Adelaide, 22 years ago.

We had been told the day before, on the Tuesday, that our 8 month old baby daughter Hannah had died but the Doctors wanted to check that the drugs were out of her system first. So they maintained her on life support for the 24 hours. I find it difficult to watch TV when they show emergency room operations and the monitors stop working and the pulse signal flattens out. It was like that for us on the Monday night about 3am. I knew that the worst had happened. The previous Friday I had gone to school in Wilcannia and about 9 o'clock I got a call from Christine that Hannah had taken a fit and she was in hospital just up the road from us. Fortunately the Flying Doctor was in town from Broken Hill that day. She had not stabilised at the end of the Doctor's shift so he took her back to Broken Hill when the pain in her head must have been so agonising for her, requiring that she be flown to Adelaide. We didn't know then that she had a viral encephalitis from the cold sore virus. Her illness drained the life out of Christine and myself and Matthew - only 3 at the time, and Christine's parents Rex and Marie and my Mum plus I think little Hannah herself somehow willed us on. So on the Wednesday, when the Doctors had reached their conclusion, we gave permission for them to remove Hannah's life support. They sent us out of the room while they removed her breathing and feeding and drugs tubes and then we went in to hold Hannah for the last time. Nanna, Pop and Granny kissed her and nursed her and then Christine, Matthew and I took her in our arms. We dressed her in a little yellow dress, laid her down in her cot, and we said goodbye.