Blog #150 - from Lindy

I have just been roaming through the blog. Enjoying the laughs. Loving the comments. Feeling encouraged by so many visitors and faithful returners.

I occasionally hear that the Blog has been a life-saver so to speak for someone going through something horrible. I am always surprised and so pleased.

Does the Blog still have a reason to keep going? We don’t want it to degenerate rather than finish cleanly.

It's hard to know.

Comments?

Whatever - from Lindy

Someone said the other day; "Have X and Y lost the plot? They were
talking to me as if Ben died last week!"

"He did" I replied, surprised that not everyone felt the same: today,
yesterday, last week. Forever.

Ben the living (not the 2D image), still screams out to me to remind
me that Ben - that young man forever carried around in my heart - is
not just a caricature or a memory or anything else. He is still Ben:
active, laughing, strong, thinking, private.

He told me that it 'pissed him off' that when he was conscious in ICU
we would all come in and hold his hand. I smile to remember it. As if
there were other ways left to us of making contact. Even when he was
conscious he had an oxygen mask over his face and in those last few
weeks his voice was weak and gravelly and it was hard to understand.

It was quite comical to combine his weak voice with our growing
hearing challenges. We often had a sibling interpreter to help us
along. Ben was so weak that to have to repeat what he said was worse
than anything. After he died Matt wanted to hear Ben's voice on his
mobile. He said how much he had hated Ben's sick voice ☹.

Anyway... Ben the living still speaks. Ben the man of 23 who was
nobody's puppet, nobody's fool and nobody's property, screams out to
be remembered. Not some namby-pamby 'beautiful son' which is of course
how mothers talk about their adult sons!

And as he nags at me to remember him, I was drawn more and more to a
song on a CD that blares out in the car as I drive along. The song is
'Whatever' and it's from an album that I love by Steven Curtis
Chapman, called 'Speechless'.

If you want to know how the real Ben, not the flat-daddy type Ben,
lived out his last few years of life at least, and stunningly and
passionately so as he got sicker and sicker, I think the words and the
style of this song says it. The lyrics are below and you can hear and
see it on YouTube here.

Whatever. Whatever. Whatever.

Let me know what you think.

"Whatever" by Steve Curtis Chapman

I made a list, wrote down from A to Z
All the ways I thought that You could best use me
Told all my strengths and my abilities
I formed a plan it seemed to make good sense
I laid it out for You so sure You'd be convinced
I made my case, presented my defense
But then I read the letter that You sent me
It said that all You really want from me is just

Whatever, whatever You say
Whatever, I will obey
Whatever, Lord, have Your way
'Cause You are my God, whatever

So strike a match, set fire to the list
Of all my good intentions, all my preconceived ideas
I want to do Your will no matter what it is
Give me faith to follow where You lead me
Oh, Lord, give me the courage and the strength to do ...

I am not my own
I am Yours and Yours alone
You have bought me with Your blood
Lord, to You and You alone do I belong
And so whatever

We have asked for permission to publish these lyrics on this page.

Try not to laugh with a mouthful of food... (thanks Von)

"Ben" - From Julia

Sallie had come home from the hospital earlier with James, the boys'
cousin, to watch a movie and try to relax. Why they chose Fight Club
I'll never know. I watched the first few scenes with them, the main
characters making their way through cancer support groups they
shouldn't be at, just for the hell of it. I wanted to fast forward but
Sal kept the remote plastered to her lap beneath her bowl of macaroni
cheese, her eyes focused on the screen as if the relevance of it was
necessary. There were big dark circles beneath her eyes and it wasn't
from her eyeliner.

Her phone rang: Chris. It was urgent. They left immediately and they
didn't say much. I sat on the couch, stopped the movie. The day was
still and so was I. The sun through the blinds left bright stripes
across the gray carpet and my jeans. I fiddled with the remote; it had
lots of different coloured buttons on it. The sunshine was hurting my
eyes.

Sometime later. Hours. The sun stripes no longer across my legs but up
the wall. A girlfriend, Nadia, rang me, her voice loud and sharp.
Sallie's facebook status says she Wasn't Ready To Say Goodbye, she
said. Has Ben died?

No, I said, too quickly. I would have received a text. Or would I? I
don't know why I assumed Tim would message me.

Are you home alone? Nadia asked.

Yes. But it's ok.

I forget sometimes how much Chris is like Ben. He picked up a raw
drumstick at a barbeque in their backyard last week and wiggled flabby
translucent chicken skin in Lindy's face. The hooting noises he was
making and the creases around his eyes looked so familiar. Lindy waved
his arm away with that scowl she gives her boys which isn't really a
scowl because the sides of her mouth turn slightly upwards and you
know it's because she loves them so much. Chris rolled his eyes and
threw the chicken on the barbeque.

I found out Ben and Andy had tried to surprise Sallie once with a
dishwashing machine, when she still lived in Carlton with me, in that
flat with the tiny kitchen. They had found it in the hard garbage,
carried it all the way from the street through the courtyard and up
onto the third floor, only to find it didn't fit under the bench - a
pipe from under the sink was blocking the way. So they had to carry it
all the way out and put it back on someone's nature strip. Ben was so
annoyed with himself for not having bothered to measure it up, and got
all huffy whenever we brought it up afterwards. But we didn't care.
But I've since learned that boys often don't get the whole "it's the
thought that counts" thing, they just want to get it right. But we
knew. They did get it right.

And so often I wonder: what in the world was so necessary, so needed,
that Ben was taken away so that something else could fit in? What
could possibly need that exact of space and air? Nothing seems big
enough to matter. A ferris wheel? Ben was so much bigger. A
skyscraper? A jumbo jet? My mind is weighed down with the uselessness
of these objects. The insignificance of things. There's a Ben-shaped
space in my lounge room where he used to sit, sometimes grumpy and
non-talkative, snorting loudly, spitting in our basin. A space where
air collided with big brown biceps and chunky thighs and settled into
dark hair and a crooked smile. Eyes with a bit of slant. Different
from Tim's wide green ones. Hands that held my housemate's in the
dark. Hanging up curtains as a surprise for Sal because of that weird
glass wall her bedroom had. He rang me up and asked me to measure the
glass with the length of a milk bottle as I had no measuring tape – he
found some curtains about ten milk bottles wide. Hands that made
Caesar salad with lots of bacon and cheese. That bought me an adidas
jumper with Sal as a consolation present while I was going through a
break up even though my ex was his best mate. Surely there was enough
air for us to breathe already that more didn't need to be made. That
space was already bursting with use and meaning and I still can't
quite work out how it got emptied so fast.

Being home alone wasn't ok. I did get a message from Tim, and I read
it, and my vision went blurry, and I was hyperventilating and started
crying really suddenly. And everything became a little surreal. I got
confused about what I should do, I could ring Sallie but she might
need space or she could need me but I didn't know what she needed, or
I could go to Stu's house but Stu might be at the hospital and he
might need space and maybe it would be strange and I was pretty sure
he didn't need me, and Meaghan was at work, and oh God what about
Lindy, and how could Ben be gone, when young people get cancer they
get better and when Christians get sick God heals them and how did
things come to this, it wasn't real, I felt sick, I put down the phone
and remembered Simon was coming over to pick up the Mallacoota forms
and the hyperventilating and crying didn't stop even after he arrived
and got out of his car and we didn't speak we just hugged and cried
right there on the street.

A few months ago, I was standing on the oval by the caravan park in
Mallacoota. I turned around and a big red van came roaring straight at
me across the grass. It didn't veer till the last second, but I stayed
still. My heart had thumped for a moment at the wide grin behind the
wheel but when the van turned back I realised that of course it was
Chris laughing at me, and that Ben must have learned to pull similar
pranks watching his dad. I cried a lot that night. But it makes me
smile lots now.

Mulherin boys redefine the words "blank stare." Are they hiding
something? I can't tell. I can't even imagine. To lose a brother? To
lose my brother? Those words fill me with panic and a nauseating sense
of incomprehension. Besides, what could I possibly do to relieve the
space that they have now, a far more important space, a space not only
of biceps and snorting and curtains but a whole history of Argentina
and childhood and pet cats and loving and living and trusting that I
know nothing about. What does it mean to go and study medicine when
the experience was supposed to be shared? What does it mean to lead a
beach mission? To find dishwashers in the hard garbage?

And what about losing my boyfriend? It's all nuanced differently. When
Stu and I broke up I had Sal and Ben to buy me presents but I'd also
made a choice. All Sal and Ben chose was to be together and even then
it all just ended one Monday morning. And Stu. To lose my best friend?
They die with your secrets and you still have theirs. Never to be
shared. Nowhere to go but inward.

On my way to Alice's 21st birthday party I burst into tears. I arrive
in tears. I am ushered into her room and given tissues for my tears.

Sorry Alice.

Yeah. That's right. You should be sorry for being sad about your dead
friend. He's alive in heaven, I want to say. Don't say dead, I want to
say. But I don't.

Back when I was just getting to know the gang Ben found my number and
rang me from Forest Hill and said I should come over because they were
just hanging around and it would be fun. Another day he rang me after
they'd all been to the movies and were having hot chocolate at
Brunetti and said I should drop around and say hello. He was always
the first to invite new people to things and, as his friends so often
comment, has a strange charisma that meant the new people usually came
along. It was great for beach mission and great for God.

I know I will be at a barbeque in the Mulherin's backyard soon. I'll
probably hurt myself jumping with Matt on the trampoline, he's bigger
and rougher than he used to be, and he's so proud of the flips he can
do when his mum's not looking, and Lindy might scowl, but who cares,
because like their son and their brother, they are always the first to
invite people into their home and their hearts, their arms open wide
enough for everyone to fit in.

And then there's Chris. And I think, Ben is here. Ben is here. It's
such a strange and vaguely inappropriate thing to tell parents - Guess
what, you remind me of the son you lost and that comforts me. As if
they could find comfort in themselves the way I see their baby boy in
them.

But I know he's not here-here. He's with his Father and I think, it's
a good thing to see so much of a son in his father. I think it is the
way of things.

For your information...

Somebody asked about the details that we forgot to put in the blogs below. We interred Ben's ashes under a lovely big tree at Box Hill Cemetery. Yes, anyone is welcome to visit. You'll find the plaque in the grass under the big tree near the office building.

One year

Yesterday was the first anniversary of Ben's death. A year of coming
to grips with living differently.

We interred Ben's ashes in the morning, very simply. Pete is in
Vanuatu, Andy in Canberra, so it was just the four of us in the rain
under umbrellas. Appropriate weather for such things.

Last night we sizzled sausages for young friends who seemed happy to
be together again in Ben's name.

Death

Death is horrible
Death is ghastly.
No-one wants death
To occur.

Death leaves us
With an empty space
In our hearts.

Death feels lonely and
Sometimes makes you
Feel angry.

(Matt Mulherin, age 9, Nov. 2009)

Double figures Matt!

Whenever one of our boys is about to have a birthday Chris shouts and
cheers 'Double Figures!'  This is mildly hilarious as he starts when
the number is three and continues on until the double figures is
really reached. So Matt has achieved his fantastic milestone that he
has been anticipating for seven years. Does he feel that it has been
especially special? Well… We did however all have a good laugh about
it and a good laugh is solid gold - a shared good laugh is even
better.

I do hope that Matt especially, because he's still only ten, will
remember his childhood as sad but full of fun and laughter as well. He
still misses Ben daily. He misses him deeply. Its quite sobering
really because he keeps it to himself. He is going well though and
Andy, Tim and Pete, with Sally as Matt's special invitee all did a
smashing job with his party games on Friday. If "a dirty (and wet) boy
is a happy boy" is true, the whole troop of his friends went home
happy + +. It was a bit tough on some parents and their washing
machines.

The guys keep us going. Life is real. Life demands to be lived and
young guys, in our case Tim, Andy, Pete and Matt, sure know how to
find the fun in it all. We thank God for them and we thank God for
their friends, Ben's friends, and all they have been through with us.
We are told by people who know, that the 'new normal' will be how we
live the rest of our lives. What I haven't heard much of is how much
hard work that requires. We still laugh and enjoy things. We seem to
have been laughing on and off forever really. So it's not that we are
now deadly (!) serious, only that behind the laughter is a damload
full of sadness. It's great having other young men to care for, not to
mention our zippy ten year old. (Yes! He reached 'double figures'.)

On this day

On this day twenty-five years ago Lindy and I were married.

On this day one year ago Ben was in a coma and his LD levels were rising. I wrote on the blog:

Ben has a temperature returning and his LD (Lactose
Dehydrogenase) levels are rising. This is not good news as it may well
indicate the cancer is at work. If it is, it means the chemotherapy
has not done the job. If this is the case then the outlook is very
grim as there are few medical options left.

For me, that was the day I 'knew' we were going to lose our boy.

Last night as we reflected on the last year and twenty-five years, we talked about time and metaphors for grief. I wrote to a friend this morning:

Yes we're doing ok I guess... it's a long road. We were talking about 'the new normal' last night as we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We decided that wounds heal but leave scars  forever, but that so far our wound has not healed yet: it still feels pretty much like a gaping wound.

And we thought that as time goes by we would miss Ben less but we would not care any less. But so far we still miss him all the time.

A note from Katie

Hi Chris and Lindy,

I wanted to share two things with you. The first is something that
resonated with me the other night and the second is a sad (yet happy)
reality for Josh and I.

On TV the other night was one of my all-time favorite movies: The
Shawshank Redemption. I can almost quote the entire thing and think
it's brilliant - I'm sure you've seen it (and encourage you to do so
if you haven't!)! Anyway, as it got close to the finish of the movie,
I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes and as I heard it, it
struck me smack bang in the heart.  It is a reflection by Red (one of
the main characters) about his friend Andy...

"Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear, the
stuff he pulled. It always makes us laugh. Sometimes it makes me sad,
though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds
aren't meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are just too
bright... and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a
sin to lock them up does rejoice... but still, the place you live is
that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss
my friend."

Even now I tear up reading it back to myself and thinking about it. It
is a little different though to my/our situation, as the movie
concludes with a reunion of the two friends here on earth. (If you are
unfamiliar with the movie Red and Andy were in a prison and Andy got
out (hence the quote), and Red joined soon after.) I miss Ben all the
time and find this quote comforting - and I know there will be a happy
ending to our movie when we all get to heaven! I could go on forever
about my feelings of loss, sorrow and happiness since Ben won the
victory, but may leave that to a later conversation perhaps.
Now to the sad (yet happy) reality for Josh and I....

Next Monday we are moving house into our new two bedroom unit. This is
a good thing in itself, but we leave our little apartment that Ben
once shared with us every now and again. It reminds me that time keeps
moving and that we will have to move with it if we want to continue
our lives too, but slowly (as I remember you saying in a blog) things
will change, new things will happen that Ben won't be here to share
with us. This is one of them. We will miss showing him around our new
home, miss having him at our many bbqs that will happen, and miss many
more things too. BUT Ben has a very prominent spot on our fridge (a
couple of spots actually), so I feel like we take him with us too...of
course we take him with us - he is forever with us in our hearts! As
we packed up the other day, we took his photo off the fridge and said
to ourselves "Come on, let's go Ben - we're moving house".

Stu wrote to us this week:

I keep remembering what was happening "this time last year."

For example, Saturday was national "seven-eleven day," where they give
out free slurpees between the hours of 7am-11pm.  I remember that day
last year, it was about 10:30pm, tim, pete, sally and I were with Ben
in his little cubicle in 3-west.  Simon rang up asking what we were up
to and if we wanted slurpees.  Of course we all did, so him and Dave
HL went to the local 7-11 and told them that they needed 7 slurpees
for their friend who was in hospital with cancer.  Of course they
obliged.  Then the two of them had to carry these 7 slurpees to
Box-Hill hospital, smuggle them through the Emergency Department
entrance, then finally past the nurses into his bed (number 4 at this
point I think).  It was great, we all sat around drinking our slurpees
together, joking about how bad the 7-11 man must have felt when he
refused them at first,  and generally enjoying a good time.

Teddies (yes: I give up on 'Teddys')

Teddies adorning our bedroom to date. Lindy has named one after each of the boys, although she hasn't found a Ben yet. Any guesses which is Andy?

Divisions in the family

The astute blog reader will have noticed a variation in the spelling
of the plural of Teddy in an earlier blog.

I say the plural of Teddy is Teddys because Teddy is a proper noun
nickname for Theodore, named after President 'Teddy' Roosevelt's comic
bear hunt in 1902 and a famous cartoon in the Washington Post of the
President with a bear.

But Andy says, of course not, the plural of Teddy is Teddies because a
Teddy is just a bear and because y changes to ies in the plural.

But I say that if Teddy is just a bear it's like Pooh bear and Pooh is
his name. And if you had more than one Pooh it wouldn't be Poohies
would it? It would be Poohs. Tiddly pom.

But Andy says that argument doesn't follow because Pooh doesn't end in a y.
 
Tim is non-committal. Pete and Matt are asleep and Lindy isn't too
sure but thought we should blog it. Ben no doubt would have a strong
opinion.

The comment line is open for your thoughts. Meanwhile Teddy photos will follow soon.

Over the hills and far away...

Lindy has just written an essay for her counselling course which I
(Chris) encouraged her to put on the blog. It's long so only the
beginning appears below. You'll have to follow the link at the end for the rest.

This is a reflective essay written by 'Old Mother Duck', who went out
one day, "over the hills and faraway" but when she called, "quack
quack, quack quack: only four of her [five] ducks came back." Her lost
duckling would never come back, but every day she went out to look for
him anyway. This essay, is about grief due to bereavement. I will
begin with an account of the last six months of my oldest son's life
and then briefly present some theories specific to counselling in
loss. These discussions are, of necessity, glimpses only, and include
key concepts and approaches from Freud's beginnings in 1917 to one of
the current theories proposed by an American professor of psychology,
Robert Neimeyer (Neimeyer, 2000). I shall present the theories
factually without my own opinions but my experiences are included in
the essay where relevant. I will finish the essay by looking briefly
at loss counselling possibilities while omitting more general theories
and skills, including how my experience might affect me as a
counsellor.

Ben

"Out of a clear blue sky" has resounded in my head since my strong and
healthy 23 year old was diagnosed with a rare lymphoma. Ben had a lump
on his leg. After a couple of months he thought he should have it
checked out. It surely was innocent but it was growing. It took weeks
of different doctors' opinions to have it correctly diagnosed. The
lump was now the size of a tennis ball. It was growing every day and
looked red and swollen to shiny. It was painless. The cancer journey
started for me with his words, quiet and serious, 'It is cancer Mum.
Not maybe.' That was the beginning. We of course assumed it would be
an annoying interruption to Ben's life and nothing more. How wrong we
were. The end of June 2008 until the beginning of December that year
was all the time Ben had left.

[If you want to read more, go to the full essay.]

Ben's Got Cancer - one year old today

From Chris:
One year and 75,000 hits ago today we started this blog at Ben's request. If you don't remember how it got its name go back to the first blog. What a lot of water and tears have passed under the bridge in this last year.

From Lindy:
When people ask how we're doing I usually say not too bad. Sure! We're not too bad. We are finding ways to cope. My counselling course calls it "reconstructing meaning after loss." I have a collection of at least 50 Teddies which have taken over our bedroom and Chris has a growing collection of wine. Yep! We're doing fine if Teddys and wine are the measure. But they don't make up for Ben. [Chris says: stay tuned for a photo of all the bears I share a bedroom with.]

Black humour has also been our very welcome companion during Ben's illness and now in his absence. When we were talking with the boys about Ben's plaque in the cemetery, we talked about a different site which would have room for another set of ashes. Tim and Pete both said 'Pido Yo!' which means 'Me, Mine!'

The full monty

So to speak...

This blog has about 25 entries below. But if you want to see all the entries from the beginning, there is now an archive version of the blog located at csbkm.blogspot.com. The archive is limited to the English blog posts and may not be up to date, but it does start from the beginning and everything is on the one page. That means it will take longer to load particularly if you are not using broadband internet.

"If I get stuck you'll have to pull me out."

Update on this photo: we got the following email from friends in the US who recognised the location:

I tried to post a comment on your web page, but since I'm over 15 years old, I don't think I know how to do it!! Please post that we were just trying to teach our Aussie boys [that's Ben and Tim on their world trip] a bit about South Carolina history at Ft. Sumter, where the Civil War started... Boring!!

First time we've seen the photo... priceless!!  We always think of the dashing two and their stay in Charleston!

We thank God for sharing each of you with us.

Love To all,

Ginny y Harris

I hope the lads didn't offend the locals when they left the tour to load the cannon.

More on absence and presence

On the same theme as earlier thoughts about Ben's absence being present...

Martin Heidegger says (my paraphrase), "Our own past is not something which follows along after us, but something which already goes ahead of us."

Kids with cancer

As we walked into the supermarket this afternoon we put several coins in a ‘Kids with Cancer’ collection. Before Ben, I had almost got to the point of thinking, ‘Ah. Nah. Cancer isn’t that bad these days. They cure it mostly. It’s not a big deal. And surely they’ve got enough money!’

That was before June last year. Sigh. Cancer is still a big deal. Even when it has a good prognosis and is curable, it’s a long, tough road. It seems true to say that it is a life changing experience for everyone involved.

On Saturday last, a group of us including our family, drove to Warragul for the funeral of a 17 year old boy who had lived, laughed and finally died with a bone cancer he had during six years or so. We thought some people might be interested in his blog spot so here it is. Phil’s sister Kris has done his blogspot. Matt says we are ‘cancer companions’ and likes our instant bond with others who are suffering with cancer. ‘Acompañar’ is the word in Spanish. Something like ‘walk alongside’.

In his own words - Ben's MySpace page

I spent the first 8 years of my life in Mel-
bourne, then moved to Buenos Aires in early
'94 with my parents and three brothers. We
lived in B.A for 6 months, then moved to
San Miguel de Tucuman, where we lived un-
til early 2004, acquiring another family member.
               Moved back to Melbourne for a year,
then spent 2005 traveling Europe, North,
Central and South America with Tim, and
ended up living back in Tucuman. 2006 saw
me back in Melbourne, continuing study at
The University of Melbourne, doing a B.Sc
and a Diploma in International Studies...and
that's where I'm at now, in 3rd year of a 4
year course, not quite sure what I'll be do-
ing afterwards.
                   I go to St. Judes Carlton, I'm
a valet/concierge at a Melbourne city hotel,
do some casual interpreting (English/Span-
ish, Spanish/English) here and there, and...
wish I was somewhere else most of the
time, wherever I am or aren't...I'm the most
critical person I know, which can be good
and can be bad. I notice everything, and
have a thing for shoes-i can probably tell
you what shoes you had on last time i saw
you-test me-or don't, I might criticize you
for being 'pesado'. People are ok, so long
as they don't annoy me, which many do,
sorry...but there are a few that don't-there's
a chance.
                 I hate it when people cheapen
the meaning of words by over-using them
or using them when not appropriate; then
when they are meant, the original meaning
is no longer there. "Love you", "beautiful",
"darling", "gorgeous" are a few examples-
don't kill them!

Soliloquy for one dead

A friend sent us a copy of "Soliloquy for one dead" by the Melbourne
poet Bruce Dawe. Ah, Ben...

Ah, no, Joe, you never knew
the whole of it, the whistling
which is only the wind in the chimney's
smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy
path that are always somebody else's.
I think of your limbs down there, softly
becoming mineral, the life of grasses,
and the old love of you thrusts the tears
up into my eyes, with the family aware
and looking everywhere else.
Sometimes when summer is over the land,
when the heat quickens the deaf timbers,
and birds are thick in the plums again,
my heart sickens, Joe, calling
for the water of your voice and the gone
agony of your nearness. I try hard
to forget, saying: If God wills,
it must be so, because of
His goodness, because -
but the grasshopper memory leaps
in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah Joe,
you never knew the whole of it...

Epitaphs - from Lindy

I have longed for a place to go and ‘be’ with Ben alone. Staring at his box of ashes on a bookshelf doesn’t seem right. Neither does not having any kind of formal reminder that he has walked upon this earth.

Faulkner Memorial is a beautiful place. It is where we had Ben cremated (how I wish we had had him buried). But it is too far away from us to go spontaneously and/or often. So with Matt’s help we have found and confirmed a spot in a nearby cemetry for his ashes. The site is in a grassy spot in the shade of a beautiful elm tree. It is simple and peaceful.

It is the closest I have come to feeling Ben’s presence. We think it is where he would like to be.

We can now make up an epitaph. What about these that I found in a book?:

Here lies Ezekiel Aikle……
Aged 102
The Good
Die Young.
(East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia.)

Or this one I like:

Sacred to the memory of Anthony Drake
Who died for peace and quietness sake;
His wife was constantly scolding and scoffin’;
So he sought for repose in a twelve-dollar coffin.
(Burlington Churchyard, Massachusetts).

The plaque next to Ben’s has a toy wind whirler, the kind that are sold at shows and fairs, along with another more robust wind chime looking like a bee. As we stood and looked and smiled, Matt said "Do you think a puck and stick (in-line hockey) would be stolen if we put them on Ben’s plaque"

I wonder what Michael Jackson’s epitaph is?

If you know any funny ones please let us know. We will put them here even if we can’t promise to use it for Ben’s plaque!

The shoes...

Ben's birthday party yesterday was a fancy shoe party. Those who knew Ben well will know why. If you want to see some amazing creations you'll find them here. These ones are my favorites, made out of shower caps.

24 today

24 years ago in the small hours of the morning in East Melbourne, Ben was born. I remember it well! And I remember the fragile bundle we took home from hospital. We were awed with that responsibility which first children impress on their parents as you take them from the safety of hospital. Little did we know ...

We had an asado (Argentine barbecue) yesterday with lots of Ben's friends: large slabs of meat and chicken cooked slowly over the coals. 27kg of well salted meat went down well. He would have liked to be there.

As the weeks go by the spaces between pain get longer, but the pain is no less. We look at photos or write on the blog, we invite friends for lunch and we talk about him. There are lots of things we do to make up for the one thing we can't do, which is to have him back again. Just to see his face again.

The weeks go by

The weeks go by, the 8th of the month comes and goes and comes again, Tim and Andy move into 'Ben's bedroom', we go roller blading and remember Ben playing roller hockey, Andy uses Ben's old skates.

The blog ticks over 68,000 hits, but we don't write as much now because there isn't a lot new to say...just the same heartache that doesn't go away but does wax and wane day by day. Today's a bad day as the photos pop up on my screen and iTunes churns out "Viva la Vida".

So I have a cry and send this blog into cyberspace knowing that there are others out there too who don't want to lose him. Thanks.

I had a dream... from a friend

Hey Lindy and Chris,

I had a dream on Saturday night. Maybe a vision... I don't know how God works...

I was with Ben, we were mucking around in the shallows of a swimming pool. The water had a gold glint to it as it reflected the sunlight...it had a sandy bottom and there were small palm trees around. I'm not sure how, but at the same time we were in a gathering of some sort, there were lots of people all around...we couldn't see them, we could only hear them. They were all singing...not exactly sure what...but I KNOW the voices were worshiping God.

Ben and I were just chatting about his cancer and his death. I asked him if he ever thought he'd get through it. He told me "Nah, I never thought I'd make it, I always knew I was going to die." But he was OK with that...he was at peace. I continued to ask him questions, but someone had started a game of volleyball (or something) in the water nearby, and he wanted to play, so we left our converation there and played the game.

"It is cancer!" - from Lindy

I loved reading the pudding blogs. I’ll have to think about another recipe favourite of Ben’s. I think the guys who have lived with him might say Spaghetti Carbonara. I bet that has loads of variations!

I read in one of Chris’s latest blogs that it was about one year ago that Ben told us ‘I’ve got cancer’. I’d like to say (with humility of course) that Chris wasn’t even in the country when Ben announced it!

I never heard Ben say ‘I’ve got cancer’ in the early days of his diagnosis. He told me ‘It's cancer’ and I said ‘You told me a few days ago that it might be cancer.’ And he said ‘It is. It's cancer.’ I believe that he didn’t think ‘he had cancer’. Like the rest of us, he believed that the lump on his leg was cancerous.

It was also about a year ago when he was at a holiday house with friends for the mid-year Uni. break, that a good mate arrived after most of them were already there. He entered the holiday house in his jocular manner, greeting everyone and saying loudly to Ben;

‘Hey Ben! Hey; how’s that purulent, pussy, cancerous looking sore of yours?’ And Ben responded instantly with a quiet ‘It is cancer!’

I can’t repeat what the poor mate said in return ‘*&*%’ but he was loudly very upset. This mate and his wife were two of the most supportive and empathetic of his friends throughout the next five months of challenge.

It still feels like it could have been yesterday and all we have to do is reach out and grab him back. On the other hand it seems like forever since we’ve seen him.

We’re so glad so many of you still remember him and care too.

What happens if...

Our NZ friend says... "What happens if you make it in a mug with gluten-free self-raising flour and are stupid enough to add baking powder as well! I have a few gluten free friends and have slightly adapted the mug recipe for them too. The answer is..."


I'm not sure what a 'gluten free friend' is. Maybe it's a New Zealand thing: do they make gluten free people there?

Meanwhile on a Ben note... Lindy and Matt and I (Chris) went to the Solomon Islands for a week last week: for a preaching conference and some time out. It was interesting how it helped to be in a place where Ben wasn't. If you know what I mean...

A year ago... (from Chris)

It's almost exactly a year ago that Ben announced "I've got cancer" in his matter of fact way. The small lump on his leg that was thought to be a cyst was diagnosed as some sort of cancer. But there are all sorts of cancers and my response was "So what does that mean?"

Little did any of us know at the time what lay ahead and that he would be gone less than six months later.

Chocolate slinging match

Well, the chocolate is starting to fly: various recipes are coming in and yes, 'NZ friend' has given us her chocolate-pudding-in-a-mug recipe too. All the details can be found in the comments section on the original blog immediately prior to this one. Just click the comments link to see them. Ben would have liked a food fight.

Chocolate plagiarised(?) pudding - from Lindy

Ben texted me once from somewhere in Victoria when we were still in Tucumán to ask for 'the choc. pudding' recipe. I've also had international phone calls and emails on the subject. It seemed that he never quite got around to writing it out himself.

I have always and only used the PWMU or Women's Weekly 'original' and Ben 'bettered' this by looking up the recipe on line. He then sent me the 'improved' recipe and said that I would find it better than the recipe I always used. He was right. I haven't looked back :-)

I presume these recipes are all public domain and so shall proceed with what must be just as old as Vegemite!

Pudding
60g butter
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup SR flour
3/4 cup castor sugar
1 tablespoon coca

Sift dry pudding ingredients into a mixing bowl or whatever you have... Melt butter in microwave until liquid. Add milk and vanilla to butter. Pour onto the dry ingredients and give them all a belt around with a wooden spoon until the mixture is a nice creamy brown colour. Grease an ovenproof dish; the deeper and narrower means the pudding will have more sauce rather than it drying up.

Topping
3/4 brown sugar (I often use white as I often don't have brown in the cupboard)
1 tablespoon cocoa
2 cups hot water

The topping was Ben's revolutionary change. He said to mix the three ingredients together in a jug until the sugar and cocoa are dissolved in the boiling water and there are no lumps. Pour the liquid over the back of a spoon and onto the uncooked pudding mixture. Make sure your oven is nicely preheated to moderate and put the pudding in. Keep an eye on it but it should be ready in forty minutes or so.  

A challenge...
Perusing my email quickly before sitting to write out this recipe I saw that there might be the beginnings of a Chocolate Pudding Challenge. A dear friend claims that not only does her mother make the best chocolate pudding ever but that this friend herself has worked out how to make a single-serve self-saucing pudding in a mug which cooks in a few minutes in the microwave! The real sting of this challenge is that both mother and daughter are New Zealanders! Are we just going to take this cross-Tasman one-upmanship? Let's hear from those who can better that. And yes, dear NZ friend, we will publish your revolutionary pudding-in-a-mug if you send it to us. Ben would have loved that one.