When I was in grade 8, I was in the interschool debate team. I clearly remember being the first speaker affirmative for a debate with the topic, Life Goes Round In Circles.
So much of that time in my life is forgotten now it’s over 30 years later, but I do remember much of that debate. While I didn’t really think that life went round in circles at the grand old age of 13, in writing my argument, I began to wonder whether it did.
Fast forward to 2026.
I recently came across a folder of newspaper clippings and stories I kept from my dad’s death only a few years after I competed in that debate.
Before Soraya’s death, I struggled to think about my dad at all. In modern terms, which did not exist in 1996, I couldn’t sit in my grief. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
With Soraya’s death, many years of living and a completely different world, it has been impossible for me to not sit in my grief. To not wallow, to cry, to despair, to feel it all. There’s no putting it aside, compartmentalising or “brushing it under the carpet”.
And while dealing with this, I am finally able to sit in the grief of losing my dad. Gaggle, as we called him. I have no idea why.
Finally, I can cry all of the tears I should have cried 29 years ago when I didn’t know how.
He died suddenly. Without warning. Much like Soraya.
I know he struggled with his mental health. He would tell us all the time that he would never be old. That he would die young. And I know he tried to take his life on at least two occasions.
It’s only through the experience of losing Soraya that I have learned so much about losing my dad. Not just what despair and depression feels like but being able to articulate my own grief over his death.
I go to support groups regularly at Support After Suicide. This is a magnificent charity in Victoria that supports people who have lost a loved one by suicide. I go to these groups to deal with my loss of Soraya.
However, through these groups, I have reconnected with my grief for my dad. There’s always at least one young woman who has lost her dad through suicide. The way she talks, what she says, how she says it, all of it, 17 year old Sharon understands.
And she is struck by the tragedy of it.
Not just that she had a dad and a daughter who struggled with so much in a way that she could never fully understand.
But because even though she left her home town, she left her old life, she feels like a completely different person than the one who lost her dad at 17… Here, she is again.
But back to those clippings.
There was the tribute my 16 year old sister wrote and said at our dad’s funeral.
I read it with a new perspective…
It came to me last night
When I was wondering what to say today
That he is really gone.
That I will never see him again
Until then it was all a game
I felt homesick because I haven’t seen him for awhile
A home sickness that will never leave me.
I want to cry but the pain is too strong
I always related to him so well.
You were a lot like me.
You were my hero
Only the last few years you slipped away,
You changed
You gave up on hope
I wish I had been more supportive,
But now it’s too late.
I wish you knew I loved you,
And how many friends you have
That are grieving for you now.
He was a good person,
But he felt alone.
I hope he didn’t die feeling alone.
I only wish me and my sisters could see him,
One more time
Just to say goodbye.
Naomi Gourlay (now Burgess)
Reading it, it struck me how most of this I could have said at Soraya’s funeral.
I, sadly, terribly, had been right in my debate.
And I realised no matter how much I thought I had changed, no matter all the goals I had checked off my list, the successes in my life, my business, having three kids, the different person I feel I am from 1996, I was still just the same.
My life had gone round in circles in the most horrific way.
