A Bird on My Shoulder (16 page)

As the sun went down I called Meg, Charlotte and George inside for dinner, keeping an eye on the other two visitors through the kitchen window as they continued playing in the sandpit.

A short time later our guest came in.

‘Oh!' he said, glancing at our children. ‘Where are the others?'

‘I have no idea,' I said, not looking at him. I was in no mood for explanations.

He went outside, collected his children, said a stiffly optimistic ‘cheerio' and left.

Even though he later apologised, incidents like this played into my sense of struggle and a certain level of self-pity – it seemed very few people understood the load I was already carrying. One afternoon Oliver drove down from Sydney.

‘What's for dinner?' he asked.

‘That,' I said through gritted teeth, ‘is becoming a very dangerous question. Perhaps you could try something else?
Do you have any dinner planned? Do you need any help or do you need me to go to the shops? And would you like me to cook?
'

I knew that I sounded curt but I was, at that moment, beyond caring. I had always been hesitant about seeming to be too bossy or demanding with Julian's boys, although their recollections may be quite different. But the days when I could happily accommodate their needs were over. I knew I was risking a great deal by being so direct. Despite my outward confidence, I nurtured a very real and secret fear that if we seriously clashed during this stressful time, that our relationships might not recover.

I realise now, knowing them as I do, that this said a lot more about my fragile state at the time than about their resilience, generosity or sense of family loyalty. When I did raise my issues with them after hours of private agonising, they were often
surprised that I had so much trouble saying what I needed. They understood more than I realised how much I was struggling, and that ultimately it was all about making things right for Julian.

•••

One morning I woke up with a strong intuitive sense that something was different; the world had somehow shifted overnight. I went downstairs to make some tea and as I passed by a bookcase, a small piece of folded paper came fluttering down in front of me and fell at my feet.

I opened it up. It was written in Charmian's handwriting and appeared to be a short recipe. I looked up to see where it might have come from. The books on the shelf were all in place with their spines facing out. I sat at the kitchen table trying to decipher the hastily written words, and wondering what I was supposed to make of this strange event.

Later that day, I was sitting in the garden at dusk while the children were playing. The sky was watery and the day was fading without fanfare. A dull light about the size of a person, perhaps slightly smaller, moved slowly around the garden. I watched as it gradually disappeared, wondering what I was seeing and experiencing, half sensing it was a woman I should have known.

The following night I sat with Julian, who was occasionally using an oxygen tank to help him breathe. Just under our
window was the front door, where there was an old wooden statue we had brought from Papua New Guinea: a carved naked woman carrying an open-sided bowl. I had made a raku pot which sat inside its alcove. The night was unusually still.

The next thing I heard was an almighty crash. I ran downstairs and found the statue had toppled to the ground, my bowl smashed into pieces.

I had a strong intuition who it was – a feeling of energy and light that seemed so familiar.

‘Okay, that's enough,' I shouted to the seemingly empty garden. ‘If all you want to do is frighten me, go away. Otherwise, come and help.'

When I went back upstairs Julian said, ‘Who were you talking to, darling?'

‘Oh, don't worry, it's just me, talking to myself.'

I never told Julian about any of these experiences – they were unnerving enough for me.

As I lay in bed that night, I felt a sense of softening, as though the air from an overinflated tyre had been let out. Beyond the medical care, beyond what I could physically do and beyond the love I could give, it was clear that I now needed help of a very different kind.

COME CLOSE

Come close and sit and talk with me a while,

We need to be more honest with each other.

I know I make you smile, and sometimes cry –

You know I have a love I cannot smother.

We are made such by facts we do not will,

And like great standing stones – the facts stand still.

I cannot check your skill to move my heart,

I cannot pass an hour without a thought of you –

Strongest when we are most apart.

I long to break the ties that keep us bounded,

To fly with you in some forgotten place,

Untrammelled, free to love as we are able,

And wipe away the tears upon your face.

18

Outside my window, a branch scuttles against the

glass. A leaf leans out, not straining, but flowing

out to a tapering end; effortless like death.

As Julian's health declined over the first two weeks of September, we were extraordinarily blessed by the arrival of an amazing and deeply compassionate palliative care nurse, Jean Warburton. Out of all the people I met during this time, she was one of the few who had the soothing presence of the truly kind. It also helped that she had trodden this road so many times before and knew what lay ahead. One afternoon she rang to see how Julian was, explaining that she had been delayed and could not come to see him unless there was something important for her to do.

‘No, everything is fine, Julian is resting,' I said, ‘but the girls have come home with lice, so they can't go to preschool tomorrow.'

Without my saying anything, Jean suggested that she would find time to come after she had finished work. She could sense that all was not well with me.

‘No,' I insisted, ‘leave it for today. I'll be fine.'

After I put down the phone I burst into tears – no preschool meant no rest at all for me and a potentially exhausting trip to town with three children to fetch the lice treatment.

I began to prepare dinner. Thankfully, Edward and Henry were expected, which I knew would cheer Julian up and give us all a much-needed morale boost. A few minutes later I heard a light knock at the front door.

It was Jean, carrying a small paper bag and looking slightly sheepish.

‘I thought you might need this,' she said, handing me two bottles of lice shampoo.

•••

I knew that the time for Julian to leave us was getting closer. It was not just his physical self that was fading, but his gaze was increasingly focused on a faraway point. He was sleeping a great deal and eating less and less.

I rang Charlie and Oliver and suggested they should come home as soon as possible.

We managed to have a family dinner one night with John and
Mary, a bittersweet celebration that week of Edward's twenty-first birthday and Henry's twenty-fourth.

After we'd eaten, Julian removed one of his favourite possessions, an old Rolex watch, and handed it to Edward.

‘Happy birthday, darling,' he said.

Half an hour later, Julian could no longer walk. It seemed all the strength had suddenly gone from his legs.

‘When I can no longer walk or care for myself, I won't be here for long,' he had said to me a few days before.

‘I don't think you get to choose,' I said.

Julian gave a quiet smile. ‘Well, that's what I have decided,' he said.

•••

The boys supported Julian up the stairs to bed. The next day, our neighbours, Greg and Trish, organised for a local priest, Father Terry Herbert, to give Julian the last rites. Whether he could hear anything being said by this point was hard to tell. But it gave me comfort to hear someone speak about the journey of his soul. Then the long vigil began.

•••

The following afternoon, as Julian drifted in and out of consciousness, Celeste rang to see if I wanted to go for a swim in a local pool.

‘I think I need it,' I said.

Celeste had nursed her first partner, Damon Courtenay, until his death from AIDS in 1991. (His father, the author Bryce Courtenay, wrote about Damon's life in his book
April Fool's Day
.) Even at the time of Damon's death, Celeste was only twenty-two, but already poised and compassionate beyond her years.

By the time Julian, George and I moved back to Australia I already knew about a woman called Celeste as Edward had given me a copy of the book as a gift, insisting that I should read it. As fate would have it, Celeste and I met at a yoga class in Robertson, where she and her husband Stephen had moved not long after our arrival, and discovered we had children of the same age – George and their daughter Jasper went to the same preschool.

A deep friendship was gradually forged – Celeste was the only contemporary I had met who really understood the deeper layers of what was happening in my life. But standing on the veranda waiting for her to arrive, I was in turmoil. Although Julian was stable and the children were being cared for, I felt terribly torn about leaving. I was needed, always needed.

‘It's okay,' Charlie said. ‘I'll ring you if there's any major change.'

The swish of tyres on gravel broke my indecision and I hurried to the waiting car.

We climbed the winding country road towards the town, the sun setting in a bruised purple sky. My discomfort mounted with every moment that we sped away from the house – despite the glorious vistas of lush paddocks and stands of magnificent eucalypts which flashed by in a blur, in my mind's eye, I continued to watch over Julian.

There was an openness between Celeste and I, an honesty forged through the many painful conversations we had already had and an unspoken understanding of the increasing bond we shared.

At the water's edge, I hesitated, wrestling with a sense of panic. How could I be standing here when my husband might be dying? What sort of person would leave her family to go swimming on a night like this?

Celeste was already in the water, the lone swimmer. She had already faced something of the void that I feared so much; she had survived and lived on through all the pain, the betrayals and the anguish of the bereaved. Her arms rose and fell in long, graceful arcs. I watched, mesmerised by her steady strokes. Guilt came in waves.

Between thoughts of Julian, there was a split second of peace. I let my body lean forward to the point of no return, and in the instant that I hit the water, it pulled me down into a shock of coldness.

There was no time, no world, no other reality but the slow and steady beat of my heart as I ploughed up and down, water sluicing over me, all dreams of past and future forgotten.

•••

When I climbed into bed next to Julian that night, I just held him.

‘I love you,' I said. A slight pressure from his hand reminded me of the words I had always loved to hear,
I adore you
.

•••

Death came in small moments.

It came in the sound of cars pulling up at the house, a toilet flushing, a telephone trilling and the soft steady heartbeat of a morphine pump. It arrived in the soft touch of a hand on my shoulder and the wide-eyed gaze of a child. It moved quietly, like a lover, in the safety of the dark.

Julian lay upstairs, drifting, dreaming.

Jean arrived and put in a catheter to make Julian more comfortable and left some vials of morphine to cope with breakthrough pain if the pump was not adequate. She sat us all down and explained what was likely to happen.

She said that Julian would probably die within the next two days and briefed us on what to do if there was an unexpected haemorrhage, or if he developed pneumonia. Her matter-of-fact
words floated around me as we walked outside towards her car. She gave me a heartfelt hug.

By early evening, Meg and Charlotte had fallen asleep, seemingly oblivious to the events around them. George's eyes quietly betrayed his unspoken concern and he would barely leave my side. Nestled on a small mattress in front of the fire watching
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, he refused to let me leave him until he finally drifted off.

The telephone rang again – a relative, a friend. ‘How is he?'

Oliver, Charles, Henry and Edward stayed with Julian. Mary and John had already arrived, their faces tight with apprehension.

As the evening unfolded, miraculously, a meal appeared. We ate in shifts.

I sat at the table with Julian's long-standing family friends, Meg and John Bell, who were visiting from England – without hesitation they had driven five hours to be with us, to offer comfort, support. In every room there were candles burning, warming the sacred space.

My body ached and my mouth was dry. I stared down at the remnants of my uneaten dinner while above us doors quietly opened and closed. I wanted to stay there, safe and cocooned, away from what was waiting for me upstairs.

Then I caught Meg's kind gaze and read her unspoken thought:
You need to be with him.

I moved slowly, as though tranquillised; the journey to our bedroom was the longest walk I'd ever taken. Ten tall steps. I knew there was no turning back now, no miracle, no ambulance to call. There was nowhere left to hide.

Opening the door I saw a room full of figures; alongside the family, half-formed shadows now inhabited our room. I had a strong intuition that these were the spirits of people who had loved Julian and I was mystified, but strangely relieved, that such loving help in the only form that was of any use now, had finally arrived.

The bedroom was full of candles; faint lights threw unsteady patterns on the walls. From somewhere I could hear the swirling voice of Andrea Bocelli. I kneeled by Julian's side, put my cheek against his chest and drank him in.

My love, my dearest love
.

•••

In my mind's eye I saw him, striding up Paga Hill in Port Moresby, a colossus full of vitality, stamina, determination. I thought I heard his deep, joyful laugh as he made fun of my short legs. ‘Come on!' he called. His greying hair glinted in the afternoon light as he disappeared over the brow of the hill. The sun was impossibly bright.