Photos of You (ARC)

by Tammy Robinson

  It’s meaningless. Most of it, anyway. Of course there are exceptions.

  What I do remember from all those Christmases is all the fun times we had. My family. Putting out the cookies for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer on Christmas Eve. Trying to stay awake and craning to hear any sound of hooves on the roof. Christmas Day itself, the jollity and merriness of the day as we played and ate and drank and watched the Queen’s message, trying to mimic her prim and proper tone and falling about in fits of laughter when my father nailed it the most accurately. Pulling crackers, running through the sprinkler, lolling on the sofa after eating too much, then an hour later getting up to forage for food once more.

  It’s the experiences that make us rich. The time we spend with our family and our friends, that is the perfect gift, and it is all we need. Don’t get sucked in by endless adverts screaming BOXING DAY SALE, BARGAINS GALORE, LIMITED TIME ONLY. Just don’t. Call a friend instead. Take them out for a beer, ask them how they are, and really listen to their answer.

  You can’t take possessions with you when you go, and while you’re here, they just weigh you down. Declutter and you’ll feel lighter, freer, less trapped. I will leave this earth with just the shirt on my back, and I’m OK with that, insofar as I can be. I am rich because I am loved. Show your loved ones how much you love them by investing your time, not your money. They’ll remember it, I promise.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  My last Christmas on this earth is a fairly low-key affair. Energy-wise I am lacking; fatigue since the hospital is an ever-present ghost, weighing down my movements so I am sluggish. Even if I wasn’t tired, though, there is nothing I want to do more than sit around my parents’ house and spend the day enveloped in their love and the love of my friends. And James, of course. Always James. He doesn’t leave my side. I don’t ask him about his work, instinctively knowing he is turning down jobs to be with me and selfishly happy that he is doing so.

  We decided against giving each other gifts this year, because really, what was the point. I am still getting packages in the mail almost daily from people up and down the country. While well meaning and appreciated, they are all opened and then gifted on.

  I have an urgent need to make memories, not just for me, although I am starting to fixate more on what will happen to my memories after I am gone. But for my loved ones left behind. I am determined to gift them with enough memories to get them through the hard times ahead. My mother isn’t coping well with the thought of this being my last Christmas, so James and I become vagabonds for the holiday period, moving between houses. We deliberately spend most nights at hers, giving her the priceless gift that is time with her daughter. When we need a break or time alone together, we go back to Kate’s, where we can make love without worrying that my parents might hear through the walls. My bedroom is at the opposite end of the house from Kate’s master and Amanda’s room, so we are free to be as vocal as the occasion requires.

  Determined to give my parents and James a Christmas to remember, we do everything Christmassy that I can think of, including a three-hour round trip to a Christmas tree farm so that we can have the perfectly shaped tree. When we get it home, it is so tall my father has to cut a foot off the bottom, and its girth is such that my mother has to make an emergency trip to the shop for more tinsel and another set of fairy lights, as the ones we have barely stretch to cover the artificial stick we normally drag out every year, let alone the monstrosity I have chosen to fill our lounge with for my final year. It is all worth it, though, because it is perfect. The sight of the tree lit up and the smell of the pine is so evocative of happier times that I decide, if I have to be buried, then I want to be buried in a pine box. I write this down but don’t tell anyone, not yet, because I don’t want to upset anybody else with the vision this conjures.

  In a rare, late-night splurge, I buy everyone matching Christmas sweaters even though it is thirty degrees Celsius outside and the asphalt is melting on the road, and we all pose in front of the tree for photos, with the fire lit for effect in the background. Afterwards my mother’s face stays beetroot red for the remainder of the day, which she spends most of it with her head in the fridge, ostensibly planning the menu for Christmas Day itself. It occurs to me that I most likely won’t live to see another winter, therefore another open fire, so I sit and I watch it until it burns away to nothing but smoldering ashes.

  We go to Carols by Candlelight in the park on a Friday night, where the sound of a thousand people singing “Silent Night” into an early evening sky has me weeping buckets. I set my mother and Kate off crying too, and everyone in our vicinity looks at us strangely, until they realize it is me, and then they are sympathetic. I lose count of how many people stop by to wish us well and to let me know I am in their prayers. I smile my thanks, but say nothing. I am past the angry days of questioning their God and have no desire to provoke them into an argument and attempted defense that they cannot prove, at least not to me. Nothing will make me change my mind now, and if that condemns me then so be it. I can’t pretend to believe in someone who allows this to happen to anyone, let alone small children.

  On Christmas Eve we do something I have never done before but always wanted to. It’s a contradictory decision for me, because to do it I must go to church. And I live in fear that someone will say something that enrages me so much I won’t be able to control the vitriolic words I will want to say. But, if I did have a bucket list, this would most likely be on it. And so we don our finest and we go to Midnight Mass. Amanda doesn’t come. She thinks that if she crosses the threshold of a church she’ll most likely burst into spontaneous flames, given the amount of profanity and blasphemous lyrics in her songwriting, so she goes out with the band to get pissed and wreak her usual brand of havoc on the town instead.

  As we go up the aisle, I make Mum and Kate walk in front of me. Dad follows behind, and I cling on to James’s arm. I avoid eye contact with anyone until we are in our seats. This church is more like the churches of my imagination. We have driven to the city to see it, which gave me the advantage of time to nap on the way. A priest in white-and-gold robes leads the service, and while I do tune out during the biblical speeches, using the time to study the people around me and the beautiful architecture of the building, there is something special about singing Christmas carols in a building that echoes. The voices of the choir can only be described as angelic, which is fitting, and their sweet tones bounce off the rafters and roll down the walls. I get chills and the hairs on my arms stick up. James holds my hand tightly throughout. All in all, it is a beautiful experience, and I am glad I did it.

  Christmas Day at my parents’ house, as is tradition. As is also tradition, friends of my parents—roughly half the town—pop around during the day to pass on their seasonal greetings and to partake in a tipple or two, to get in the “holiday spirit.” They are mostly retired couples like Mum and Dad, with empty nests and children who live too far away to return home every Christmas. They are filled with stories about “how well Susan is doing in her top-earning, high-flying executive job,” and how “the children really like their new nanny.” She’s German, they think. Or maybe Swiss.

  It makes me sad to think about it. But I can’t honestly say that if I was Susan, cancer free, in a great job and living the city dream, I’d make the effort to come home for Christmas either. You can read all the self-help books you like, but perspective only really hits when you’re running out of the time you need to put it in practice. Death tends to do that, though: rob you of time.

  It is a wonderful day. A lazy, easy, carefree day. I have my village of people around me, except Amanda, who was apparently so drunk Christmas Eve she fell asleep on the roundabout in town and spends Christmas Day at her parents’ house comatose on the couch and texting me things like

  Oh God, I think I kissed that guy Nate we went to school with. The one who used to eat worms. Remember him? With the weirdly straight side-part? FML.

  The day is both unrema
rkable and memorable, for all the right reasons.

  The week between Christmas and New Year is spent, as always, finishing off the ridiculously oversized ham my mother bought before it goes off, and sitting on the lawn with our feet in paddling pools complaining about the heat. Well, the others do. I don’t because I love summer. Everything seems easier when the weather is warmer. People are generally less miserable.

  I do two more articles for the magazine. Nadia has taken to phoning for updates now instead of visiting, and James is happy to supply her with the photos she needs. He mischievously sends in the family Christmas awful-sweater photo, and none of us know until the issue hits the stand. I see the funny side but Kate is mortified. We might know it’s an ironic photo, she says, but the rest of the country doesn’t.

  As soon as we get back to Kate’s each time I head for the beach. The curved shore is mostly private and empty, and I can sit with my thoughts and be hypnotized by the waves lapping the shore. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I laugh. I build a sandcastle, on an afternoon when the sky is the bluest blue you’ve ever seen and the sun is unbearably hot. Everyone else refuses to leave the cool shelter of the house, so I build it alone, decorating the walls with sun-bleached shells and little sticks of driftwood. I am ridiculously proud of it, so when the tide turns and gradually washes it away I feel sad. Nothing is permanent. Not feelings, not people, not sandcastles. I strip down to my underwear and float on my back in the sea, keeping a wary eye on the shore to make sure I don’t drift out too far. The memory of that dream is still with me.

  Somewhere between Christmas and New Year I completely lose my appetite, along with four kilos. I can feel my body steadily going into decline, but I say nothing. I don’t want to worry anyone else until it’s unavoidable. New Year’s Eve, James and I drive to the top of the cliff that overlooks the town and watch fireworks explode in glittery bursts against a black sky. It is hard to say goodbye to the last full year on this earth that I will have lived in, even though it was the year that brought me the worst news. Despite that, and the treatments that failed to buy me more time, I don’t hate the year as much as I would have thought. Because it was the year that also brought me James. And that’s a pretty big highlight as far as I’m concerned.

  It is terrifying to think that I am now in the year of my death. The four-digit number that will be recorded beside my name in a computer somewhere and on a headstone—it has arrived. Like a black storm cloud that has been threatening on the horizon, it is here.

  Notes from Ava

  (Women’s Weekly, January 14)

  Don’t forget to take the time to enjoy the simple pleasures.

  I know it’s so easy to get caught up in the big things, working hard to save for a new house, new car, that expensive holiday, that we often forget to just take the time to enjoy the small stuff.

  And I know that sometimes, in reality, things that sound magical all too often actually aren’t. Like dancing in the rain, for instance, or buying a puppy. Rain tends to be a cold, wet affair, and puppies can be bloody hard work, given their natural tendency to pee on the carpet or chew your shoes.

  Baking your own bread sounds a noble pursuit. Till you forget the yeast and waste an hour waiting for bread to rise that doesn’t, but you bake it anyway and then wonder why you bothered when it’s harder than a slab of rock and not half as pretty. Not even the birds will touch it, or the dog, and that’s saying something because he eats the cat’s fur balls. As for growing your own vegetables, painstakingly tending to them for weeks only to have some bastard rabbit eat them from under your nose right before harvest time, well that’s just infuriating. It’s so much easier to buy your lettuce in a bag and your carrots pre-peeled.

  You might think a nice family afternoon walk on a Sunday afternoon conjures up images of rosy-cheeked children dashing gleefully ahead to frolic in hedges and marvel at nature, while Mum and Dad stroll hand in hand blissfully behind, overwhelmed by how blessed they are and how wonderful life is, but then you actually go on a walk. And the fight begins before you even leave the house when you have to prise your cherubs away from the TV. Before you’ve even gone five hundred meters someone sits down in the middle of the road, crying, because their legs are too tired to continue, the other child is in desperate need of a bath and possible decontamination because they poked a dead possum with a stick “to see what would happen,” your husband is wondering whether if “we turned back now” we might make it back for the second half of the game, and you end up climbing a hill in an effort to get cell phone service so you can google where the nearest pub is.

  It’s exhausting, and not at all what you had in mind.

  But here’s the thing: These moments, these “experiences, “they may feel like they will break your spirit at the time, but they won’t. You WILL look back on them one day and manage not to cry or cringe, and instead you’ll see it for the character-building, memory-making time that it was.

  When you are on your deathbed, you won’t recall with any great detail the eight-plus hours you spent every day in an office, or the hour and a half you spent in the car on your daily commute. I understand the bills have to be paid, I’m not saying quit your job and run away to join the circus, or sell up and spend a year sailing around the world. What works for some is a nightmare for others. What I’m saying is, When you’re dying, you won’t look back and remember how horrible that picnic was because of the ants, and how hard the ground was, and because you stuck your hand in bird shit and took a bite of your sandwich before you noticed. Instead you’ll remember how blue the sky was that day, how warm the sun felt, and how long and hard you laughed with your friends (or family). How good it felt to be outside, reconnecting with nature, doing nothing much in particular.

  So take that walk, bake that cake with plums foraged from the neighbor’s tree. Sleep under the stars, feed the birds, read the paper from cover to cover; the housework can wait.

  Slow down.

  Keep the balance.

  Keep it simple.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  January brings with it new resolve. I have been caught up in a downward spiral lately, focusing on the unfairness of my illness, and the impending hard days to come. I know why, of course. James. He is everything I ever wanted. Loyal, passionate, funny. When we are not sleeping or making love we are talking, about anything and everything. He tells me about the places he has been and the things he has seen and I close my eyes and pretend I was there with him, at his side all along. It’s a poor substitute for actually having done it, but it will have to do.

  After the hospital visit I decide I have been concentrating too much on dying, and I need to remember to focus more on actually living instead. It’s hard, though, when most of the time I am so tired all I can do is curl up on the couch and watch life go on around me.

  Kate and my mother have gone into wedding-planning overdrive. There are To Do lists stuck to surfaces all around the house, and Kate has taken to walking around with a pen tucked behind her ear so that she always has one on hand to scribble down notes in the little teal-colored notebook that she keeps tucked under her arm. Especially useful for the many phone calls she fields.

  “Who was that?” I ask one day after her phone goes for the fifth time in an hour. James has gone home to air out his house and mow the lawns, and Amanda is in the city for a few days with her band. Kate has taken a few days off this week, to “finalize things.” The wedding is only two weeks away.

  “Mm? Oh, no one you need to worry about.”

  “You guys haven’t gone like, a bit crazy stupid, with this whole wedding thing, have you?”

  “As if we would.”

  “Good. So we’re still on budget?”

  She makes a sound that I think is supposed to signify agreement, but her eyes twitch shiftily at the same time.

  “Kate.”

  “What?”

  “What have you done?”

  “Exactly what you asked me to do. Organize you a wedding day
to remember. Or celebration-of-your-life day—whatever we’re calling it now.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not hiding anything.”

  “Really? Then you won’t mind if I look at this.”

  I leap for her notebook but she is too quick and dives over the back of the couch, where I can’t reach her.

  “Aha. So you are hiding something,” I say.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Ava. Stop asking questions and just wait and see. You’ll spoil the surprise.”

  “So there is a surprise.”

  “You can be so annoying sometimes—anyone ever tell you that?”

  “You. All the time when we were growing up.”

  At the mention of our shared youth her eyes go glassy and her bottom lip wobbles. “If I did, I didn’t mean it.”

  “Don’t cry,” I sigh. “Not today. Not yet.”

  “I can’t help it.” She looks down at her feet. “I’m trying to keep myself busy so I don’t think about it, but it’s always there. Every time I look at you, the thought of never seeing your face again…” She sobs, and then claps a hand across her mouth. When she has recovered enough she removes it and whispers, “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear this.”

  I sit down on the couch and pat the cushion beside me. “Sit.”

  She takes a step and then pauses. “Is this a trap so you can try and get my notebook?”

  I roll my eyes. “No. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But now that you mention it…”

  She clutches the notebook tighter.

  “Oh, for—come on. Sit. I promise I won’t try and get it.”