A Bird on My Shoulder (17 page)

•••

In the dimly lit bedroom, his breathing was becoming more laboured and he sounded uncomfortable. But was it pain? It was hard to tell what it meant. We were not doctors. We hovered around him, looking at one another.

‘Should we give him some more morphine?' someone asked.

‘I'm not sure. Do you think he needs it?'

We began to rummage through a wardrobe drawer full of prepared syringes, vials of mysterious drugs, endless crinkling packets of unpronounceable pills.

For a moment we could not quite remember which syringe was which or where we were supposed to inject him. The moment bordered on farce as we stumbled around in the gloom. Finally, someone made a decision.

We waited, watching Julian. It was hard to tell if the morphine was helping.

Another hour passed.

Gradually his breathing changed again. This time it was slower, heavier. From somewhere came a quiet internal nudge.
It's time, be with him.

I squeezed his hand, wondering if he could still hear me. My mouth felt numb.

‘Jules, I love you,' I said. ‘We all love you.' As his breathing dropped again, I leaned in closer, my mouth brushing his cheek.

‘It's okay if you need to go. We're all going to be alright.' I gripped his hand, my eyes intent on the soft folds and fine
lines of his beloved, living face. And all the while I could sense he was slowly receding, being pulled away by some vast, unseen current, taking him somewhere that none of us could follow. I pressed down on a volcano of tears.

Don't go. Don't leave me.

There was a long, quiet, lingering exhalation. The seconds passed as we waited for him to draw another breath. The beams of a passing car lit up the arc of intertwining roadside trees like a cathedral and the smell of jasmine, sickly and sweet, floated up through an open window.

There was a shift in the air, so brief, and then I felt my heart fill with the most profound sense of happiness. I looked around the room, imagining I would see something tangible to explain this unexpected exhilaration. The living faces I saw around me appeared frozen in sadness but I hoped this feeling was not mine alone.

Then I suddenly knew, without any hesitation, that this was not my joy at all. It was Julian's. It was his relief that I felt, his absolute lightness now that he was free from the heavy pain of living. I stared at his face. He was absolutely gone.

I felt a soundless scream. At first it was slow, gathering like a storm in my belly. It surged upwards towards my throat then hurtled through my head, filling my ears, tearing at my hair, smothering my mouth, trapping me in silence.

The spirits who had inhabited the room only a few seconds before, faded into darkness. There were quiet prayers and then we gently washed Julian's body with lavender oil and water and removed the intrusive tubes and needles. Not knowing what more we could do, the boys went in search of a sofa to sleep on.

I walked around the house in a daze for a while, then called ML in the Solomon Islands and Ian Boden in Port Moresby to tell them the news. Their voices comforted me. Ian was working at the time as a columnist and deputy newspaper editor. He finished work around midnight, often taking several hours to wind down after the crescendo of the deadline. I would often call him in the middle of the night when I could not sleep and, despite my inability to articulate how I was truly feeling, he was always able to divine the exact timbre of my underlying mood.

Eventually, just before dawn, I lay down next to Julian, careful not to disturb the sheet we had placed over his body. There was no strangeness in this at all. It felt just like any other night, creeping back to our bed after settling a child who had woken in the night. Waves of exhaustion, after several days with little sleep, carried me away.

•••

As morning light filled the room I became aware of the sound of feet drumming up the wooden stairs. Three small, anxious faces appeared bedside me.

I struggled out of a deep slumber, my mind coming to life to remember death. The events of the previous night pushed me into the day with a jolt.

‘Mum?' said George, placing his hand on my shoulder. His wide eyes asked me the question I did not want to answer; it seemed he already knew.

I got up and quietly ushered the children out of the room, closing the door behind me.

I'd not had time to really think about what to tell them. What should I have said to children who were only five and two? I crouched down and gathered them into my arms, and inhaled with gratitude the sweet earthy perfume of their bodies, their tousled, sleepy hair. We sat on the stairs while they waited for me to speak.

‘Dad died last night,' I began. I could not say any more.

The children all began to wriggle into me, their bony limbs jostling for space on my lap. I held them; held them tight.

‘Daddy not here,' Meg said finally, putting her arm around Charlotte's shoulder. She gazed out of the window into the clear spring morning. ‘He in the sky. I see his legs.'

FOR JULES

The hidden heart, inside you

The unled life, beside you

The unknown dreams, above you

The greater path, before you.

part two

Boroko, Papua New Guinea

Dearest Lucy,

I have been part of the death of so many people but the transition of Julian last night has been like no other. His reserve cloaked a depth of perception and a sense of the immutable destiny denied most. And your joint quest for an informed spirituality has been a spur to those of us also prompted by our own aching need and who, no matter how falteringly, reach out to the same timeless mysteries.

My dear, you are not now required to perform. What the host of friends and acquaintances ‘expect' of you now is entirely a matter for them. Forget the proprieties, the baked funeral meats and the appalling humbuggery with which humanity can surround this moment of supreme achievement by you and Julian.

‘Nothing became him in life so much as the leaving of it.' Julian's exhausted body may have bowed to the inevitable but I know that his ineffable spirit is with you now and will always be with you.

The ache to feel the strong clasp of those familiar arms just once more will twist the very core of you. All the intimacies will crowd like spectres into your mind and you will often feel overwhelmed by them.

Stop when that happens. Ask yourself why those memories are so pervasive. If they are the casual debris of a passing passion they would twinge a regret here, twitch a wry smile there. But your memories are the true delineation of the quality and the vastness and the spirituality – yes, spirituality – of your relationship. Head up.

Know that your closest friends are beside you, day and night. Draw strength from us as we have often drawn from you. For what you have gained through the death of Julian is immeasurably more than what you have lost. Cruel words?

No – not if you believe as you do in the primacy of the spirit and the transparency of death, for you and Julian have conquered that artificial spectre and he now has the full measure of ‘the peace which passes all understanding'.

And so, my dear, do you.

I ache for you and I am here for you, whatever, whenever.

Ian

19

In my garden there's an imperfect, serrated rose with

a forest of stamens reaching upwards like towering

suns and jagged edges like a torn memory. I can crush

it in my hand like a truth that can't be faced.

One of my first calls that morning was to our friend Maur and her teenage daughter Charlotte. They soon arrived to help care for the children as the activity in the house increased. Drivers arrived with bouquets of impossibly beautiful flowers, and the phone rang constantly as friends and loved ones tentatively asked if the news was true.

Yes, I repeated like an automaton, Julian died last night. This was a strong, palpable fact, my only confident reality on that strange day. Oddly I felt no trauma in saying it; the strong sense of peace I had felt only a few hours before still remained.

Meg and Charlotte appeared in the hallway chasing George, who was at the wheel of an ancient, squeaking tricycle, perfectly
designed to squeeze through every doorway if correctly steered. There was a sound of splintering wood.

‘Me go now.'

‘No, me!'

George raced off again at high speed, his little legs pedalling madly, pursued by shouting toddlers.

•••

Our family doctor, John Barnett, arrived to hear the stories of the previous night, conduct his examination and sign the death certificate. After he had gone, I stole away to sit with Julian while the children were distracted. I sat and soaked in the comforting, suspended air of our bedroom.

As Julian had begun to decline during the previous months, I had started to read many books about the care of the dying –
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
was one of my favourites. It had helped me to remember to move more consciously into the spiritual space Julian occupied, beyond his body and mind, and connect with him there. According to the philosophy of this fascinating book, after death the soul hovers in a kind of limbo known as the
bardo
, a word meaning suspended in between, a transition.

The job of the living was to consciously nurture the passage of the spirit to a new, more fulfilling existence. Far from the idea of one's life ‘flashing before your eyes' like a film on fast
forward, this alternative vision of Julian's death allowed me to imagine his soul slowly and naturally expanding, his future a deliberate choice of his highest intelligence, beyond our immediate world, unencumbered by the burdens of an earthly ego. It also suggested in very powerful terms that there was no real division between this world and any other – a liberating and comforting thought which fully resonated in every part of me.

By lunchtime, Charlie suggested we ring a funeral home. I was reluctant – surely there was no hurry, I said. The truth was I did not want to face Julian being taken away from the house; it would be the first step towards acknowledging that he was truly gone. While he remained at home, where he lived and where we had a life, I could reassure myself that nothing had really changed at all.

As with Oliver, Henry and Edward, Charlie and I had grown closer over the past few difficult months. Like his brothers he was someone with enormous sensitivity, someone I could always be honest with and by whom I never felt judged. I instinctively knew that we understood one another – he would have guessed why I did not want to make that call. But when I saw the kind and fearless expression on his face, I acquiesced. I regarded Charlie as the likely barometer of how everyone was probably feeling, and clearly, for everyone's sake, this was something that must be done. I began to trawl through the numbers in the local phone book.

•••

In the middle of the afternoon a white hearse arrived with two burly, friendly men. I followed them upstairs. I had already chosen the clothes I thought Julian would be most comfortable in but when I suggested I stay and help to dress him, they ushered me out of the room.

‘This could be very distressing for you,' they said. ‘There are things we have to do and it would be better if you weren't here.'

I went outside and sat alone on the grass in our hopeful orchard. Under the shade of a blossoming apple tree and through its hesitant, budding branches, I watched with wonder the slow passing of indifferent clouds.

The branch nearest to my face was finely smothered in a soft, green lichen which fanned itself out into bold and intricate lacy patterns. In the grass under my hand, I could feel a papery object of decay. Squinting, I held it up against the grey sky and saw the skeleton of a leaf, dried and discarded.

I am being plucked out of my life by a guiding, unseen hand, the unknown path I know I have to follow.

Its deepest imprint looked like a thumb. I imagined that at one time this leaf might have bent, drooping as I had so often done, to shoulder unexpected rains. Under a summer sun it might have curled like a cat, heavy with heat. But in these softer,
shaded moments, as we waited for Julian to be taken away, it simply lay open in the palm of my hand.

•••

The men appeared on the front steps, pushing and pulling a shape on a stretcher to the waiting car; Julian was completely enclosed in a zipped white bag.

I think they spoke to me. Something about the visiting hours and then being asked if I had any special requests.

What are these people talking about?

I went upstairs, avoiding the rumpled, empty bed, and scurried around looking for the death certificate they needed. I might have signed a piece of paper. I don't remember. I returned to the sanctuary of the orchard.

Finally, there was the sound of a heavy car straining to gain traction, digging deep into the gravel drive. It drove past me amid a slow cloud of dirt.

•••

The love that Julian's older boys had for our children was something I never doubted, not for a moment. I, on the other hand, had long been insecure about my place in the family, even though I knew the boys had a high regard for me and appreciated how I had cared for Julian.

Despite this, I still felt the quiet agony of the outsider. Over the years, I had witnessed the boys' joy around the children and, with enormous goodwill on all our parts, we had weathered many storms together. I loved my stepchildren but I had to be realistic – they were young men who I had only known for a relatively short time and they still had lives and adventures to follow elsewhere. Without Julian, this new, uncharted landscape of family life stretched out before me, leaving me empty and fearful.

Without Julian, I reasoned, perhaps I would not be tolerated anymore? And if I was to be cast out, what would this mean for the children? There was no logical basis for this feeling – but I had a very strong, almost visceral intuition that my place in the family was under threat from a force I could neither see nor understand.