Ma vie Parisienne: For Heath

This week has seen the loss of yet another great Australian. On Tuesday night, the 22nd of January, I arrived at work for what I assumed would be a normal shift. My shift starts at 11pm, and so I arrived in the newsroom right at the moment when we went on air to broadcast the 11pm bulletin. I looked across at one of the hundreds of television screens, that are on every second desk in our office, to see the very familiar face of Heath Ledger. Being proud of all great Australian things, and thinking that perhaps this picture had something to do with the daily oscar nominations, I said to my fellow colleague - ''He's Australian you know'' - to which she said ''Yeah I know, he's dead''...

I couldn't believe it - I stared back at her and said ''WHAT?'', and she said ''Yeah it's crazy, they found his body a few minutes ago''. Without even thinking I dove into my handbag to grab my mobile phone -only one thing on my mind - I needed to speak to Hayley. As I found the phone I saw that I had a missed call, and a voicemail message - it had to be her.

Sure enough as I listened to the message I could hear the voice of my sister, choked-up by her own tears on the other end of the line. I grabbed the phone and I called her.

For anyone who actually knows me, they know that I have a little sister Hayley - and anyone who is anyone, knows that her hero is Heath Ledger.

To me the news was shocking, but I could only imagine what it must have been like for her. It felt in a way like I was losing someone I knew, not because I actually knew him, but because through Hayley I felt like I did. I knew a number of ridiculous details about his life, who his family and friends were, and he had become a part of our family in a way for a number of years. Every morning back home in Australia, I used to wake up to pictures of Heath on our walls, and hear stories of Heath, hear about the latest film and the next time he would be coming to Australia. I'm sure for Hayley, who had met him on several occasions, she really must have felt like she had lost a friend.

To be sitting on the other side of the world to my little sis, editing pictures of her hero's body being loaded into an ambulance was an absolutely surreal and somewhat horrible experience. I couldn't believe that the pictures of Heath I was seeing, that I saw on a daily basis for a number of years, were now pictures of someone who was no longer with us. I didn't want to be there, in front of that computer, editing those pictures for the world to see - I just wanted to be home, to see how she was doing.

Instead I used the opportunity to try my best to edit the best pictures and make the best montage of Heath I possibly could and to pass on the live news information on the details of the death, direct from the press agencies, to Hayley back in Sydney.

It's strange how death affects us in different ways depending on our context and our reference point. For me it seems that since I've been in Paris, the death of a famous Aussie has a stronger effect on me than it would were I back home. There's something strange about being away when it happens, you feel isolated and that no one really understands what you're feeling. I know I felt this way when Steve Irwin died. Being here and knowing that no one over here even knew who this guy was, made the whole thing very bizarre - I couldn't explain it to anyone, I was alone in my shock and I couldn't talk about it with people, like I knew they would be doing back home. I had the same experience when Belinda Emmett died - once again not being able to explain who she was and why I cared and why I wished a was home for a moment just to be able to say goodbye. And with Heath it was the same feeling but multiplied to the extreme because this guy had been such a big part of my sister's life, and through extension, my own.

The comfort with Heath was that at least he was well known outside of Australia, which meant that I actually got to hear the news, talk about it with people and read some articles to attempt to make sense of it all. Although that being said, the press over here covered it just for the day (which is totally understandable) and so I can only imagine what it has been like at home and in a way I miss that. Not because I'm morbid and want to read all the horrible facts, but because I think being surrounded by the media frenzy and having so many stories of that person's life in some strange way gives you the time to come to terms with the facts and to say goodbye...A public grieving in a sense.

And as I don't get a chance to go through the public grieving, I thought I'd try and explain my private grieving, in public, through this blog.

And so Heath, It's always a tragedy when someone dies, but a young man, with a beautiful little girl, is even more difficult to swallow. There are so many things I could say, but the only thing that seems important is to thank you. If there was one man who could light up my sister's face, and make her happy, that was you - and for that I am truely grateful.