In my opinion: Grief: It comes and it goes

I WOKE up sad yesterday morning. And within a few dark minutes tears were rolling down my cheeks.
I got up and made a cup of coffee while the rest of the house lay in quiet darkness, and kept my thoughts to myself.
It's been like that for 22 years.
It's not always the same setting, and sometimes it comes out of nowhere.
Once I was driving on the Auckland Motorway when suddenly I started sobbing so hard that I could barely see the car in front of me.
Another time I was standing on an apartment balcony in Melbourne when it popped into my head that I had to ring my parents.
But yesterday morning's tightening of the body, quiet tears, minutes of remembrance, and mental replay of regrets, was directly related to time and memory.
For today marks the anniversary of my sister's death. Susan was 33 when she died.
I had seen my diary note during the week, and it had obviously triggered my subconscious.
Not that it needs much triggering.
I remember the phone call from my father which I took at my flat in the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn on October 24, 1987. It was brief - I said: "I'm on my way". Then for some reason I rang straight back and said: "Dad, I'll be there in a few hours."
When I arrived at our family home in Caroline Rd in Hastings I broke down in his arms, and cursed the unfairness of life in front of the Minister.
A few days later I delivered the eulogy at her funeral, and a family friend, Rex Ingram, said to me afterwards: "I don't know how you did it."
He had not seen the river of tears I had cried while pouring my heart into those words.
I don't remember too much more about the funeral, other than that we had an organisational problem - my brother unable to get home from England - and that people of all ages were kind and helpful.
One of Mum's friend's, Heather Kawenga, offered me the benefit of her loving heart and wisdom.
She said it would be bad for a while, but that I shouldn't feel guilty when a day passed without me thinking about my sister. She would come back to me from time to time when I least expected it, Heather said.
It is advice I have offered to others since, and it has always been well received.
It took about seven months before I realised a day had gone past when my thoughts had not turned to Susan. And Heather was right - from time to time, like yesterday morning, I do reflect.
It's not always in this month, or on her birthday in July. My emotions around my sister are not a tap I have found.
Sometimes like yesterday I reflect with sadness that I didn't enhance my sister's life as I should have, that I didn't tell her I loved her often enough, that I wasn't always mature enough to behave as I should have towards her.
It was only when she died that the good times we had shared growing up flooded into my memory.
And over time I have come to recognise that she had a good LP collection - perhaps was ahead of her time. She loved ABBA.
Love was her strength. She was generous when it came to birthdays and Christmas. What a great Aunty we have missed out on.
When my brother got married in England it was Susan who made the effort, used her hard-earned money, to travel to his wedding.
Sadly she never married, never found a soul mate. I like to think she was a bit good for this often cruel world. She wasn't necessarily armed for the slings and arrows that came her way. She wasn't intelligent in the intellectual sense, perhaps not even in the social sense - too trusting, not competitive, uncomplicated.
My sister was an asthmatic. She had health problems for much of her adult life. It got her down. I wish I had done everything I could to help. That I put my own vanity, my own needs unnecessarily ahead of hers on a few occasions is something I live with.
For my mother it has been much worse - her pain far deeper. She was away when her first-born died. We all lost a piece of Mum's heart that day.
Over the years she has gradually bounced back, but there is no full recovery for a mother who loses a child. She lives with it now, but she will be tending the plot at Hastings Cemetery today where Dad and Nana have both joined Susan since. I hope the weather is good.
Susan was six years older than me, we were very different and yet oddly, deep down we had similarities. She was the audience for my stupid jokes.
She phoned me the night before she died. I can only think she knew something was up - she always said she wouldn't make "old bones". It was a check to see that I loved her. Thank God I was on form.
I see her at her best as I write this. I wish I could hold her - and make it better.
* Grant Harding is APN's Columnist of the Year.