Story
Grief is love
words mel jaunay
PHOTOGRAPHY sam kroepsch
There’s a wall built of Mount Gambier limestone at the heart of Fiona Lloyde’s Tanunda home.
Warm and tactile, it anchors the meticulously renovated stone barn with an understated beauty, a serene backdrop to the busyness of Fiona’s life.
While Fiona designed most of the home herself – the latest in a string of renovation projects she’s tackled over many years – that particular wall is a legacy left by her late husband, Tim.
“The only thing he wanted… was to have what we had our last house (built) out of,” Fiona says, nodding to the exquisite, sturdy feature which borders the interior of her main living area.
“That was his part, how he wanted it.”
Cloaked in morning sunlight with a cup of espresso coffee balanced on her knee, a look of nostalgic reverence passes across the 55-year-old’s face.
This wall, like so many spindles in her life, is a precious memory of Tim, and the journey they chose to weave together when they married in 1996.
Both originally from Bordertown, the pair always knew of each other in the way small town people usually do.
She was a daughter in a trucking family, who became one of the town’s hairdressers straight after high school.
He was a shearer, one of four ‘Lloyde boys’ from a respectable farming enterprise.
“I knew him when I was 16 and I thought he was hot!” Fiona laughs.
But it wasn’t until much later that they came together as a couple, brought together by their common interests in travel and evolving career paths. Fiona had recently returned from undergoing humanities training in schools and orphanages in India, and Tim, from China, where he’d volunteered on a mission trip.
“We both kind of came back to Bordertown. I’d always liked him. He was seven years older. I’d always thought he was too good for me,” Fiona recalls of her “wild colonial boy” who she says will always have her heart.
The pair began to set down roots together, which included having two children, India and Lewis.
“We had our home, we had our veggie patches, we had all the fruit trees. We had a beautiful home in the South East,” Fiona says of that time.
“But we were kind of a bit bored. We loved the community, but we felt like there was more.”
Both had ambitions for further study. Tim, who had been a volunteer ambo, wanted to expand his expertise and become a paramedic. He won a scholarship to do so, and it was that posting which led the family to the Barossa.
“We just thought the scholarships were either Port Augusta, Coober Pedy, all the places that are remote. And we thought, let’s just wing it, let’s just see where we end up,” says Fiona.
“We got the Barossa, and we went, ‘that’s not regional. How did we get that?’ We didn’t even know there was a station here.
“It was only a five-year plan to do this scholarship, wherever we went, and then go back home. It’s nearly 15 years later, and I’m still here.”
But in all the plans the Lloydes had made together, none could have prepared them for what was to come.
In the final year of Tim’s paramedic training, 2016, a shocking diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer brought the family’s world crashing down.
“It just came out of the blue,” says Fiona recounting those early moments of fear and disbelief.
“He had pain in his back. We were on holidays in Robe – we go there all the time. He had just a pain in his back, he’d had it for quite some time – but you don’t think.”
It took just eight months for Tim to succumb to the illness.
“I gave up work to care for him. But to see someone in so much pain… I’m sure God allowed it, to let me let him go, because I couldn’t otherwise. It was too hard,” Fiona says.
Naturally, Tim’s death left her reeling.
“I had to get my kids through, but I don’t know how. I was so disassociated myself I can’t remember a lot of it. It’s called survival,” Fiona says of that time.
“I probably overdid some things. Like, I’d get up in the morning and think, ‘I can’t stay in bed. I’ve got to get up and run.’ That kept me sane.”
As it turned out, the Barossa was the best place for Fiona to grieve. She found herself surrounded by support, but with enough autonomy to keep it at arm’s length.
“I look back now, and for me to grieve… I couldn’t have done it in a small country town (like Bordertown). I had to do it on my own,” she says.
“The support I got here was absolutely overwhelming… And if I’d had to go home, it would have been so much harder. I mean, I love (Bordertown), but this is my home… So I’ve been able to grieve here.”
Some of the outreach she received was from Tim’s paramedic colleagues at Angaston, who rallied to do the landscaping of the Lloyde’s front garden at their newly finished barn renovation, complete with hammock, so Tim would have somewhere to lie and watch the sunset beyond the North Para River during the last months of his life.
“They are special, unique, incredible, I can’t say enough good about them,” says Fiona, who, at the time, felt undeserving of such goodwill.
“They work hard, they see so much trauma. They see so much, and each one of them are incredible people… I walked out every day and as much as I said, ‘don’t’… They said, it’s actually not about you, we want to do this for Tim.”
In the years that followed, gradually and with love and support from her family and her late husband’s, Fiona had to discover an identity beyond Tim, as a widow and single mother.
“I needed the kids to survive and function. They had their moments too, big time. But I’m so proud of how they’ve both, in time, really gone beyond. They’ve survived trauma, (shown) resilience, even though none of us have been perfect in it at all,” she says.
“Seven years it is now, and I feel like a different person.”
Having previously worked as a wellbeing officer for schools in the South East and India, she began working at Good Shepherd Lutheran School, Angaston in that capacity, and committed herself to the study she had always planned to do after Tim had qualified as a paramedic.
“I did a degree in social science when I lost Tim, that kept me sane, and I learnt all about grief and loss and trauma,” she explains.
Rather than shy away from such topics which cut to the core of her own experience, Fiona leant into them, finding comfort in academic enlightenment.
“That trauma response, you’re not really in your body, you disassociate. I get that now. And I see it on others. Because I did the study I understand. I get it. It makes sense… You don’t get over it, but I’ve learnt some great strategies to work through it,” she says.
“When you’re younger, you want to find the right person to settle with and have your family. I was really blessed to have that, even though it was short… I feel complete. I feel like I’ve been loved. It’s a big thing.”
- Fiona Lloyde
Her faith, also, has been a solace during this necessary season of wayfinding.
“Life is still fabulous. I’m very blessed, very blessed,” she says.
Helping others through challenging situations in a school environment is now what Fiona thrives on, and she hopes to one day further her expertise by doing a Masters in trauma, grief and loss in children.
While she feels her interest in the field is innate, she recognises her perspective now is likely deepened by personal experience.
“Grief is love,” she says simply.
“When you’re younger, you want to find the right person to settle with and have your family. I was really blessed to have that, even though it was short… I feel complete. I feel like I’ve been loved. It’s a big thing.”
And in her own time, when she’s not travelling the world, lapping up other cultures just as she and Tim loved to once do, Fiona’s favourite place to be is at home, cooking, gardening, and sharing it with her now adult children, friends and family.
And overlooking it all, stands a wall of limestone, ever steadfast and reassuring.