kindness, hate and love, sorrow and joy. Some have more bad than good in them, and not everybody is helped by the generosity of others. Some people have to suffer through and rebuild on their own. But whatever the circumstances, an enormous number of bad stories do end better than you might have ever thought possible.
That’s not to say there’s always a happy ending in life. Some people do lose everything and never recover. Sometimes people hope they are at a new beginning when they are in fact right at the very end. Nothing about recovering from a devastating blindside is easy and often life is not better afterwards, it’s simply different. And don’t get me wrong – I’m still scared. I still worry about what might happen next. The difference now is that I’m fairly sure I will be able to carry on, as painful as it may be. The wisdom and experience of the people I’ve met has led me to believe that almost all of us are far more resilient than we could possibly imagine. My own life in recent years has given me hard evidence that I am way stronger than I ever thought. That makes me feel more optimistic about how I will manage in the future. The Under Toad will always be lurking beneath the surface of life, I’m just not so afraid of him. The next time his creepy hand grabs my ankle and drags me under, it will no doubt be as awful as it’s been before. But I also believe that I will probably shake him off and keep going, with the help of others.
I wish that through studying all of this, I had some wise scroll to unfurl before you. Even the idea that I wish there was a ‘lesson’ shows how unwilling I still am, like most of us, to sail into the winds of fate head-on. I wish I could tell you how not to be the person who walks into the Lindt Café on the wrong morning, or how not to choose the fatal day to go for a surf. Of course nobody can do that, and if we thought about these things too often, we’d never leave our homes. To live life, we have to take risks, most of which we will never even know we’re taking.
All I can tell you is that life is richer, kinder and safer than the news would have you believe. People are more decent. The things you think you wouldn’t be able to survive, you probably can. You will be okay. There’s really only one lesson to take from all of this and that is to be grateful for the ordinary days and to savour every last moment of them. They’re not so ordinary, really. Hindsight makes them quite magical.
INTRODUCTION: STARING AT THE SUN
In late 2014, the news media was dominated I originally published some of these thoughts in a newspaper article: Sales, L., ‘Ordinary Days That Go Disastrously Wrong Rattle Our Sense of Security’, The Australian, 27 December 2014. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/ordinary-days-that-go-disas
trously-wrong-rattle-our-sense-of-security/news-story/ea44aa7a1b19d49af5189989d47f3b71
In one fairly typical news month on 7.30 March 2016 archive for 7.30. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/archives/2016/730_201603.htm
‘Uterine rupture in pregnancy https://reference.medscape.com/article/275854-overview
The novelist Iris Murdoch once wrote Murdoch, I., The Sovereignty of Good, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, London.
ONE: THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME
These strangers were forever united when a gunman Details of the Lindt Café siege can be found in the report from the coronial inquest. http://www.lindtinquest.justice.nsw.gov.au/Documents/findings-and-recommendations.pdf
In September 2002, Louisa Hope was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis Personal interview, L. Hope with the author, Sydney, January 2017. 2000
The chance of any Australian having the remarkable misfortune The equation for calculating the probability of any one Australian being both those things at once is: (24 million ÷ 18) × (24 million ÷ 23,000) = 1 in 39 billion. This is based on eighteen Australians being hostages in the Lindt Café, and the population of Australia at the time being approximately 24 million, and approximately 23,000 Australians having multiple sclerosis, according to the latest data: http://www.msra.org.au/living-ms
Louisa’s 72-year-old mother, Robin The account of what happened to Louisa immediately before and during the siege is drawn from both her interview with the author and five statements she provided to the police, all of which were tendered as evidence at the inquest: transcript of initial interview by NSW Police with Louisa Hope, 16 December 2014; audio statement with Louisa Hope, NSW Police, 23 December 2014; additional statement by Louisa Hope to NSW Police, 17 January 2015; additional statement 2 by Louisa Hope to NSW Police, 27 January 2015; audio statement 2 with Louisa Hope, NSW Police, 12 May 2015.
