Brianna Parkins: We are a different family now, the family that lost a child

I realise with horror that we might be the tipsiest people in the queue for the Anne Frank House.

We are not monsters. We did not wander off a hen’s party booze cruise with willy straws in our hair. It’s hard to know where to start this story, but it is probably the point when my parents’ youngest grandchild died suddenly just after his fifth birthday.

I do not think my family is special. Grief doesn’t have a unit of measurement. No family escapes death. We know loss is inevitable and we don’t like it. But eventually, we accept it.

It does not feel right to enjoy a fancy castle hotel when your child and his wife have to walk past an empty little bed every day

But a child dying is not inevitable. It is a different type of grief. There is no comfort in the usual cliches. He did not live a long and fulfilling life. It was not his time. I cannot accept he is in a better place – there was no better place than with his mum and dad who loved him. People do not know what to say to us – we are and always will be the family who lost a child. People cross themselves after they talk about us, knock on wood and pray that they will never know our pain, please God.

Brianna Parkins: I’m sick of being asked why I don’t have kids

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Cillian Murphy would like us all to know that’s just his face. Okay!

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Brianna Parkins: I fantasise about moving back in with my parents

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Brianna Parkins: Marie Kondo has fallen. Tidying up is out and wall-to-wall tat is in

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We live in a different world now, where Christmas and Mother’s Day are days to get through as best we can for his siblings left behind. We have to make conversation about renovations with well meaning friends, when all we actually want to say is “I don’t care about things I used to think were important because none of it matters when tiny children you love can die”

[ Brianna Parkins: Why can’t a woman be left alone with her book and a pint in a hotel bar? ]

In other words, we haven’t been the best fun to be around lately.

My parents had originally planned to visit me in Ireland and do a grand tour of Europe for my mother’s 60th birthday. But then the bottom fell out of our lives. It was going to be a different trip because we are a different family now. It does not feel right to enjoy a fancy castle hotel when your child and his wife have to walk past an empty little bed every day. That’s the thing about family grief, you feel selfish for expressing sadness because it doesn’t belong to you alone.

So I took my parents to Amsterdam because it met our needs. My mum could buy dust-collecting knick-knacks, and wouldn’t have to complain about walking up hills. My dad could stare at canals and try to work out how they are engineered – cat nip to middle-aged men who watch BBC docuseries.

Lastly, the city would let them see remnants of the second World War. The conflict and the Holocaust is covered in depth in Australian schools. Many of us have met survivors who settled in our country, often relatives of our classmates who came in to give a talk; people who were gracious enough to give up an afternoon answering questions from noisy kids about their personal trauma so future generations would not forget what happened.

We secured tickets to Anne Frank house for the last remaining slot at 8pm. It was late but I reasoned it would be fine. My parents love history.

But it was not fine. We were tired and prickly with grief.

It dawns on me then that taking my parents to an exhibition about a little girl’s murder possibly wasn’t the best choice just months after their grandchild’s death

Patience was exhausted. My mum complained that “there are too many bikes” in Amsterdam. My dad wouldn’t get Revolut because “it asked for my bank card”. I annoyed them with my gritted determination that everyone was going to have a nice time whether they f**king liked it or not.

As a precaution we had dinner and a restorative glass of wine so we would all be civil paying our respects to a Holocaust victim. But the waiter must have misunderstood us (or they had heard us row and thought we needed it) and poured half a bottle into each glass.

So that is how I find myself standing outside the Anne Frank house deciding what would be worse morally – my family being intoxicated or having a sober public fight at a Holocaust memorial? It dawns on me then that taking my parents to an exhibition about a little girl’s murder possibly wasn’t the best choice just months after their grandchild’s death.

But it’s too late to call it off, and so we tour the rooms we had read so much about. We see how the families were torn apart. We read her diary, her actual writing, the imprints she made on the page. I feel ashamed for being cranky with my parents when I should just be grateful we are together and alive.

My mother calls me over to a glass cabinet holding a section about Anne’s frustrations with her family.

“She fought with her mum too,” she says. And for a split second it makes us feel a little bit better – this small shared piece of flawed humanity linking us together.

Then we feel much, much worse, because what kind of terrible people feel better about grief at the Anne Frank House?