As I sit here vexelling away on my new Mac, listening to the music that iTunes just so happens to throw at me, I reflect a lot. I always like it when Peaches by the Presidents of the United States of America starts playing, because it reminds me of a very bittersweet time of my life.

I was thirteen, in year eight at school, and I was relatively happy. One day, I came home to my mother, who was in tears. It turns out that my grandmother who pretty much raised me, had died. She was 57 years old and was, what we thought, happy. That was until we found out that she had died of kidney failure and a subsequent heart attack due to binge drinking. She was found sprawled on her bed surrounded by seven empty vodka bottles. She’d been dead a week before anyone realised. Her defacto partner who was working on a barge out at sea had to call a friend and get him to knock the appartment door down when she hadn’t answered the phone for a week. She called us on the day she died. She seemed so fine, but now I know it was just to say goodbye.

Mum and I went up to cairns two weeks early to organise the funeral and other arangements. I couldn’t bare to be at school knowing my favourite person in the world had just died. I was sad, but I knew that I had to keep every body elses spirits up. Grandma would have wanted it that way. I tried my best to cheer everybody up: I told jokes, stories, drew everyone pictures, made friends with my uncle who i’d never known. It was nice to know I could make people happy at least for a little while.

The day of the funeral came. My brother and dad had arrived, all of the family was there. I kept smiling despite how sad I really was. The funeral went off with hitches: My uncle (another to the one mentioned above) ruined the eulogy by focusing on the bad side of my grandmother’s life, and how she was beaten and abused in her marriage to my grandfather. As much as I wanted to hurt my uncle for saying such things on a day we should be praising my grandmother on her wonderful life, I kept smiling. I couldn’t do anything else.

In the car, heading to the wake, we all sat in silence, somewhat ignoring the radio. The silence was broken about 20 minutes into the car ride when the radio station decided to play Peaches. We all kind of looked at each other and giggled at the randomness of the song playing out of the radio.

That song, as stupid as it is, means everything to me, because from the moment I heard that song, I knew that everything would be alright. To me, that song was a thankyou from my grandmother in response to my positive attitude towards everything for the previous three weeks. Even to this day, I can’t help but giggle when I hear about the millions of peaches that broke the silence in the black Mercedes four years ago.

And I still know everything will be alright, even if it’s not right now.