People have been asking me about the dinner we had to celebrate Ross’s 40th birthday.
It was a terrific evening — very special indeed. It was the weekend of the Chinese New Year, so Sydney was buzzing, and we had decided to go to one of Ross’s favourite restaurants, The Golden Century. One of the group said they had been to that restaurant many times with Ross, and knew what his very favourite dishes were, so we said, Please order for all of us, and that’s what we’ll have. If it sounds like some sort of shrine, that was far from the case, but it was a lot of fun. We told Ross stories, and we re-visited the past, and we heard new stories about Ross and about each other, and it was not really sad at all. Poignant, but happy.
It’s incredible to think that Ross has been gone from us for almost two years, yet sometimes it is still as raw as yesterday. All those who came are still grieving, and always will grieve, but there comes a time when you have to hide the grief because people think you should “move on” and get over it. But, the loss is too huge for that to happen. I think about Ross every day. I know that for everyone there, it was a relief to be able to talk about him, and tell stories about him, and laugh about him and yes, even say derogatory things about him! and express some of the things that you can’t say to other people once the first tide of grief is over and people get uncomfortable.
Eventually there came a point where we were, sort of, “Ross-ed out”, and we started to chat about other things going on in our lives. And that was healthy too.
We were all very aware that it was an evening Ross would have loved to have been at.
Perhaps he was.
I can’t get rid of the “red eye” (new camera) but I’ll put in one photo of me at the dinner:
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