Geoff's

"My Remembrance of Kessia"

So I am going to talk about a number of 'images' I have of her and some realisations of blessings we had that I hadn't recognised until so very recently (please bear with me if this seems all over the place)

Firstly, Kessia's name. Kessia began to be aware of the uniqueness of her name only recently - mostly complaining that no one ever pronounced it properly the first time! Denise and I came across an African name of Keziah, meaning "favourite". We softened the sound, played around with the spelling and arrived at "Kessia". And her unique and pretty name suited her immediately. It has only been this week that I've realised what a blessing her unique name will be for us in the time to come: we will not have the saddness of ever hearing her name called in parks, in shopping centres; at the beach.

In the anguish of the first days and weeks following Kessia's diagnosis and prognosis - both of which happened pretty much in 24 hours, and only 6 weeks ago - the words which kept rearing up in me was :"they're going to take my beautiful angel away from me" (they being the great amorphous "they"). My angel... I realised that's how I thought of her "My angel"; not princess; not anything else; just My beautiful angel. I remember talking to both Kate Pettit and Louise Bromhead on different occasions when I was in Sydney, they asked how I was, I was about to say something like tired or worried, but out of somewhere deep within, carried on a love pain I've never experienced until this time, rose up and choked out every thing else were the words "they're going to take my beautiful angel away from me".. And now she is even more so a beautiful angel.

There were times since we've had Kessia that I thought were dark and difficult - that many parents have - that I now see as blessings and give me comfort out of the humour of that changed perception:

• Kessia as a baby and toddler was a bad sleeper. We had months and months of rocking Kessia to sleep. I trained my self to wake to her cry (Ok, Denise trained me to wake to her cry), and I would get her for a feed with Denise and then have to rock her for a long time afterward; or we would put her in the front pouch we had and jiggle her for hours to keep her asleep. Ali just the other day reminded me of how when we visited them I was always jiggling around, never able to sit down; we bought a mini-tramp so we could bounce Kessia more gently to sleep - and I have memories of watching old black and white movies at 2am bouncing on that tramp for hours.

• We tried 'controlled crying' but to no lasting avail;

• When she was around 2 she would just not go to or stay in bed. We had read all the books so I tried hard - kept getting down at her level, looked her in the eye, directed her to bed in a strong firm (but loving) voice - for hours.. One particular night I caught sight of it all and realised how ridiculous I looked - on my knees, arguing, demanding, directing, pointing my finger at her bed;

• From around that time to now, I have always patted Kessia and Joshua to sleep. As the years have gone on they have needed less of it to sleep and "10 pats" after goodnight kisses has become part of our nightly ritual, but early on - again - hours of patting. I even used to fall asleep with Kessia while patting her!

• So for seven years I've complained about being sleep deprived, about struggling around in the morning when they woke early, about not having enough evening time to be 'me' because it took so long for them to get to sleep BUT now,. but now I can only think of it as "all that extra special time with Kessia" bouncing her while she slept against my heart, cuddling and rocking her when it was just her and me and no distractions, kneeling next to her gently patting her.

• Hours and hours and hours that I begrudged at the time have now become precious, precious times in my memory.

The other memories I wanted to share with you all was in holding Kessia. I have so many wonderous memories of holding her in all sorts of ways and places and at all ages. One of the most precious I'll leave to last, but let me list some of them:

• Holding her when she was between 9 and 18 months in our back yard in Kambah under a glorious golden ash we had there. Her in her little purple tye-dyed baby suit and golden light washing over both of us;

• Holding her in our lounge in Kambah and then laying her little half naked body into a nest of pillows, dapled light everywhere, the air and temperature just perfect and watching her sleep. This was a moment in time I later described to Michael Tynan and David Bromhead as a seminal moment in my growth in 'fatherhood'.

• Holding her against my heart for so many of her early years in the baby pouches;

• Holding her in hospital when she had rotavirus at 17 months old, where the IV drip pump seemed bigger than her;

• Holding her up as she was learning to walk;

• Holding her as she learnt firstly to deal with her in-line skates; and then later to ride her bike on our regular Sunday mornings at the Port Vila market place;

• There are of course so many times, and I now think of all those times as not holding but cuddling times.

• And then in the last months I was often Kessia's transport and how I loved it - we used to call each of the times I carried her as "cuddle carries" and Kessia would often put her head down on my shoulder or her cheek against mine and wrap her little arms around my neck and squeeze so gently.

• And Denise and I were able to carry her from life to death as we cuddled her and held her last Sunday;

• And today I can carry Kessia for the last time (physically at least)

BUT the moment I wanted to leave for last is the day she was born. All cleaned up, and wrapped up to the hilt I took Kessia out to the Birthing Centre lounge to give Denise some time to rest. And I sat down for about an hour with Kessia, my little, little baby, fitting into my forearm, staring into her face and I fell in love.

A friend (in fact David Preston) gave us a lullabye CD by a Nicolette Larson, I think just before Kessia was born, which we have played continually over Kessia's life and was often played on repeat all night to keep her settled. More often than not whenever I held Kessia to get her to sleep over the last 7 years I would sing her the lullabye from that CD that you are about to hear- "The First Time I Saw You".

"My angel, my baby, my Kessia,
I am going to miss you
so, so very much".