Sarah Yvonne

If a butterfly flapping its wings can – in theory – set off a chain of events that leads to a tornado on the other side of the world, what impact would a cataclysmic explosion have on a single life?

It has been four years since my two-year-old son Isaac was killed in the Beirut Blast. Four long years since he was ripped from our lives in an instant. Isaac’s death is everything. It permeates every single aspect of our lives. His absence is a constant, looming presence as we move through the hours, days, weeks and now – somehow – years. A lifelong sentence.

But, as my psychologist makes a point to remind me every year, the 4^th of August is not only the anniversary of Isaac’s death, but the anniversary of everything else that happened to me.

Each year, I dismiss her pleas to give myself space to grieve our other losses, to process my other trauma, because everything seems to pale in comparison to Isaac’s death and it feels unfair to him to even give it space in my mind.

But she is right.

As the days creep towards the 4^th, I can feel it in my body. The headaches become more frequent, I am agitated, on edge, and any quiet moments alone – a shower, laying my head down to sleep – are invaded by vivid images of what happened that day and the aftermath. I am constantly distracted, my resentment building, as I pick apart of all the changes over these past four years. Changes big and small. Changes we did not choose.

This is the anniversary of everything that happened.

This is anniversary of when I lived through one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. Of when I heard, saw and smelled things that you cannot possibly fathom unless you have lived through something similar yourself.

Screams of children in agony flooding hospital corridors for hours on end with not a moment of respite. Screams that ached in my bones as I anxiously waited for news of my son’s own fate. Screams that burrowed their way into my brain like an earworm where it is nestled still.

The sight of twisted metal, upturned cars, collapsed buildings, rivers of glass, bloodied bodies on the street – were they dead or alive? I don’t know.

Inside of my son’s chest. Worse still – the look of fear in his eyes.

The overpowering stench of death, my body steeped in my son’s blood, my skin stained red.

Sounds, sights and smells that have been vivid in my memory from day one, and others that creep back into my consciousness over time. Sounds, sights and smells that take over quiet Melbourne nights.

This is the anniversary of when I gained new scars, on my soul and my body. A scar on my face that people sometimes ask me about and I have to make a split second decision whether to tell them the truth. Scars on the palm of my hand that make it painful to hold anything too heavy or open jars. Scars scattered down my legs. Other scars that throb periodically. Scars that I wish were bigger, deeper, more painful, as if it would be easier if my pain was etched all over my body for everyone to see, rather than buried inside. As if I deserve to be disfigured because of what happened to Isaac. Scars that are a reminder that while my body could give Isaac life, it could not save him.

This is the anniversary of when we lost our home and most of our belongings. Just material stuff, yes, but our stuff. Evidence of the life we had built together and with Isaac. After he died, I was never able to go and sleep a night in Isaac’s room, smell his clothes or hug his teddy, to feel some semblance of connection with him. I lost remnants of my family history, the few pieces of jewellery given to me by my beloved grandmother, the first gift Craig gave me, my engagement ring.

And while we never slept a night on the street, the feeling of having your home ripped out from under you, for the life you have built to be gone in an instant, to suddenly be reliant on the kindness and generosity of others, rattled me to my core. It has changed the way I move through the world. The decisions I make. My sense of security, naïve as it was, has gone, a constant feeling of uncertainty left in its wake.

This is the anniversary of when the career that I worked hard for came to a grinding halt, yet to fully recover. Of when all of our plans for the future were thrown out the window. Instead of heading down the path of our hopes and dreams for Isaac, with our own ambitions and goals, we were set on a different path. A path filled with decisions taken out of our hands. A path filled with events and milestones that no parent should have to endure. Seeing our child in the morgue, repatriating his body, planning his funeral, making arrangements to move his grave when we settled in different city from where he was buried. A path riddled with guilt. Guilt for having any wants or ambitions – how can we want for anything when Isaac was denied everything?

This is the anniversary of the last time I felt pure joy. There have been happy moments. More happy moments than I expected, Ethan and Levi have made sure of that. But pure unadulterated joy? Dance like no one is watching, laugh until you can’t breathe, sit looking out at the horizon and breath a big sigh of satisfaction that life, right here and now is good? No. And never again. For all the happy moments come with a grief hangover. A comedown. A realisation that the moment wasn’t as happy as it should have been and never will be.

This is the anniversary of when fears I have for my children took on a new life. From the moment Isaac was born, I had normal parental worries and fears. All parents are terrified at the prospect of something happening to their child. But no one ever possibly imagine what it is actually like.

Knowing what I know now gives my fears new depths. It gives rise to panic attacks over a cut lip, hundreds of sleepless nights as I obsessively monitor their breathing. It sends me flying up the stairs, heart racing, at any bumps in the night. It turns my blood cold any time I see their daycare pop up on caller id. It has opened the door to an imagination darker and more morbid than I knew I had in me. It is a constant slog to reign in my fears, to disguise and internalise them, so that the boys are not suffocated, so they don’t drown in my panic and can actually live.

This is the anniversary of when every single relationship in my life changed in one way or another. There were people I expected to show up, who didn’t; people who have lashed out or walked away; people who had good intentions but never quite knew what to say and eventually drifted away or consigned our interactions to superficialities; people I have distanced myself from because remaining connected is just too painful. There has also been people who have floored us with their ability to just get it, who provide comfort but not pity, who show up time and again in just the right ways. And then there is the relationship that matters most of all – with my husband. At first I was terrified that we would fall apart with the weight of the grief, but instead we have fused together, like carbon and iron to make steel, stronger than ever before. More than soul mates. One entity forged in fire.

This is the anniversary of when the way I connect with the world fundamentally changed. It has been coming home and feeling completely out of place. It is people remembering that I have lost Isaac, but, in the safety of Australia, forgetting the context in which he died. It is me getting frustrated and impatient at the things people around me complain about in our privileged existence – things I too would have once complained about.

It is sitting with a group of mothers comparing notes on experiences I should be able to relate to, but instead feeling a yawning chasm between us as big as the Grand Canyon. It is opening Twitter and seeing an image of a woman in Gaza, her hands soaked in her son’s blood that she refuses to wash because it is the last physical connection she has with the boy that was her entire life, and feeling like I know this woman on the other side of the world deep in my soul, because I have been her. It is feeling lonely because no one around me can comprehend that feeling. No one around me wants to know about that feeling. It is feeling like I don’t know where I belong anymore.

This is the anniversary of when my life, and my family story, became a footnote in the history of a complex and ancient land that is not my own. I had been in Lebanon just over a year, a good portion of which was spent in COVID lockdown. I was a visitor, an interloper – there ostensibly to “make a difference” – but knowing deep down that my presence would leave no mark and that I would take more than I could ever possibly give. I loved, but barely understood the place where we were living.

But the moment my blood, and that of Isaac’s spilled on the streets, the moment Isaac’s last breath was that of thick Beirut air, Lebanon adopted Isaac as one of their own and our stories became forever intertwined. His face has adorned banners flying in Beirut, locals hold his picture at protests, his name and story known by many people I have never met. Will I ever understand Lebanon? No, and any outsider who claims they do is probably full of it. But as I see Lebanese people fight for Isaac, I feel a connection and solidarity that runs deep. I see the layers of trauma piled onto the people in a way that I never did before. As I write this, I am consistently refreshing news feeds, watching the ongoing developments and tensions that hang over Lebanon, and I feel fear as if it were my own homeland, my own people, under threat.

This is the anniversary of when I started to fight for justice for Isaac. Of when I went from an international civil servant trying to navigate through bureaucracy and red tape to make a small difference in the world, to a mother, fighting that bureaucracy from the outside. Of when I learned for the first time what it is like to be told over and over that, yes justice is important, but the time isn’t right, there are political sensitivities, business interests, other priorities. That yes, justice is important, but Europe is trying to hold the tide of Syrian refugees banging on its door at bay, so we can’t upset Lebanon right now. That yes, justice is important, but the world is distracted by another atrocity, and then another, and another, pushing us further and further down the list of considerations until we finally don’t appear on the list at all. My rose-coloured glasses have come off and for the first time I see with true clarity that the system is not designed for victims. When victims have to fight for an investigation into an explosion that destroyed a major city, when they have to bare their trauma over and over again to officials, the media, and in court processes to prove this cataclysmic event impacted your life, there is no justice. Only greed, corruption and indifference.

This is the anniversary of when I learned that being at the centre of a catastrophic explosion means the media will have an interest in you and your story. And dealing with the media means dealing with journalists. There are the journalists who clearly care, who want to use their voice to shine a light on injustice. The journalists who give you time, check that you are happy with the story they have written, follow-up not just when the article is published, but weeks and months later. Journalists who have become my friends.

Then there are the others. The journalists who just see you as a story, as clickbait. Journalists who obtain your private information from the hospital, who show up at your doorstop, who dare to ask to come to your son’s funeral without bothering to even express their condolences. The journalists who listen to your trauma and then disappear, not taking a moment to share what they have published, or even worse, who don’t have the courtesy to tell you they have decided to go another way, and won’t be publishing your story. Your trauma discarded in a desk drawer. The challenge is, when you are trying to get your case noticed by people with power, you need the media as much, if not more, than they need you. So without any media training, without any guidance, I have muddled my way through, learning who is worth talking to, and what messages stick.

This is the anniversary of when the old Sarah died alongside Isaac and someone new was left in her wake. Who is this new person? I’m not quite sure. She is someone more fragile and vulnerable. Someone who suffers flashbacks and panic attacks, whose heart races and hands shake uncontrollably at loud noises. Someone who didn’t drive for almost two years after the explosion out of some displaced fear. Who still avoids large crowds. Someone who gets frequent headaches and dizzy spells. Who sometimes feels the earth moving under her feet. Who can’t stand near the stovetop without quietly bracing for it to explode. Someone who can find it hard to focus.

But she is also someone who has found new strength, new confidence and a new voice. Someone who has been writing her entire life but is only now brave enough to share with the world. Someone who has no fear taking on governments and large corporations if it means getting any justice for Isaac. Who has shown up every single day for her surviving kids, mentally and physically, even when the grief is crushing. Someone who is strong enough to hold that crushing grief, weighing tonnes, at bay with one hand, while rebuilding a life with the other. Someone who has managed to piece a life – what looks like a good life – back together.

It is four years since my body and soul, my first true love, my Isaac, was taken from me. His death is everything, but these other things are not nothing. There is not a single aspect of my life that the explosion and the aftermath did not touch, and the reverberations will continue to be felt for the rest of my life, and possibly those of Isaac’s brothers, in ways that we don’t yet understand – the butterfly effect. I don’t look for sympathy. I detest pity. I just seek to honour everything I have gone through and to try and understand myself the magnitude of what happened on that hot summer day of 4 August 2020 in Beirut.