Monday 23 May 2011

Landmarks of a death


Landmarks of a death -  November 2009


You often hear people talk about what they want to leave behind when they die.  Before now, this seemed like a good thing to think about.  Leaving a legacy of positivity that could be continued in your absence seemed like a great ambition.  I learnt how it happens through one of the toughest lessons of my life. 

Simon died a little more than a year ago, and he died majestically, in a way that I wouldn’t have thought possible had I not been there to witness it.   While coping with indeterminable testing and treatment regimes his raison d’être was constant: he had too little time for anything but love.

Before he knew his life was going to end, and end quickly, Simon philosophised about loving, but frankly he was so busy doing what he loved, he neglected sharing enough of himself with us.  His death sentence changed the focus so that he could give more of what I needed to remember why I fell in love with him, while balancing his passion for creating and playing music.

Simon hasn’t been far from my thoughts for twenty years, this month.  Yet how I think about him now is so different to before, when I had never contemplated that he would die so soon, before we had finished being proper parents.  Fortunately I am able to remember how he was in his life, but the trauma of his illness and his death is so big in my memory it blots out most of what came before.  These two times are very separate.  Before the back-ache that was “metastatic cancer of unknown primary” and “afterwards”.

The legacy of his life is in the future of our daughter, the music he left behind and the memories stored by everyone who loved him.  There is still so much sadness.  It usually surfaces and takes over my resolve whenever I realise how physically close I am to the landmarks of his death.

Only yesterday, I woke up feeling almost buoyant.  Instead of pulling myself out of bed, I launched myself into the hunt for delicious food for a meal with my cherished friends, Jane and Margie.  Excited I had found fabulous pink spinach for our salad I decided we also needed bubbles and perhaps a full-fruity red with our meal.  As I waited for the lights to change to cross the highway to the bottle-shop, all of sudden I realised I was standing opposite the funeral home, which was the last place and time I saw Simon.  Tears flowed down my face without warning.  Sobbing shook my body while I stood, staring at the wall of the chapel where I last touched his body.  While the traffic waited for me, I stood frozen at the corner of Jarrad Street and Stirling Highway, a block away from John Curtin’s home.  Unable to move, the lights changed back to the red man while I managed my reaction to this memory-bolt and regained my composure to get back to the life in front of me.

There have been many very tragic moments during Simon’s illness but identifying his body before taking him to the crematorium, was close to being the worst of all.  The face and body that lay so still in the white satin-lined coffin undoubtedly belonged to Simon, but it was very different to him in life.  It was a week from the last time I saw him, after he took his final breath and finally relaxed.

The funeral director explained that I needed to verify that the person in the casket was the person I expected it to be.  It was my job and I needed to do it alone, yet it took all the personal strength and will I had left not to run out of that lonely chapel squealing.  I could barely contain my hysteria after touching his cheek, realising my darling Simon had been lying in a refrigerator all week.  I forgot to breath for almost a minute before starting to gasp through my heaving chest.  Eventually the rhythm of my breathing returned to normal as I paced up and down between the pews.  Still not sufficiently composed to return to the others I sat down at the back of the chapel.  I was all alone – except for Simon’s body, flowers and the casket.  All the same I worked on repackaging the emotion that had exploded out of me, like of flock of pigeons leaving their coops on race day.  My control had been shattered and was scattered around this cold, sad room.   “How did this ever happen to you Simon?  This should never, ever have happened like this.”  Maybe choosing a local funeral director wasn’t so clever after all. 

By the time the lights had changed again and I was able to cross the highway, my attitude had completely switched around.  Now I had begun to feel comforted that this was where I last saw and touched him. 

I have said if before, but Simon was very well loved by many.  Today I visited Simon’s tree that was planted for him and Ella.  It came about from the positive influence of our friend, Libby.  While it isn’t yet big enough to sit under for shade, it is growing fresh new leaves and developing a strong woody trunk.  It overlooks the river to the south of our home.  

Before we lost Simon, he loved to walk around our neighbourhood, following the path I have been taking every morning for the past ten years.  He was always active, but walking was secondary to riding his bike or swimming in the ocean.  However in illness during his last few months, walking was the only activity left that took him outside.  It had become his new obsession.  So much so, there was a period when he would walk for several hours every day, with anyone who had the energy to keep up with him.  So that I could get some time to run our home and work, we had a roster of friends to keep Simon safe and happy during the day. Within minutes of their arrival, he would ever so politely ask if they would like to go for a walk.  Fortunately, rain was never a problem for anyone.  If he wanted to walk, we put on a raincoat and walked.  During these walks Simon had told me several times how he wanted a bronze plaque to commemorate his life.  “I just want my name and the dates, Lulu” he said.  “And just the line from the song, you know the song.  Dragons Fly.  You know just “something else in disguise””.  This excited boyish conversation contrasted from the careful, measured Simon I shared the previous twenty years with.

His plaque sits on the limestone wall overlooking Freshwater Bay with a hundred other deeply-loved ex-Mosman Park residents. This is north-east of our home.

Regardless of how I go to work, I pass by a major landmark.  The one I travel past most often is the cemetery.  Sometimes I get past without thinking about Simon.  Sometimes if I get past without thinking of him there is guilt that already I don’t think about him and I panic that this somehow makes his life less meaningful.  Fortunately there are more and more times when I get past without so many tears that I need to tidy my make-up before I walk into the office.  Mornings are always worse.  Living in the between of then and now, is a strange place; sad and illogical.  But mostly sad.

If I head off to drive by the river, it is the blue sign leading the way to Hollywood’s Palliative Care Unit. This is the landmark of green skin, nausea, great strength and determination shown through the six cycles of monthly chemotherapy.  And then the final month of his dying.  My memories have these bizarre moments of his wakeful times, when he listened to music or ate jelly and icecream dispersed between the weeks of sitting beside his bed (or lying on a stretcher beside him) with me listening to his breath get slower and irregular until the worst of all of his last hours.  And then there was the peace that came at the end of all of this torture.

The ocean is always good for the soul.  And I think Simon’s soul is out with his dragons.  Mostly the twinkle of light on the top of the ocean brings joy, it is like the clink of a glass celebrating all that is good.  But driving the route that we took behind the hearse remains devastating.  I didn’t know that until last week though.  Perhaps it will get easier.  For now at least I take alternative routes.  If sadness gets triggered too many times in a single week, my resources for resilience run out and struggle follows.    So I am going to stick with the shine on the ocean….


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