By REBECCA SPARROW
I remember the exact moment I became a different person.
The moment when the old me sort of dissolved. Faded to black. Blew away in the softest of breezes. The moment my protective casing hardened while my heart became more vulnerable, splitting open like an over-ripe summer peach.
I remember the moment I started seeing the world through a new prism. A ‘well no-one died, no-one is dying’ prism.
It was the moment I sat alone in a hospital room in 2010 and stared into the face of my stillborn daughter.
That’s when something in me shifted – like a Rubik’s cube. From that moment the past would forever be categorised as either the time Before Georgie Died or the time After Georgie Died.
The time when I worried about book reviews and family spats and being late for meetings and parking tickets and how other people saw me and thought of me and what they said about me.
And the time when I realised that none of that shit matters. When my skin became Teflon. When I lived my life not just knowing but living and breathing ‘the main thing’: living your life with the people you love.
Needless to say when I read The Age columnist Wendy Squires’ column on the weekend about the death of her mother and the profound impact it had on her — I got it. I had one of those reading experiences where my spirit just vibrated ‘Yes Yes’ to each beautifully crafted line. Because it was a column that reached out and grabbed the hand of those of us in the club. Those who have experienced the slamming-on-the-brakes defining moment of losing someone close to us whom we love. It was a column about how that loss irrevocably changes you and how you see yourself, what you do and the people around you.