You don't understand

“You don’t get it Dad.” my daughter told me emphatically.

*

She and I were having breakfast at Jerry’s Cafe on Barkley Street in St Kilda, as we do on occasion. Today happened to be January 20th, 2018. A year to the day after some crazy bloke had run riot with his car in Melbourne. He drove down and killing half a dozen people and injuring maybe twenty more on the Bourke street Mall.

Of course it had been on the news again today, as happens with the news services on any anniversary of any and all bad stories. I guess that I must have made some comment on the incident and the reactions to it. And being me, it would have been with some comment about perspective. What can I say? I am a creature of my generation.

*

She proceeded to tell me exactly what this girlfriend of her's partner had been through.

“Sally’s Brian was a twenty two year old university student at the time. He was working part time as doorman come security guard at a cafe bar on Bourke street. He was there, working that day, when the terrorist drove those people down. Right out the front of where he was stationed.”

“And he did not just stand there or run away! No. He thought quickly, locking the door to the cafe to keep the patrons and staff safe and then he ran to offer assistance to one of the injured victims. He stayed with him until the police ushered him away.”

“He had a man die in his arms that day!”

*

“Yes, but all I said was…” I started to respond.

*

“Of course he can no longer face being on Bourke street. He had to give up his job because of the emotional and mental stress of it all. He needed that money to support him through his studies at university, so of course he needed government funding since then. ” she further explained to me.

“He has suffered P.T.S.D.. He was a hero. He will be lucky indeed if the trauma of that experience ever leaves him. He will need assistance for years.”

“You just can’t understand!”

*

“Well, neither of us had been to war, although I only missed out being drafted by two years. I saw my birthdate come up on the selection. I doubt Sally's Brian even knows what the word means. If I had been two years older I would have been off to Vietnam.” I thought, but did not say. I am not that silly. It was a pleasant morning and there was on need to ruin it with a fight.

A mistake that, I realised as it set off a stream of other memories.

I remembered a time when I too was twenty two years old, a trainee Customs Officer as my main job, and a part time motorcycle license instructor with VicRoads for some extra cash on the week-ends.

I had dropped in to visit mum and dad on the way to work at the airport. They live at the bottom of a steep hill in the quiet suburb of Pascoe Vale. Leaving their place I was driving up the hill when I saw an elderly man wandering across the road in front of me, from my left.”

“Coming towards us from the opposite direction was a young man on a motorcycle. He had a brand new “L” plate on the front of his bike and was riding well within the 60 kilometre per hour speed limit. My week-end job skills told me that instantly.”

“There was nothing I could do but watch as the old man walked directly into his path. The rider braked but could do nothing to avoid colliding with him. To watch it, it was an unspectacular crash, but the result, there in front of me ,was one old man, one young man and a motorcycle, splayed out across a suburban intersection.”

“I stopped my car and jumped out. First I helped the rider up and calmed him down from his panic, then I knelt beside the old man. He was not conscious, but he was breathing, so I laid him in the ‘coma’ position as was the instruction those days, and then sent the rider off to knock on the nearest house door to call an ambulance. This was well before mobile phones of any description.”

“I knelt with the old man, shouting instructions to the growing number of spectators. Some to assist the rider to move his bike from the road, others to warn any oncoming cars from the side streets.

Just as the ambulance and police arrived, the old man coughed and stopped breathing. The ambulance officers immediately took over his management, but to no avail, and the police took over the management of the scene and obtaining witness statements.”

“An hour later I drove on to work at the Melbourne airport terminal.”

*

“Several weeks later I was requested to attend the coroner’s court to give evidence. The old man being dead, the young ride’s life was now on the line. Fortunately my training with the Customs Service included note taking and giving evidence, so I got my first experience at it for real. I had taken notes in my issued work note book once the police had finished with me.”

“At the end of the hearing the coroner found it to be an accident, no fault was attributed to the rider.”

*

“I continued to visit my parents, coming and going by that same road, it being the only option. I continued to work as a motorcycle instructor on the weekends and as a trainee customs officer. Again, both being to only options open. I was one year into a marriage and had a mortgage to pay on our grungy little one bedroom flat in Glenroy.”

“Nobody had told me about post traumatic stress disorder, nobody at work said anything about counselling, so doing anything else did not cross my mind. I just did what was expected and got on with things.”

*

Turning my attention back to my coffee and pancakes, I responded in spoken words, “No, you are probably right. I do not understand.”