Mourning into Dancing

My name is Gloria, and this is an overview of my life highlighting how through some very sad circumstances I found ultimate joy and the strength to embrace life again.

I was brought up in a Christian home. I met my husband Terry when he was in his first year at university studying Geology. At that time, I was working at Myers. We first met when one of Terry’s former high school teachers, who went to my church, invited Terry to a combined church youth meeting. Our friendship developed and Terry would often drop into a coffee shop called One Way, where a friend and I volunteered trying to help kids who had dropped in for a chat.

Terry and I married in August 1973 and had our first child Nicky in February 1975. Sadly, Nicky was born with a hole in his heart and consequently was always very sick. Terry was studying geology and working part time. Twenty months later our second son, Damian was born. By this time Terry was working two part time jobs and studying full time. I went back to work when Damian was three months old. Needless to say, it was incredibly stressful and tiring, particularly with Nicky’s ongoing heart condition and related sicknesses.

When Nicky was four and a half, they were going to operate on him and close the hole. Just before they operated, however, they did a cardiac catheter test on him and took a chest X-ray. One test contradicted the other, so the doctors decided not to operate. It would have been a high-risk operation on a child so young. At this time, they also started treating Nicky for asthma. He was on an asthma pump for twenty minutes, twice a day. Nicky hated this treatment, and I had to struggle with him daily just to give it to him. It did, however, help Nicky significantly and over the following six months he rarely needed to see a doctor. Prior to this I was taking him to the doctors practically every week and he was regularly prescribed antibiotics.

One of Terrys' jobs was taxi driving at night from around 6:30pm until around 2am. I was used to being at home with the kids on my own. On one occasion when Terry was going away for a week on a geology excursion to Broken Hill, I decided to take the kids and stay at Mum and Dad’s house. I took the week off work and was planning to go back on the following Monday. Damian, Nicky and I all slept in the one bed. On the Friday, I had taken Nicky to the doctors as he sounded a bit husky. I wanted to make sure he was ok; he checked out fine and had no infection. However, that night Nicky was tossing and turning and was very restless. He had begun using inhalers about a month earlier. About 5:40am Nicky woke up and said, “I can't breathe!” I raced to get his inhaler which was only about two meters away and by the time I got back to him, he was gone. In my mind I heard Nicky say several times over, "It's ok mummy. I'm ok mummy." I still believe if I looked into the corner of the room, I would have seen him leaving.

During this period, I had moved away from God, however, about six months before Nicky died, I frequently talked to both boys about Jesus and encouraged them to put their trust in him. They did this whole-heartedly. Nicky had a favourite song by Evie called “I am Safe. The theme of the song is about angels watching over us. In one verse it says:

I've got an angel that watches me each night,
When I'm sleepin' really tight,
Or I wake up in a fright,
I've got an angel that watches me.

We played that song at Nicky’s funeral.

Terry was an atheist. Twelve years of Catholic boarding school; all he saw and went through there as a young boy had stripped him of any love for, or belief in Jesus. Terry and I separated eighteen months after Nicky died and so my life and Damian’s life felt completely shattered. I moved to Melbourne not long afterwards and took Damian away from everyone and everything that was familiar to him. Over the next seven years he attended thirteen primary schools, and I became completely addicted to marijuana. Damian struggled with being bullied and not fitting in, mostly due to the constant moving. Our lives were a mess.

Damian, however, never gave up on his faith. From the age of four he kept praying for Terry and me to become Christians. I wasn’t aware of this until much later because after Nicky’s death, I no longer prayed or read the bible. At night I only read Damian children’s stories, not bible stories. Damian had a favourite song from the Evie album which was ‘The Tree Song’. There is a line in the song that says, “I've got roots growing down to the water, I've got leaves growing up to the sunshine.” Damian always believed Terry and I would come back together. When he was eleven, I came back to Jesus and a year later Terry became a Christian. Nine months later, after about 8 years of separation, Terry and I were re-married, and Damian sang at our wedding. It was like a dream! He turned thirteen a week after our wedding.

Damian will be 49 this November. He is happily married and a proud father of two beautiful children. Terry and I have been married 51 years this year (2024). The songs my two young boys cherished have always been a great comfort to us over the years. God promised me "All your sons will be taught of the Lord" (Isaiah 54:13). Nicky had already gone to be with Jesus when God gave me that scripture and Damian continues to remain faithful to this day. Thank you, Lord, for ‘turning our mourning into dancing.’

Gloria’s Story