Letter from my Father

by Dasia Black

  In the highly competitive environment of the Clinic, which attracts bright and ambitious cardiologists from all over the Western world, Jonathan’s clinical and academic talents were quickly recognised.

  I left for Montreal for my own adventure. On the plane I developed pain in my chest. I thought how much easier it would be to take an anaesthetic and just be numb, without thoughts or feelings. Or maybe I could just stand and knock my head against a wall and wail. I was finding it so hard to behave in the civilised, dignified way that I expected of myself.

  XVII

  Living as a Widow

  Deep snow and penetrating cold awaited me in Montreal. I had arranged to be a lodger in the house of Erica, a physician, who wanted me to look after her cats during her frequent times away from home. She had left the keys with her neighbour, Olga, Professor of Psychology at the University. She welcomed me and invited me to accompany her to the closest shops to buy some basic groceries and fresh fruit and vegetables. It was minus twenty degrees outside so I gratefully accepted the offer of her daughter’s colourful purple down coat and yellow boots. I became friends with this talented, compassionate and intelligent woman and through her met other interesting people whose work ranged from medical research to the legal representation of refugees. They understood my fresh grief, extended generous hospitality, included me in their social life and introduced me to local arts and politics. I was fascinated and stimulated. However, it was still hard to live day to day. I wrote in my diary: Did not feel too good at end of evening. Aware of my lone status. Longing for family life.

  My host at McGill University, Professor Agnes Faroud, was a lean, intense, highly rational woman of Lebanese descent. She involved me immediately in her work, the main focus of my visit. She had developed a series of measures of racial attitudes in Canadian children. With her guidance, I read and grappled with understanding the concepts involved, since I wanted to take these back to Australia and adapt and apply them to Australian conditions. Agnes was supportive of my project.

  I found that my thinking had never been clearer, never as focused as during this period. I functioned at my best while reading and working with Agnes and her collaborators or at meetings and work-related discussions. Most of the time I felt that this was now all there was to me: a disembodied mind.

  During my early morning meditation sessions and breathing exercises, it was different. I felt as if I were connected with Henry’s breathing in those last days of his life. Sometimes, especially when it was raining or snowing or grey outside, and the steps to the house were slippery with ice, I simply stopped all activity. After breakfast I crawled back into bed, covered myself with the doona, curled up in a foetal position and lay there in intense misery, for hours and hours. This was a part of me that nobody knew nor should know.

  Early one morning, half-awake, half-dozing, I had a strange experience. I dreamed it was late afternoon on a snowy day. The phone rang and I answered to hear Agnes telling me that Henry had arrived in Montreal, and that she had given him my address. I became angry. Why had she told him where I lived without checking with me first? And how dare he turn up so suddenly, after all the misery he had put me through: his death, the funeral, my life shattered. In the dream he arrived at Erica’s and I asked how he thought that he could walk back into my life, just like that. In response to my protestations, he told me that all would be well. Then I woke. It took a while to accept that the whole episode was a dream.

  Another experience which also seemed completely real had me going along a street and noticing that Henry was walking on the other side, in the same direction. Again I was overcome by anger at his impertinence. I held my head up high and walked briskly on, pretending not to know him.

  On weekends when there was no work and no invitation from my new friends, I would start the day missing Henry. I made myself get up, dressed warmly in my borrowed clothes and, guidebook in hand, explored Montreal. I took lengthy walks around the area established by the Anglophone upper classes, proud of their British origins. Erica took me for a walk in the large park around Mont Real where children and the occasional squirrel played happily. The sun shone, the air was crisp and clear and I felt good.

  I was introduced to Canadian literature. Gabrielle Roy’s The Hidden Mountain resonated with me:

  The world is vast; life a thing incredible, unforeseen. All is new. I have come back to life. Was it then impossible ever to reach a day when one would know that one owed nothing more to oneself and to others? To be able to say, the task is done; it is finished.

  With envy and longing I copied a description from a Canadian novel: She knows that she is beautiful and that things will go well for her in life and that gives her great self-confidence and charm.

  Olga gave me a quote from Mosuf Khan: Let the field lie fallow and the natural flowers that are in it will bloom. I also noted Wittgenstein’s comment that it is impossible to perceive the meaning of any one thing without knowing the pattern of the surrounding things.

  When reading an article about adapting to change, I drew a line down the middle of the page and listed which aspects of my life I wanted to keep and develop, and which I would like to discard to adapt to my new circumstances. The first thing I listed as changing was getting rid of Henry’s clothes which I had left in his drawer at home.

  In this stimulating Canadian environment with people leading stable lives, even those with immigrant backgrounds, I was beset with doubts about everything. I wrote: I still feel diffident, in terms of my professional accomplishments, in the company of academics like Agnes. But then I would tell myself: What the hell – I’ve worked hard and within the limitations of my background as a little migrant girl, I’ve done well. I have the right to confidence in terms of my work: my thesis, my work with children, as a human being.

  On 27th March, at 3 am Sydney time, the phone rang. It was Simon announcing the arrival in our family of granddaughter Rachel, the first girl child in two generations. She had black hair like Ruth, Simon told me. I heard her cry on the line. What joy! The following day I marched off to St Denis, the old French quarter, to a children’s wear shop and proudly told everyone in my broken French that I had come to buy the prettiest, most feminine baby dress they had for my first granddaughter. The one I chose was pink and printed with tiny flowers, with a flounce along the hem. It would be right for Rachel when she was one year old.

  I kept in touch with Jonathan and Paula, just across the border, and they gave me regular updates on how they were furnishing the house they were renting and preparing for the baby. I was to come over as soon as he or she arrived. I was fed up with the sleet and the cold of Canada and the hard mattress. I not only missed Henry’s physical presence but also his sense of frivolity and original take on things. I knew that I was now ready to leave Montreal and be with my own family. Anticipating the call that would come any day, I gave a little reception at Erica’s, inviting all the good people who had been so kind to me.

  The very next day Jonathan phoned me. It’s a boy! A very beautiful boy. Both he and Paula were doing well. Jonathan was overwhelmed. Three days later I flew to America. At passport control, a big, heavy, grim immigration officer asked me: And what is your reason for coming to the United States? I smiled at him and replied: To visit my three-day-old American grandson. His expression remained impassive as he let me through. I went directly to the hospital to meet Adrian, who was a bonny little boy with a nicely-shaped forehead, a little round face and deep brown eyes. It was love at first sight. Again.

  The next three weeks were joyful but demanding. I moved into the living room of Jonathan and Paula’s house to be helper, cook, shopper and anything else needed in their early days as parents. Paula was only allowed to stay in hospital for three days, in spite of the fact that Adrian had been born by Caesarean and she was still in pain and needed support. Jonathan and Paula were inexperienced parents, but totally committed to doing everything correctly for their little son. After his long hours at the Cardiac C
linic, Jonathan tried to get up at night for the baby, but simply wandered around stunned and sleep-hungry, the very picture of a novice Dad.

  The suburb in which they rented was a model of a racially integrated community, and they had many middle class African American neighbours. There was also a sizeable Jewish community dating back to a wave of people who had migrated from Hungary. I didn’t want to take up the challenge of driving on the wrong side of the road so I walked everywhere or caught buses. My main outside chore was the supermarket shopping, involving a twenty-minute walk, often in snow along a sludgy path, before trudging back carrying heavy bags. We did the washing in the cold, dark basement beneath the house and hung it out there to dry. I also did most of the cooking. These were all physically more demanding tasks than I had undertaken for decades. But I was rewarded when Paula welcomed my help.

  Adrian’s Brit Milah (circumcision) ceremony, performed by a Mohel who was also a doctor, proved traumatic. As the only relative available, I took the role of the Sandak (the Hebrew term for the person given the honour of holding the baby during the ceremony). The blue velvet-covered box in which Adrian lay was placed on my lap while he underwent the operation. The story of Abraham and Isaac flashed through my mind as, with my eyes averted, I witnessed this ancient ritual, welcoming my grandson into the covenant between God and Abraham. There was a blessing followed by drinks, the doctor left and the three of us collapsed around the coffee table and consumed copious amounts of whisky. Adrian slept through it all.

  As the days became warmer, flowers emerged from beneath the snow. On sunny days, as I strolled with Paula in the nearby gardens, with one of us wheeling the pram, I experienced a rare sense of calm. We played with little Adrian for longer each day, and I bathed him the way only three months before I had bathed Henry when he was unconscious. The human cycle of birth and death was very real in these moments.

  Before I left them, I organised a party for Jonathan and Paula’s friends, bright, ambitious and committed young doctors and their spouses. It was good to see my little family settling into such a mutually supportive community.

  Three weeks later I flew to London to spend time with my friends Patricia and Edward, in acceptance of their offer to me in Canberra during those days of crisis with Henry to visit them in London where Edward was taking his sabbatical. Patricia arrived in my hotel room laden with brochures and programs showing what was on in London. We walked and talked and looked at wonderful art, discussing Henry and how I could shape my life without him. Patricia, an insightful and empathetic woman, predicted that returning to my everyday Sydney life would be very hard, and emphasised the need to acknowledge and be prepared for this.

  I continued writing my diary in an effort to understand where I was in my life. I made lists of new ideas and insights and tried to find guidelines on how to live this unexpected, unplanned segment of my life. I read Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation about a Polish Jewish girl’s migration experience. She discusses the losses, the nostalgia and displacement and the struggle to make sense of the new world, to become familiar with it, to feel comfortable, to understand it and be a part of it, accepting it as one’s reality. How accurately her words described my experience of adapting to widowhood – my new country.

  Some experiences were hard to bear. An Otto Dix exhibition at the Tate Gallery showing his dissection of the horror and ugliness of World War I, with maimed, distorted veterans playing cards in the trenches and prostitutes servicing decrepit old men, his concentration on death, the hideous, the frightening and the grotesque in human life made me feel physically sick.

  Jermyn Street near Piccadilly, famous for its tailored gentlemen’s clothes and accessories made me sad. Here were all these desirable goods but no Henry for whom to buy them.

  After ten days, I travelled back to the United States to spend a couple of days in New York before a weekend staying at home with Adrian, Jonathan and Paula. In New York I stood before Matisse’s painting of a ring of dancers, gazed at the Kandinskys and felt joyous. My senses responded to the gracefulness of Matisse’s forms and the colours and fairy tale themes of Kandinsky’s beautiful paintings. I was grateful for the discovery that I could derive physical pleasure from sources other than intimate relationships, which had been my bedrock.

  Back with Jonathan and Paula, I spent some pleasant days with baby Adrian and Paula’s mother, who had taken my place in the mothers’ relay. In the couple of weeks we had been apart, Adrian had grown into an alert little fellow with a calm disposition. During these two visits I also became fond of Paula, who was gutsy and adaptable.

  When the time arrived to farewell my little family, Jonathan took me to the airport for my flight to Los Angeles and gave me a true bear-hug. I felt the strength of this tall young man and departed comforted and happy, knowing that my son was flourishing in his work and was full of joy at his dream of being a father coming true.

  In Los Angeles I enjoyed my time, professionally and personally. Pacific Oaks College was a centre for research on strategies for combating racism in young children. The likeminded people I met were passionate about their teaching programs which were relevant to my own work. I stayed with my academic host Maureen and her husband, a prominent attorney and a gentle and perceptive man. Maureen and I were from completely different backgrounds and quite different in appearance, but somehow felt an instant easy intimacy. We found that both of us had been close to our fathers and that we had wanted to study medicine but being girls were discouraged. On the day I arrived she took me to an afternoon tea party at the College. We walked there along a street shaded by huge old poplars leaning towards one another across the road, forming a green tunnel dappled with magical filtered light.

  After a month of stimulation among these kind people, it was time to go home and meet my new granddaughter and resume relations with grandsons Zak and Nathan, now four and two. And, of course, I longed to hear Simon’s and Ruth’s voices.

  XVIII

  Building a Raft

  On the flight home to Sydney I was overcome by anxiety and fear of a life without Henry. I knew that many moments of misery awaited me. And so it proved to be. As was my habit, I took stock of my strengths and wrote a number of injunctions to myself: Be gentle with yourself. Reflect before making decisions. Be cautious. Let people come to you.

  I arrived home on a bleak winter’s day and the following few months were indeed grey, apart from the sunshine of Simon, Ruth and their little ones and the weekly phone calls from Jonathan, reporting on and sending video-cassettes from the United States of baby Adrian’s doings. My diary from May-December 1992 tells the story of these early days of widowhood.

  May 10 I am back home and feel daunted by the huge task ahead of me, like being at the foot of a mountain and facing a steep, difficult climb.

  May 22 Today lunch with my family to celebrate Nathan’s second birthday (he of the ‘excuse me’ and ‘please’ as he boldly proceeds to get what he wants) and my hard-working Simon’s birthday. Zak is sick with flu but lovely, and so is Rachel, a most sociable, friendly and alert baby girl.

  June 21 More than that. I have been feeling quite desolate at times. Waking up in the middle of the night, 3 am or 5 am, alone on a winter’s night and nobody to cuddle up to. Saturday mornings are particularly hard. I wake up and weep and weep. Especially this morning, when none of my friends has asked me to join them for Saturday night, the traditional going-out night among my coupled friends. What are the singles doing? I wonder. I suspect they are out with married friends or other singles. After this morning’s crying, I cooked, went for a walk with a psychologist friend and then threw out Henry’s toothbrush and contact lenses. Finished off evening quite calm, reading the papers, watching a videotape of Zeffirelli’s production of La Traviata.

  Henry’s mother, Erna died on Friday, close to 103 years old. Sad that I didn’t see her before she died. I am psyching myself up for the Senior Lecturer interview on Tuesday morning.

  July 5 I’ve go
t my Senior Lectureship. I did well at the interview but am suffering an anti-climax. One seems to get things when they no longer matter. Yesterday much weeping over being alone, bereft. Also overtired. Last night nice evening with friends. This morning, with my neighbour Herta, I did the cliff walk from Bondi to Bronte Beach alongside sparkling waters, followed by magnificent lunch at the Pier restaurant with my South Australian colleague and friend Anne – so full of vitality, intelligence and warmth. Carrying anger at my friends in my ethnic community living, like me, in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney, for not allowing me into their married circle in a relaxed way. They seem to be so densely programmed. ‘Sorry, Ester. This weekend we have the opera and next Saturday we have already made arrangements.’ It seems that they are locked, by choice, into these arrangements well into the future. My immigrant friends from Holocaust and displaced backgrounds similar to my own tend to organise themselves rather tightly. As one said to me perceptively: ‘Having arrangements in the future gives me a sense that the future will come.’ And in fact they are being good friends, inviting me for a meal, welcoming me warmly, glad to hear of any good news, and indeed very loyal. My Aussie friends are more relaxed. ‘What are you doing this weekend, Ester? Why don’t you come round for lunch or a drink or a walk?’ I am grateful for the friends who are there for me unreservedly. It’s those damned Saturday nights, written so firmly into my expectations of how one lives one’s weekly life, that are disturbing.

  31 July I am spending the weekend at Nambucca, a small town six hours by car north of Sydney teaching Child Development to Aboriginal students studying for a teaching degree, as part of a team that flies up twice each semester for face-to-face teaching. Our venue is a large classroom in a small demountable building situated in the grounds of South Nambucca Primary School, transported from what had been an Aboriginal mission in the area. It has a large colourful mural on its main exterior wall, painted by local Aboriginal people under the direction of their well-known resident painter, Robert Campbell.