The 7th year: the one when I can sit back and see how far we’ve come

Seven years - I often feel like the years are a wash, rinse, repeat cycle of ups and downs and laughs and tears and challenges and grief and happiness and firsts and lasts…

Life rolling along seems to be that - I’m so used to the rollercoaster of all of it…I forget that what we do isn’t ‘normal’.

This last year had a number of times where I was telling people about our life for the first time - and I forget just how much it all is - and I had looks of complete … well, I never know what the word is - wonder, aghast, gobsmacked, disbelief…

It’s just my life.

Recounting it to new people in the last year has made me relive what it has been, these last 7 years.

But 7 years hasn’t, in lots of ways, numbed the very intense grief - those times are just spread further apart.

On the day of the 7th anniversary of losing Pete I sent the entire day on the point of tears.

It was weirdly heart hurty.

The anniversary always falls so soon after I’ve looked back over the year before and it always makes me realise how much the 365 days between the days we do.

Last year was a child leaving home and another one finishing Yr 12, it was a knee reconstruction and work achievements, it was school performances and hockey grand finals…

But also, in the last year, for the first time in 7 years, I have been able to see just how little the kids were when Pete died. And how far we have come.

For the first time I’ve maybe been able to take a breath, maybe because they are older now there is less of the busyness of little people, I have looked at photos and gone ‘omg - they were so young…’

Other people saw it back then.

I was just too close it all.

I looked at the life as I knew it being vaporised and knowing I needed to rebuild it.

And so on the 7th anniversary, I looked at all 4 of the kids, these 4 teenagers, wandering around Melbourne and doing the tennis like we now do for the anniversary and heading off to seek out food or drinks or items without needing an adult it really just smacked me in the face.

They are so grown up now. They are not little people any more.

December 2018: 26 days after this photo, Pete was dead.

January 2026

I have spent 7 years meeting all the needs, doing all the things, taking all of them places together or arranging care for some of them while others did things … and now? Now they don’t need that as much.

And it really tugged at my heart how much we had grown and changed.

Back then, they were just who they were at the age they were. But now I can sit back and look at who they are and how far they have come and think: wow, it’s been a lot.

Until now, it’s been so much for so long I haven’t had the capacity to really sit back and see or realise it.

The 7th anniversary had a combination of smiles and rage and tears and yelling and the best dinner out ever - we might never try another restaurant and just keep going back to Society it was that good.

I looked at the montage of photos of Pete and the life I so barely remember and recognise now, and thanks to someone showing me and feeling genuine love and care and kindness for and to me, just how much it hurt to lose that.

I’d forgotten what that happiness felt like. Remembering what it felt like to lose it hurt my heart a lot more than I’d anticipated.

I also looked around at the 7 year anniversary and in the days since thought - half way there.

In 2 weeks I will have successfully parented two kids to adulthood, having successfully got 2/4 through school.

Half way to a milestone of: got them all educated and to adulthood.

Duly noted here (as people scoff when I mention it) that parenting doesn’t stop once they turn 18 but it’s a milestone none the less (and I’m getting better at telling those people to go jump on their heads or eye roll at them…)

Getting 1/2 of them there is a massive sigh of relief.

There were lots of lots of days and weeks I wasn’t sure we could handle the pressure and challenge.

I also 100% know I can’t take my foot off the pedal just yet - there’s still 2 to go. One starts VCE this year in Year 11 … at 6ft 1in he looks more like his dad by the day.

And I’ve got one heading into that torturous and life defining school grade of Year 9.

And so after the 7 year anniversary has been and gone and we take a big deep breath, and lean into the eighth year of doing this rubbish wash rinse repeat life of grief, it’s one where I think: look how far we have come.