"Edited to Add"....

This started as a pregnancy blog when I fell pregnant in May 2009 after four years of finding a donor, doing all the counselling / paperwork / tests and trying.

And now, thanks to a 4WD which skidded onto our side of the road, killing our baby daughter at 34w and injuring me, my partner and two of my stepdaughters on 27 December 2009, it has turned into something else. We didn't want this something else, but apparently it is all we've got to go on with.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Grief & doing my tax return

It had to happen eventually. My 09-10 tax return has been sitting there glowering at me, waiting for me to pull out all the pieces of paper and play with spreadsheets. Tonight, I've finally started to wrestle it.

I was expecting the urges to procrastinate, the frustrations with having no filing system since we moved to Melbourne (the filing cabinet which I'd just gotten organised before we left sydney is in the garage), the general head-achey-ness of trying to find documents from nearly 2 years ago.

What surprised me was the emotional gut-punch of looking at our bank statements from before & around the time of our accident. There we were, doing mundane things like getting the dogs vaccinated, when we only had 12 days left with that beautiful round living bump that was Z. There is the parking fee for the last scan we had at the hospital four days before, there is the movie we went to see (Where the Wild Things Are), all weary from making the big move, the last bits of Christmas shopping. And then, suddenly just a whole lot of withdrawals from hospital ATMs. It still shocks me, even 16 months on.

[ps thank you so much for the beautiful warm welcome back xxxh]
Posted by Hanen at 3:50 AM
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7 comments:

  1. MerryMay 8, 2011 at 12:19 PM

    I think it is just the oddest thing, those things that are hurtful. I find it astonishing and insanely strange that for my whole life I was counting down the number of April 2nd and April 13ths I had that were happy. I find the pictures from the day before his birth just shocking. How could I have been so distracted? HOW?

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  2. JeanetteMay 9, 2011 at 10:08 AM

    Strange isn't it? I found a fathers day card tucked away behind a shelf. It was from June 2009, and it was signed by all the children and "the baby (probably" in India's handwriting...it meant nothing at the time, but finding it now just about took mine and dh's breath away. x

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  3. SuzyMay 9, 2011 at 7:20 PM

    isnt is amazing how a bank statement can punch you in the face like that? I find mine the same. I obsessively track our finances but I can't bring myself to look at anything from the end of 07 to the middle of 08. It's so full of physical, concrete, reminders of that time. Of the hope and joy we felt right before the fall.

    Thinking of you and loving little Z. Sometimes I wish we all had warnings of these things so we knew to be aware, to know we only had days, minutes, hours to go before we lost everything - but then I wonder if that would be worse...

    xxxx

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  4. KristinMay 9, 2011 at 7:42 PM

    I'm sorry the tax returns were such a punch in the gut.

    However, I am immensely relieved that it wasn't a molar.

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  5. PomegranateMay 10, 2011 at 11:20 AM

    so sorry this seemingly mundane task brought back so much heartbreak.

    ((hugs))

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  6. PingMay 15, 2011 at 5:06 AM

    I didn't do my taxes for three years because I was just about to fill in my 2004-05 return when N left me - the two became conflated in my mind.

    *hug*

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  7. Catherine WMay 22, 2011 at 1:29 PM

    Anything dated from 'before' never fails to make me do a double take. How could I not have seen it coming?

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