On Tuesday May 8th 2018 my sister Liz together with Remy and me searched the cemetery at Corowa NSW for Marker 237. This was in the old section of the cemetery as we looked for signs of the place our brother John was buried sixty-eight years ago. The search was led and motivated by my sister Liz who had worked for many years at Sands Australia assisting parents grieve and cope with the death of their baby.
There were six siblings in our family. That was the usual statement. But actually we were seven. John was stillborn in 1950, so would be 68 now had he not died before he was born. Even though at times I referred to “our brother John who was stillborn” I never really thought of him as a real person. The search in the Corowa cemetery was for me a true seeking for John, a mourning for a lost brother and a need to connect with and remember him.
We came from Queensland to undertake the search. Prior to our trip south, Liz had begun the search through enquiries with the Council Offices and Funeral Directors in Corowa. From these sources came the directive to search for Marker 237. It was Remy, my wife, who found the Marker and we three rejoiced. We had found John.
Irene – Mum – told us in later years she believed John had died two days before he was born. During the delivery Irene was sedated and never saw her baby. When she awoke she was in the maternity ward surrounded by mothers nursing their beautiful babies. Irene was in that ward for more than a week before returning home to the family property at Howlong, some thirty kilometres from Corowa, upstream on the Murray River.
On the following Sunday Irene and Richard – Dad – went to church at Howlong with my older brother and me in tow. She found it hard to get out of the car, feeling guilty that she did not have a baby to show. After church when the congregation gathered to chat, no one said anything to Irene. They drove home in silence to “The Olives”. Again, in later years I asked Richard if he talked about this to Irene. He said no. How had he managed his grief? He told me he did his crying down the paddock. Alone. Irene also grieved alone.
John’s burial was witnessed by Richard and his sister Eileen, our aunt still living in Yarrawonga. We spoke with Aunt Eileen before searching the cemetery in Corowa. She was at the burial because two witnesses were required. Eileen felt the death of John was “the beginning of Irene’s nervous problems.” In other words, depression that then plagued her life.
Often the words are floated in the air that “the world is worse now than it was”. For many reasons I disagree. One of the reasons is that in our time we have people like Liz and charities like Sands Australia that are able to walk with parents through the dark trauma of the death of their baby; they ensure that people who love each other do not have to be locked in terrible silence and grief as Richard and Irene were when they lost John.
We worked with the local Council in Corowa to have a plaque erected in memory of our brother who has been found. We have a debt of gratitude to those people at the Council offices who have assisted us so much in our search. In October 2019 Remy and I visited the cemetery while traveling in Victoria and southern NSW.
Mum’s Memorial Plague in the Biloela cemetery has also been renewed to register our “bringing John back to her”.
Thank you, Tony, for this very beautifully touching piece.
Thank you Rey, it is good that finally I have come out in the open! There is so much to reflect upon, to learn, to understand. To search the meaning of!
I just read this now, Tony.
It must be a deeply wounding experience for parents to lose a child, especially a first child like John. And how such a loss is compounded when the parents are somehow not able to share the loss even with each other. I connect with your Aunt Eileen’s remark that your dad and mom’s ‘solitary’ grieving over your eldest brother, John’s, death could have had a factor in your mom’s depression in later years . Could her difficulty I going through her sister’s funeral later be also distantly connected with John’s death?
It must be a healing event for you and your siblings to not only find John’s grave but also be able to bring him back to your mom and join her and your dad in grieving his lost at last.
Thanks , ol’ mate.
It was indeed a great journey “bringing John back into the family”. Yet I continue trying to understand what it was like for Mum in that maternity ward with others mothers nursing their new born babies. Did the matron of the hospital not understand her pain at all? It is confounding that they were unable to share the story. “They” being not only Mum and Dad but the small and close-knit community of people at the Church. They were fed on the Law of God and obeying his commands. But a counsellor was needed to facilitate the sharing of the wound for the purpose of healing.
Like many seminary formation in the past, medical & nursing curriculum did not include human/heart/psychological education, or whatever it is called. We/they were simply trained to perform their ‘trade’. I remember One our formators (and he would have been one of the most ‘hearty’ or ‘gutsy’ Red at that time) tossing a voluminous sexuality book at me a week or so before I was being ordained a deacon, and saying , “Have a look at this, and don’t get too excited with the pictures!” Seriously! That book should have been a Must at the start of our priestly training! Then perhaps we would not only a healthier sexuality but a heart that is deeply understands & empathise with the intricacies of people’s married life! I remember also when I was going to the US for further studies , one my ‘superiors’ told me ‘No Psychology, Ben, ok?” Thank God, I am a disobedient religious, haha, I enrolled at Blanton-Peale’s Institutes of Religion & Health, and had real ‘further studies’ and education!
Sorry for this mild personal ‘blow out’!
This writing was certainly a teary one for me. I remember asking mum about John at various times in the past but the deep grief that dad and her felt was not shared. I remember Liz telling me after the heartache of losing Dominic and while still in hospital, that she and mum – mother and daughter – shared their experienced of loss and grief together. Her openness in speaking of her own pain, no doubt brought healing for mum and dad as well.