Flowers in the gutter. The father is not alone
In times of grief, words can be unnecessary. Yet there are such times when something must be said. Anything. Say it with love.
Opinion
By Alexandra Sangster
January 11, 2026 — 5.30am
I am picking up sodden scraps of decomposing plastic, from a gutter, by the side of the road. It is the middle of the day, hot now, and I still have my bike helmet on and my headphones in. I am a little
overwhelmed.
I have just come from a shift as an emergency chaplain with the Victorian Council of Churches Emergencies Ministry. I am on my way home. But then I see them – the flowers, wrapped with ribbons. Beautiful and bright, laid on the footpath where the boy was shot.
Flowers left in Fitzroy, to remember a boy killed on the street.Credit: Wayne Taylor
It is a narrow street, like a thin artery shooting out from the main vein of the road, and there is not much on it but the sides of buildings, a bluestone church and the flowers, all bright and beautiful and lying in filth.
An hour earlier, I had been sitting with another chaplain – a large man with a flowing beard, a member of the God Squad who has spent his life ministering on the street and in the jail cells.
We were sharing war stories, recalling funerals where ancient mothers had clutched our hands and not let go, and where fathers had delivered eulogies to congregations of weeping trans kids and bikies alike.
Funerals where family members who had not spoken for 20 years had sat separated – a sister on one side of the church, a brother on the other – and funerals where we have seen the ghosts of the dead hover by the coffin mist like when the members of the family came down.
They had been gathering here with the father of the boy who had been killed, and now they came from the flats to meet us. They are tall, so very tall and so very dignified. And so, so broken.
There were no words.
We stood in silence, and I reached out my hand. Such an intimate thing – a handshake. Like a promise. I mean you no harm, we are saying. I have no weapons, we are saying. We are good, we are saying – all of us – and we will show up for one another when we can.
“How is the father?” I ask.
“He will not be alone,” they told me. “He will not be alone.”
And now I am here, picking up a discarded COVID mask, one blue plastic glove, and a rotting sheet, making space for a memorial for a boy now gone. There is something deeply necessary about this mucky work, it cannot not be done, and yet it also feels conspicuous and ridiculous in equal measure.