The Blood of Others

The essay below is Olivia's final assignment for her Massey University Creative Nonfiction paper, submitted 8 June 2018. It's too good not to publish.

The Blood of Others

By Olivia Stocker

There are moments in life, where you pause, ponder, and conclude: I never pictured myself here. Thirty-two, swigging cough syrup in a craft beer bar bathroom, more Fentanyl onboard than Tom Petty, but the only dream worth running down is a bonus bowel movement. This wasn’t the plan.

The Blood

85, 87, 88. Those were our birth years. Three Johnson girls, each a different shade of blonde. Somehow, I had grown from my parent’s genetic mash to be in the back row of school photos. My younger sisters were always front and centre, half obscured by the class year sign they had the privilege of holding.

There’d be days of truly outrageous Pooh Stick battles and games of kick-the-can. In the evening we would huddle on a bed listening to Dad read a poem, or a chapter, or a story. Come bedtime, I would smuggle thirty-year-old Nancy Drew paperbacks under the duvet.  As my literary tastes thickened, and night-time antics were discovered, I would lie there imagining I was Batgirl or Buffy. I longed for a secret identity and super strength to save the world.

After school, we’d meet on the asphalt mini-ball court and Mum would walk us home. One day, Hillary had been off sick. Mum didn’t arrive to pick Antonia and me up. Hillary was in the hospital, her right eye puffed up like a nectarine with green juice oozing from its corner. She was only six, clever as clever, but I didn’t want her to stay six for ever and ever. I didn’t want to leave the hospital that night. How would I protect her if I wasn’t there?

I was never afraid of needles. Nor spiders. I was the one to burst forth and retrieve the daddy-long-legs from the strawberry scented Polly-Pocket house. I suspect, looking back, that neither sister feared spiders either. Needles, well, a phlebotomist once sparked Spiderman strength within Antonia. It took two adults and a Sylvanian Families panda to pry her from the waiting-room door handle. We played with our collection for hours that evening.

I recall the three of us crammed in a Mitsubishi backseat, proclaiming our aspirations for adulthood. I can’t remember what my sisters said, but I had decided I would discover the cure for AIDS. “No,” my mother said from the driver’s seat. “Not blood. You can catch things from blood.”

“If you had a superpower, what would it be?” I asked my husband on our second date. We were 17, supervising a junior school dance. He wanted to fly. But how do you help once you get there?

Perhaps it was teenage rebellion, or chasing a flying boy, but I did study Dracula’s drink of choice. Blood is red, white, and yellow in a centrifuged vial. Some cells are pink, purple, and blue, once dyed and examined under a microscope. Here I can see leukaemia and glandular fever; iron deficiency and lymphoma. Here I can see disease.

Blood is a transport system carrying oxygen, proteins, and hormones. It’s a defence system reacting to bacteria, virus, and foreign cells. It’s an emergency system responding to cuts, tears, and puncture wounds. Blood is a collaboration of cells and proteins, enabling the body to function.

I worked graveyard shifts in the Dunedin Hospital laboratory. Some nights, I would hear the battering of the emergency helicopter as it approached the roof. Its searchlight was like the bat-signal shining through the window. I’d tear myself from the microscope, power-walk to the Lamson tube, anticipating the urgent blood samples. In lieu of black leather, I wore a white coat. Unbuttoned and with a strong pivot-step, I could make the tail fly like a cape.

Enough of my incoherent rambling! I’ve stayed halfway up the nostalgic stairs for too long. In a story I have written elsewhere and don’t have the strength to rewrite; Michael and I spread our webbed wings and around the world we flew. There were labs in Brixton and Hampstead, and night shifts overlooking a cemetery in Fulham. In Worthing, with earnest learning, I added transfusion science to my gadget belt. But the belt slipped and kept slipping, as did my faded blue jeans.

Lymphoma, cancer of the immune system. Failed chemotherapy, a feverish 40-hour flight; we hung our broken wings in Hillary’s Wellington flat. I’m a snotty bald shivering mess, and I need a bone marrow transplant. The bone marrow. The birthplace of blood.

Each blood cell begins life as a stem cell within the bone marrow. Like a utopian child, it has the potential to be any type of blood cell, maturing in the marrow, and emerging full-grown, into the bloodstream. Intramuscular growth factor injections stimulate the overproduction of these stem cells, prematurely forcing them into the real world, where they are captured in a bag by apheresis, frozen, and preserved.

This allows oncologists to blast the body with high-dose chemotherapy, killing the cancerous cells hiding within the bone marrow. The captured stem cells are then infused into the bloodstream. They find their way to the empty marrow and, like Californian suburbia, clone and multiply, restoring the blood and immune system. These cells may be your own, but they’re more likely to be the cells of others.

There’s a catch. The donor cells need to be genetically similar, HLA matched, otherwise they will munch the recipient's organs like Pacman who has eaten all the ghosts. The genetics behind HLA marker expression are complex. To save you from my excitable nerdish description, the US National Marrow Donor Program sums it like this:

You have many HLA markers. Half are inherited from your mother and half from your father, so each brother and sister who shares the same parents as you has a 25% chance (1 in 4) of being a close HLA match.

So my sisters have the highest chance of HLA compatibility. If they match me, they could donate their stem cells. Those stem cells could cure me. It’s showtime Synergy.

The Others

When I fell ill, there were offers and gifts abound. Scarves, hats, magazines, adult colouring-in books. Everyone wanted to help, unaware of my super-hero alter-ego. Or just my ego. Both my sisters offered me their eggs for the future. I hadn’t even thought about infertility. Antonia, now an Edinburgh based behavioural analyst who runs ultra-marathons for fun, accompanied me to a chemo session in Brighton. During my cannulation, she hippity-hopped from foot to foot, swayed a little, her blue eyes rolling to white. Hillary, my tiny little sister with her Kirsten Dunst smile, how was I to ask for their help? How was I to ask anyone?

I don’t remember how, but I remember emphatic affirmatives from both.  They never questioned how their health might be affected. Antonia admitted her needle phobia was irrational. Exposure therapy was the best way to overcome it. She began accompanying her husband, Scott, to his regular blood donations. “The nurses were more worried about her than me”, Scott recalls. She WhatsApp’d me one morning “It’s just spit! Scott’s signing up too”. Anthony Nolan, a charity managing a UK bone marrow register, had mailed her their testing kit. All they needed was her saliva. In Edinburgh, Antonia spat into her container. In Wellington, Hillary had six vials of bloods drawn. Now, we wait.

Spit. Anthony Nolan. This seemed familiar to me. In London, prior to a mandated NHS heavy-lifting course, some enthusiastic commissioned young presenters had asked for my saliva. I was a shelf deep in Orwell paranoia and couldn’t get a clear understanding of why their white smiles wanted my DNA. I vowed to look into it when I got home. But I never did. With frozen tissue specimens in labs around the world, my HLA profiled for my own purpose, and both parents on AncestryDNA, I reflect on my selfish paranoia almost every day.

My friend Amie had not been so paranoid. We first met in a cupboard designed to be a staff room at the Royal Free Hospital in London. She was reading aloud an absurd Rush Hour Crush printed in the Metro ‘newspaper’. I still think she may have written it herself. We were fast friends, and I was her virtual bridesmaid. In my mind, I was a Hologram. Amie spat into a cup for a free pen during her first-year O’Week, over ten years ago. Her aim at the time was to obtain as many free pens as possible. In 2017, Anthony Nolan phoned her. She was an HLA match for someone in need. Was she still able to donate? After a complete health check-up, four days of injections, and some mild bone pain, she was attached to a machine for six hours via an IV line and captured her stem cells for a stranger.

During those six hours, she recalls “I found myself wondering about the recipient and willing my collection to be bountiful. It was a very humbling experience and at times both happy and sad.” She is allowed anonymous communication with her recipient through Anthony Nolan. If the transplant is successful and both parties agree, they are permitted to meet after three years.

In Wellington, my HLA results are complete. Neither sister is a suitable donor. Hillary matched half the markers, Antonia none at all. “They said it would be harder if I didn’t match,” Antonia said between sobs when I called her. Hillary, at the time, appeared unphased. Now, when I ask her about it, she replies “I think about it still. Being only a 50% match really sucks. I felt guilty that I couldn’t donate. I feel guilty about your disease.”

In an interview for People magazine, Robin Roberts, a Good Morning America host, spoke of her transplant. Her sister, Sally-Ann, was her donor. Robin’s mother made her promise not to favour Sally-Ann over her other siblings.

A fellow haematology patient was relieved one sister matched over the other. He didn’t want to ask ‘that bitch in Australia’ for anything.

Neither of those responses has ever crossed my mind. When my sisters offered their eggs, I wasn’t going choose which sibling to accept. Make it random, or both even, a nice nature vs nurture experiment.

The New Zealand Bone Marrow Donor Registry (NZBDMR) states “70% of patients do not have a suitable HLA matched related donor.” Aside from mismatches, there are only-children, even children themselves in need. Registers are searched to match unrelated donors, and I did have a match. Just one. A woman in Germany.

Why Germany? I knew Anthony Nolan recruited anyone who chanced upon a heavy-lifting course or a fresher fair. Just spit into the cup. Why did New Zealand feel they could rely on Germany? I, Negative Nancy Drew Buff-Girl will bust this conspiracy wide open and implore all Kiwi to donate.

I began investigating the NZBMDR website. Skipping the promotional material, I downloaded their guidelines and read:

NZBMDR is funded to recruit males with Māori or Pacific Island ancestry. Other NZ ethnic minority groups may also be recruited.

The preference for males I understood; antibodies can cross the placenta during pregnancy complicating the donor-host relationship. If funds are limited, it makes sense to restrict the registry to men. But why are funds limited?

I delved into websites and journals. There were diagrams and arrows, and a spiral maze of acronyms resembling a Pynchon novel. I focused on finance, cursing our past blue government. I was about to bombard the Ministry of Health when I came upon the World Marrow Donor Association, a collaboration of 53 countries and over 27 million donors, targeting diverse demographics to expand the chances of unrelated matchings. Germany has 10 separate registers. The UK has six. There are millions of European donors. New Zealand, with its single registry, has around 12,000 donors. 75% are of Māori or Pacific Island descent. My pākeha heritage allowed my donor to be from Germany, others aren’t as lucky.

In this post-Trump, post-Brexit world, I was relieved to find a giving global network. Although I cannot implore all to donate, I encourage anyone with exciting heritage to donate blood and mention the bone marrow registry when you do so.  The blood service and marrow registry are linked. That was part of the spiral. See www.bonemarrow.org.nz for further details.

I never received my stem cell transplant. Relapse morphed into disease progression that no dose of chemo could cure. My secret identity is exposed: I’m super weak, reliant on others. I’m unable to save the world.

Works Cited

The National Marrow Donor Program [US]. “HLA Basics”. The National Marrow Donor Program. Web. May 2017. [www.bethematch.org/transplant-basics/matching-patients-with-donors/how-donors-and-patients-are-matched/hla-basics/]

Anthony Nolan. “Who we are”. Anthony Nolan. Web. 28 April 2018. [www.anthonynolan.org] 

Parkes, Amie. Personal email correspondence. 2017.

McLaughlin, Hillary. Personal interview. 2018.

Roberts, Robin. How love saved me. By Sharon Cotliar. People. 28 April 2014. 74-75. Web. May 2018.

Blacklock, Hilary et al. “NZBDMR Standards”. New Zealand Bone Marrow Registry. Sections 1 and 4, 2017. Web. [www.bonemarrow.org.nz]

World Marrow Donor Association. Multiple pages visited. World Marrow Association. Web. May 2018. [https://www.wmda.info]  [https://share.wmda.info]

Works Read

Collins, Graham P. et al. “Guideline on the management of primary resistant and relapsed classical Hodgkin lymphoma”. British Journal of Haematology 164, 2014, 39–52, Willey Online Library. Web. 28 April 2018.

Norfolk, Derek. Handbook of Transfusion Medicine. 5th Ed. Norwich: TSO, 2013. Print.

Groopman, Jerome. “A Healing Hell.” The New Yorker 19 October 1998. Web. April 2018. [http://jeromegroopman.com/ny-articles/BoneMarrowTransplant-101998.pdf]

NZ Blood Service. Multiple pages visited. NZ Blood Service. Web. May 2018. [www.nzblood.co.nz]

Works Borrowed

The Blood of Others - Simone de Beauvoir

Truly outrageous - Jem and The Holograms

Six, clever as clever ... stay six for ever and ever - Adapted from A.A. Milne

Halfway up the stairs - A.A. Milne

It’s showtime Synergy - Jem and The Holograms

Olivia (Liv) Stocker 1985 - 2018

Olivia (Liv) Stocker, the girl who just wanted to save the world, died on Sunday 15 July 2018 at home in Nelson, New Zealand, in the care and company of her husband, Michael (Mike) Stocker.  She was 32.

Liv, the bibliophile, blood scientist, budding writer, devoted sister and friend, will be best remembered for her fear of peacocks, like of a beverage or two, dislike of Carmelo Anthony, incredibly strong will, ability to pull off a stunning red dress, captivating personality and beautiful smile.

In an age of groomed images, she was a natural.  With the tendency to comfort over fashion, Liv had the careless dignity of someone too preoccupied with serious matters to care what she looked like on a day-to-day basis. She just wanted to be herself, and for others to feel they could do the same. 

Born in Nelson, New Zealand, Liv grew up with her father (Haydn Johnson), mother (Ann Johnson, née Coughlan), and two sisters (Antonia and Hillary) always close by.  Haydn would read A. A. Milne to her at night. Not just Winnie the Pooh, more his poems.  It stuck with her and remained one of her happiest childhood memories. 

Driven by her Johnson genes, Liv was a lover of all things words - literature, usage, puns and swears.  She never went anywhere without a book bag containing a paperback modern classic and a dog-eared notebook. Compelled by her mother’s genes, she was an unashamed ailurophile (a lover of cats) - always on the lookout for a friendly feline to befriend (for those wondering, sadly Piper never returned home). 

Despite being a self-professed book nerd, Liv was a tom-boy by nature and preferred sports (cricket, cross country running, basketball) over the accepted pastimes for a pretty young girl with long blond hair.  The sporting endeavours eventually slowed down, but the bookishness never did.  Liv completed all of her schoolings within the quaint confines of the Nayland Road Stoke series of schools and excelled in both Science and English along the way.  High school brought with it the usual teenage angst, but Liv emerged as a strong young lady with some excellent lifelong friends, a taste for punk rock and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (anything Joss Whedon really), and a boyfriend named Mike.

The influence of a particularly inspiring High School teacher eventually tipped Liv’s academic focus towards the sciences.  Liv challenged herself to first-year health science at Auckland University before reuniting with Mike in Dunedin on the pretext that Otago University offered the desired Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science; a courageous move that was undoubtedly the best decision of her life (although the writer may be a little biased on this point).

Graduating with credit in 2007, Liv started her medical science career at Dunedin Hospital and thrived under the tutelage of some excellent mentors.  Blood film morphology soon became her speciality, as did night shifts - a position she often preferred to minimise social interaction and maximise the opportunity to rock out to her own tunes.

Biomedical haematology science was Liv’s calling, her vocation (but not in the religious sense - that definitely wasn’t her), and one that she approached with a determination to do the best for her patients.  Liv once wrote: 

“A name and a date of birth were enough to bring forth an image of a living, breathing person, and I formed emotional attachments to many of the patients, especially the regulars, despite never meeting them.” 

A colleague recently recalled that “working nights with her in Dunedin was probably the most fun I've ever had at work, and she is still one of the best scientists I have ever worked with.”. 

An eighteen-month stint at AgResearch’s animal Genomnz DNA Testing Laboratory near Dunedin was enough to turn Liv vegetarian (a conviction she never willingly strayed from).  Liv was quickly directed away from the “proper” farmers towards those of a more natural rapport - the alpaca and highland cattle breeders who named and petted their animals.  The successful career move lifted Liv’s confidence and added another set of lifelong friends to her growing list.

Liv and Mike married on 30 January 2010.  “I Wanna Grow Old With You” by Adam Sandler was read at the service.  It was a bloody good night.

Departing Dunedin in search of adventure (another courageous move that Liv later admitted never seemed like a possibility), Liv took one for the MikeLiv team by literally taking on a shit job (a technician position at a London lab weighing poo among other biological samples) while waiting for her HCPC registration to be granted - a mere formality, but many months in the making (don’t get her started on the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the British health system) - before settling in Brighton, England.

Liv explained the move as: 

"In 2011, while our friends were in family making mode, my husband and I packed up our smallish life savings and joined many fellow antipodeans in the UK. We came for the work experience, the multiculturalism and the proximity to Europe. Aotearoa is four hours from anywhere, Britain is nine hours from everywhere.  The experience I have gained through working in NHS haematology laboratories is undeniable. Every day cases in Britain would warrant popup conferences in New Zealand. The plan was to return home and pass on my experience. Healthcare knowledge should have no borders."

Liv successfully navigated the spectrum lab rats (the stereotypes are real) to become a UKIP / Brexiteers’ worst nightmare - a hardworking, overqualified, foreign-born locum propping up the overstretched NHS.  Terrible.  Eventually, the two hours each way commute from Brighton to London became too much, and Liv settled into a permanent position at Worthing Hospital with a joint speciality in haematology and transfusion science. 

The Brighton years were undoubtedly the happiest of her tragically cut short life - filled with lazy days sipping long black coffees, solving the world’s problems over pints, hanging out with workmates, hosting friends, and reading on the train commute (again, don’t get her started on the reliability of the British train network).  When the otherwise inclement Brighton weather permitted, a perfect day entailed taking a picnic of French cheese, a baguette, and a bottle of Cava (the budget having already been blown on the cheese) to a nearby park for a chilled day of people watching, philosophising and reading. 

Interspersed with these lazy days were many trips throughout the UK and further afield.  Liv grew so much from seeing and experiencing other cultures.  A perfect day of travel entailed crisscrossing a European metropolis on foot, taking pit stops at modern art galleries, craft beer bars, second-hand bookshops, and bakeries along the way.

Pit stop time?

As these experiences accumulated, Liv grew into a complex and compelling person to be around with a strong sense of self.  She once described herself as “a bit dark, a bit cynical, left-wing, over-analytical and therefore indecisive, inappropriate, and a little scared of children”.  She was certainly a dark horse - once winning a Texas Hold’em pub poker league and an all-expenses-paid trip to Melbourne in the process.  Rather paradoxically, she also held a secret liking for real crime documentaries while simultaneously despising “who done it” crime fiction books with a passion.    

Liv understood what it was like to feel like an outsider and took it upon herself to nurture others, even throughout her angsty teenage years. A people pleaser by nature, she felt a strong empathy for the disadvantaged and oppressed and looked at the world with idealism and an instinct for how things should be.  This conviction was not easy for her.  It often boiled over into anger, even rage, when confronted with the cynics, incompetent, uncaring and wilfully blind among us.  This gave Liv a reputation for being as feisty as she could be gentle. Well known for her explosive rants in and out of the workplace (and on the basketball court!), she wasn’t shy about calling out hypocrisy, injustice or frustration inducing ignorance when she saw it.  At times she had the impulse control of Leela from Futurama.  In this sometimes blunt way, Liv had a knack for fostering introspection in others.  A catalyst for change, she encouraged others to front up to that big decision they had been pondering over.  Relocations around the world, job changes, re-training, perhaps even a marriage or two, all owe a debt of gratitude to Liv’s free, determined and clear-sighted advice. As Liv said, “Finesse is not really in my repertoire”.

Despite Liv’s success in practical science, her real passion lay in written words and the minds of those producing them (her Goodreads library records more than 200 completed works). Liv read to transport herself to another location, another time, and most importantly, to another mind (as only the great writers can achieve) - Camus, Orwell, Hemingway, Atwood, Vonnegut, Mansfield, Marquez, Deborah Levy, David Foster Wallace, to name just a few. She was particularly drawn to the reflective self-conscious style of stream of conscious writers who could confront the existence of contradiction within society, and themselves, with honesty. These writers were Liv’s kindred spirits.

Liv would have hated being referred to as “a writer”.  However, the characteristics she praised in others were certainly present in her own writing. Given more time, something remarkable would have come from Liv’s creative side, if it hasn’t already.  Those who read Liv’s blog and other writings would agree she had a gift for sentence craft, including this cracker: 

“My consultant informed me he was rather impressed with my blood. I blushed.” 

Liv’s blog is now a tangible legacy, a window into her ailments (both physical and mental), the banal and the profound.  Liv acknowledged that her situation was by no means unique, and just wished to reach out to others to show them they were not alone.  Her blog had many purposes - a guidebook, updates to friends and family, reflective learning, public therapy, popular science - but at its best, it offered a stream of conscience from a mind in a place none of us would wish to be.   An opportunity for her readers to learn, to grow their empathy and understanding.

Returning to New Zealand in July 2015 and unable to work due to ongoing treatment, Liv directed her energies towards amateur biomedical science (with herself as the sole patient, forever scrutinised), volunteering for the Red Cross Refugee Resettlement Programme (supporting families from Bhutan, Myanmar and Colombia), tropical island holidays (including some risky volcano viewing and reef diving), blogging for her dear avid readers, exploring New Zealand like a foreign tourist fresh off the airplane, and hanging out with her sisters and friends (and doing her best to correspond with those further afield). 

All the best things in life at once

Liv also took the opportunity to further her studies, completing online and distance courses, and amazingly, enrolling for a full-time post-grad diploma in creative writing via Massey University starting in February 2018.  Liv achieved excellent grades (studying far too hard like a true mature student) notwithstanding the slight handicap of periodic radiotherapy treatments, blood transfusions and hospice stays.  Liv insisted upon attending her final Twentieth Century Literature exam despite looking rather frail on the given horrible winter day.  The results came in at a respectable “B”, and also haemoglobin in the low 80’s… Liv wasn’t finished there.  Liv discovered that she’d received an “A” for an essay on a Thomas Pynchon novel (The Crying of Lot 49) that she never submitted (for several reasons, including her health and Piper’s disappearance, despite having poured over the book for weeks).  “It’s a compassionate mark Liv, one you know you could have easily achieved in better circumstances.  Just take it. You deserve it.” friends and family said.  But no.  Liv would not allow one of her final acts to be one of dishonesty.  She made us promise that the official record would be corrected.  The promise has been fulfilled.

Lymphoma and stubbornness aside, life wasn’t always easy for Liv.  She suffered bouts of crushing anxiety throughout adolescence and early adulthood fuelled by self-doubt and an overwhelming desire to please others.  This anxiety always bristled below the surface, and despite her aspiration for frankness, inflicting discomfort or wounds on others (whether real or perceived), even if to correct a wrong in worldview or actions, inflicted a wound of many magnitudes more on herself.  The conflict within her was potent, sometimes all-consuming.  Liv expended tremendous energy merely to appear normal, to get through the day and its social interactions with her conscience intact.  However, in doing so, she gave so much warmth and benefit to those who sought out her company.  People often said how strong Liv was for living with her illness for so long - and she undoubtedly was.  But her real strength was in managing this internal conflict, living the absurdity of life, carrying on in the face of ever-increasing obstacles, yet somehow remaining sanguine in the process while the rest of us caught up. 

Liv’s writings reveal this underlying character, and the struggle within, with elegance and a level of honest beyond many (and with liberal use of wit, humour and puns to top it off).  Liv once said “I need a distinctly set level of despair in order to trigger my creative ambition.” and her writing certainly yielded an unpredictable reward schema only slightly less addictive than the opiates she relied upon.  Liv’s prose became an essential outlet for not just her creativity, but also her outpourings of dysfunctions, neuroses and emotions.  Her audience, including those of the anonymous internet and depths of her unpublishable black book scribbles, provided a confidant, a punching bag, a pun receptacle or whatever it was she needed when the words began to flow.

Despite being ill, Liv’s death seemed impossible to those around her.  Her strength unending. However, Liv confronted her mortality and the contradictions of living head on: 

“But I believe Camus. I believe that in order to continue with the absurdity that is life, I have to try to make it better for others. And how do I do that? How, when my master plans required decades, do I condense them into a couple of months? By writing? By voting? By traveling, giving my money to remote communities, corrupting them with my Western ways? Really all I am doing is what I want, feeling guilty about it, and then attempting to justify my behaviour.” 

So what did Liv want from us?  Only to be affected, moved, touched, to be better, do better, whatever that may mean to the individual - question long-held beliefs or assumptions, properly listen to and try to understand someone, expand your mind, plant a tree, make that long procrastinated change, just challenge yourself to be a better person.  Liv never wished to hurt or wound, and certainly didn’t want anyone to be burdened by guilt.  She went through all this pain so that we didn’t have to, and her legacy lives on in those she touched in this way.

Liv may not have saved the world, but she certainly made it a better place.  It breaks my heart to have Liv’s drive and talent cut short, to be denied her companionship and intellect. I will miss you forever Liv and love you more than I ever could show.

Liv was farewelled, at what can only be described as a party, at Rhythm and Brown, a favoured drinking spot where she spent many late hours. Liv’s ashes were scattered in the forever changing sand dunes of Wharariki Beach, to blow carefree in the wilderness while the rest of us carry on her good work.

Regret

Through my negligence, our arthritic three tooth tiger is gone. This may appear trivial, but I can assure you the pain I feel is not. Nor would be the pain Piper experienced; cold, alone, hungry, scared. 

Feb 2017