"Today is not a day to complain about parenting."

How we can honour William Tyrell’s parents today.

“Mum! Will you come and get me?”

They were the first words I heard from my little boy this morning. Usually, he abandons his bed of his own accord, barreling down the hallway at some unholy hour, calling out for something he wants – milk, his sister, a dinosaur.

But today he wanted me. I lifted him out of his bed, and his body was hot. Too hot.

Right now, it seems like my little boy is sick all the time. In the last few weeks he has had a vomiting bug, oozing conjunctivitis and a cough that won’t quit. Nothing serious. Just lots of iPad time, lots of doctor visits, lots of interrupted work days for his parents.

Which was my first thought when I held the weight of his sweaty little body this morning. “Oh NO. I can’t stay home AGAIN.”

Last night, with my boy and his sister sleeping a room away, I, along with 1.3 million other Australians, watched William Tyrell’s parents on 60 Minutes.

I watched a woman I have never met talk about an ordinary morning, the kind of morning we all have when we are on holiday with our children. You sit, sipping tea, watching kids play. You get up to them, you sit down again. You see them running, hear them roaring and rumbling and playing.

And then, I heard her talk about the moment William ran around the corner and the roaring stopped.

In those short minutes, this stranger’s life just ended. As she describes it:

“I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t hear him. It was like the world came to a screaming halt. There was no wind. There were no birds. There was no movement. There was nothing. And I’m looking out, around this garden and I’m thinking ‘where are you?’ and I’ve just said, ‘William, where are you’ ?”

This mother has been asking that question for a year.

“William. Where are you?”

It has been a whole year since she has seen her little boy’s face. A year since she held him, or scolded him, or heard his laugh.

My son is the same age as William was that day. He is three and a few months. He is obsessed with dinosaurs. He roars rather than talks. He stomps rather than walks. He’s gone in the blink of an eye if I turn my back on him at the park, at the beach, rushing away, always, to chase something new.

But right now, he is sick all the time. Because it’s winter. And day care. And for me, largely, it is a massive inconvenience.

Who can work from home today? Whose colleagues are going to be most inconvenienced? Who did it last time? Whose boss is going to get shitty about this first? Is there anyone else we know and trust well enough to leave with our sick child?

But today, I have to check myself. Because imagine what William Tyrell’s mother would give to have the chance to stay home with her sick child.

Imagine what she would go without for one moment to pass when she doesn’t have to deal with the dread, the weight of knowing that the worst thing that could possibly happen has happened to her family, is still happening to her family.

Today is not a day to complain about the inconvenience, the drudge, of parenting a little boy.

After the events of this past week – a week when a tiny body washed up on a far-away beach became an indelible symbol of parental desperation – news of a grey sedan parked over the road from a grandparent’s house seems like a sinister omen.

Like a signpost to the fact that absolutely everything can change in just a moment. Everything that holds your world together can be unravelled in the time it takes to notice that the roaring has stopped.

And we can’t live our lives like that. We can’t, and shouldn’t, co-exist with constant fear that something unspeakable is about to happen.

But we can honour the parents who are living through our nightmares by holding ours tight when we have them.

My instinct last night, when I watched those parents talking about the last time they saw their little boy, was to go and climb into my little boy’s bed and give him a hug.

But, you know, I had emails to respond to, and washing to fold. So, of course, I didn’t. I just listened to their words, and shuddered, and got on with my night.

What an unspeakable luxury, for most of us, to be able to turn our compassion on and off.

How ridiculously lucky I am to be able to shrug off my son’s fever, decide it’s not my day at home, and get on with my life.

William Tyrell’s parents sit and share that story as a reminder to all of us that we should see the things that matter clearly.

A short shockwave to remind us of what we already know: Our very existence is connected to our children’s. We can only be happy and safe if they are happy and safe.

Go and climb into bed with them. Breathe them in. Try to hold on, through the sickness and the inconvenience and the rush and the noise and the chaos, to the fact that there is nothing that matters more than they do to us.

That’s how we can honour William Tyrell’s parents.