by Petrea King
***
Wendie and I decided our home would become our private space—I would no longer work from the house. After having two hundred people in the sunroom each week for years, the idea of home being a sanctuary was very appealing.
We were also unsure if my work would continue, given we had no idea how many people would make the two-hour drive to Bundanoon from Sydney. Wendie was toying with the idea of becoming a real estate agent as we thought about how to reinvent ourselves in the beautiful country of the Southern Highlands.
The real estate agent who’d sold us our house had an adult daughter in remission from a lymphoma. She was finding it difficult to re-engage with her life due to the constant fear of recurrence—a common and understandable fear that I knew only too well. The agent asked whether I would counsel her and, while I replied that I would be happy to see her, I also told him that I needed to find professional rooms in town first.
The following day, before we’d even made the move to Bundanoon, the agent phoned to say he’d found me rooms, and he asked when I would see his daughter. So, I rented half a house in town from an elderly gentleman who lived at the hotel. Before long, my practice resumed; I saw a constant stream of people living with all kinds of difficulties, including depression, grief, loss, family conflicts, anxiety, cancer, chronic illnesses, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, trauma and despair.
***
By now, Wendie and I had a very close relationship with my parents, who were still living in Mosman. On one of their visits to our new home, we showed them a nearby house that we believed they would love living in. Within six months of our relocation, they too had moved to the village, and we were delighted they were so close to us.
Over time, Geoff shared some of his experiences from the war. Some were wonderful, funny or sobering, but there were also stories of shame, pain, terror and distress—and, as he wept more openly, he softened.
Geoff ’s journey to find his peace was long and difficult, and it was wonderful to witness the integration of long-buried traumas in this later part of his life. He still needed to control Rae, but to his children and grandchildren he was kind and generous with his time and in many other ways. He certainly became a loving, loyal and staunch supporter of me personally and of the Quest for Life Foundation to which he and Rae regularly donated. He made a huge contribution to the world of publishing and to many charitable organisations throughout his life. He had much to be proud of—his family foremost, as we had weathered many a storm together.
Geoff frequently gave me sound advice around a variety of financial and other business matters. He loved being the patriarch of the family, and he enjoyed being called upon for counsel. His fondness for Wendie was obvious, and they enjoyed dozens of robust discussions around political, economic and social topics. My father had certainly met his match, as Wendie is a voracious consumer of information about global affairs. While their political differences were sometimes considerable, they both shifted their stance through having these discussions.
It was lovely to enjoy more time with family, and weekends were mostly reserved for such gatherings. For the first time, my life had expanded well beyond my practice, which now existed more or less within the confines of business hours.
***
Within a few months, Wendie and I decided to conduct Quest’s first residential program at a motel in Bundanoon.
Over the past decade I had conducted dozens of retreats and educational programs in the Southern Highlands, and now it was wonderful to have Wendie’s support in co-facilitating these powerful opportunities for education, support and healing. She had years of experience within the education system at all levels, including university lecturing, consulting and group facilitation.
Forty-seven women with breast cancer attended that first weekend program. We went on to conduct a dozen residential programs each year for men and women living with the challenges of cancer, grief or mental health issues.
At the same time, I was being invited to speak at an increasing number of events. In the busiest of these years, I delivered seventy speeches—six in one week! I’ve always preferred to speak without notes or a digital presentation. It wasn’t until I was invited to give a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra that I became nervous and went with back-up notes; it went well enough, but speaking directly to my audience is still my preference. There’s an aliveness and vulnerability in such talks, when speakers voice the truth of their own experience.
Wendie and I relished the privacy of our garden and home life and, along with Simon and our three dogs, we settled into a routine. Wendie complained from time to time, ‘I’m used to having a secretary, not being a secretary!’ but other than that life was happy, and we were busy with family, my practice, my speaking engagements and the residential programs.
CHAPTER 34
Healing journeys
Wendie and I enjoy travelling, especially in Asia and, as the children matured and moved on with their lives, we had many wonderful adventures in countries including New Zealand, Italy, Slovenia, the United States, Canada, Vietnam, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Perhaps our favourite has always been India. The assault on our senses, the shifting contrasts and the deep underlying spirituality of this ancient land and its people is a delight to us both.
In 1996 my first book, Quest for Life, was published for the US market. Wendie and I embarked upon a lecture tour throughout the States with our good friend Roma Newton. My US publisher arranged the schedule, and we completed thirty-two presentations or television interviews in thirty days across a dozen states. Wendie and Roma were kept busy selling books and meditation practices at each event; because Americans have such enthusiasm for consumption, they would often purchase every one of the dozen practices I’d recorded.
That year I was also invited to participate in a conference, The Four Faces of Woman, at Mount Abu, a hill station in Rajasthan, India. Two hundred women from more than one hundred countries came together to discuss aspects of being a woman—the eternal, the traditional, the modern and the Shakti face, the face of innate power.
The Australian contingent were an enthusiastic group who promptly bonded. Sister Angela from the Franciscan monastery at Stroud was there, along with many other fabulous women for whom spirituality was important. Australians have always had a robust rather than pious view of spirituality, and as most participants dressed in white and became more reverential, the Australian contingent dressed more colourfully and enjoyed a good deal of laughter and conversation.
After the conference finished, and because of our interest in health and wellbeing, Wendie and I travelled with a local doctor into the surrounding desert to visit a man with tuberculosis and his wife. After travelling for half an hour on a desolate dirt road, we left the car and trekked for a kilometre or so down a well-trodden track winding through a gully and up the other side into a scrubby landscape. This couple lived there in the simplest dwelling we’d ever seen, a one-room mud and stick hut. They greeted us with much smiling and bowing at the entrance. The man, his smile wide and toothless, moved slowly, bent over with frailty, his ribs clearly visible in his tiny frame.
As we entered their hut, I was struck by its cleanliness. The dirt floor had been brushed spotlessly clean with a bunch of sticks bound together by long grass strands. In one corner were three or four metal plates, two cups, a couple of bowls and two saucepans scrubbed clean and neatly stacked. A flimsy piece of faded and frayed cotton was the bed cover on a woven mat of sticks. Hanging from a strut in the roof were several small hessian sacks that I imagined might contain rice or other staples.
Outside, near another woven stick bed, an open fire occasionally smoked, signalling that it could be stirred into life whenever needed. Timber was unavailable—the only vegetation were scrubby desert bushes and the very rare stunted tree—so fuel was derived from a pile of dried-out cow pats stacked neatly in the corner.
These people appeared to have no ot
her possessions, yet they smiled broadly as they welcomed us so warmly into their humble home. We gently declined the woman’s generous offer of tea and were struck that, given we couldn’t see any food, she should offer us anything at all.
The doctor briefly examined the man. After a fleeting visit full of friendly gestures and a good deal of nodding, bowing and smiling, we returned to the car immersed in our own thoughts. Everything this couple possessed would have filled a medium-sized cardboard box. There are so very many ways to live a life, but the universal need we share is for connection and love. Our surroundings don’t define the ease or difficulty with which we discover the simplicity of what really matters.
***
After the conference, Wendie and I travelled on to Kathmandu as I was keen to visit the city where Brenden had ended his life. I wanted to walk the streets, smell the air, absorb the atmosphere of the city where he had made that fateful decision.
I was surprised by my tumult as the plane began its descent among the Himalayan mountains to land in the saucer-shaped valley that encloses Kathmandu. An aching lump of emotion swelled in my throat when the plane circled for landing. I reached for Wendie’s hand but couldn’t explain to myself, let alone her, the tsunami of grief engulfing me.
For some time, I had lectured and written about grief. I had counselled hundreds of people through their grief. I had wept for dozens of much-loved people over the many years of my practice. I had wept about Brenden frequently, had planted numerous trees in his memory, had talked and laughed about him on countless occasions, but nothing prepared me for the gut-wrenching sobbing to come. Perhaps the looming presence of the mighty Himalayan mountains helped elicit such powerful emotions. Wendie gently took over as we made our way through customs and on to our hotel.
I had written to the British Embassy before we’d left Australia, alerting them to our impending visit. We knew Brenden had gone to them for assistance in the afternoon before the night when he ended his life. There were so many unknowns about his death, and I was keen to see if any fragments or echoes of a memory, any small trail of insight might remain.
The following day we went to the embassy, which was full of chattering Nepalese people lined up at the counters, keen to apply for UK visas. I was rendered speechless, so Wendie took over and said to the woman at the counter that we were there because ‘our’ brother had died; we had sent a letter to alert them to our visit. Instantly, a hush fell over every person crammed into the undersized space. I was so touched by the compassion and kindliness exuding from their faces.
It turned out that a tourist had died the previous week, and the assembled crowd assumed we were his relatives. Their empathy was so palpable, it served only to bring me further undone as we were ushered into an office to meet with a diplomat.
‘Diplomat’ is a great descriptor for this solicitous and gentle man. He was so sweet with us, but his kindness caused me to plunge even deeper into the inarticulate spaces of grief. Wendie had to do all the talking because I simply couldn’t get one word out of my mouth. I tried and failed several times to say something, but grief had hollowed me out of coherence—the words just wouldn’t form.
Wendie asked whether we might see where Brenden had been cremated. The diplomat gently guided us away from this idea, saying that the river next to where cremations were held had dried up and was filled with crows. He kindly offered a driver and car to take us to where foreigners were buried, but that seemed pointless given we knew Brenden had been cremated.
Through this conversation, we learned that Geoff must have made the decision for Brenden to be cremated. Families are always given the option of having a body repatriated. This news came as a shock, because Geoff had told us that Brenden had already been cremated by the time we heard of his death. He’d clearly decided to protect us from seeing Brenden’s body, and I knew he had done this out of kindness.
The diplomat finally suggested that we travel to Boudhanath Stupa on the north-eastern outskirts of Kathmandu, as it is considered the holiest place outside of Tibet; a place of pilgrimage. Perhaps, he suggested, we could purchase prayer flags there to take back to family members in Australia.
Opposite the embassy stood a simple hotel. Brenden had been referred there on the day he’d sought help from the embassy and they’d told him to return in the morning. It was there, in that very building, that he had died, but my heart and legs refused to enter its grounds.
***
We followed the diplomat’s advice and travelled to the Boudhanath Stupa in the ancient town of Boudha. My first sight of its extraordinary architecture took my breath away. Situated on the trade route used for centuries between Tibet and Kathmandu, Boudha is now the central town for Tibetans in exile from their own homeland. The imposing stupa is its crown jewel.
As Wendie and I walked into one of the temples surrounding the stupa, a large group of Tibetan monks were chanting their scriptures and playing musical instruments such as the rag-dung (a long and impressive trumpet), drums, cymbals and bells. The air was heavy with incense, and the steady drone of the chanting felt like a balm to us both. We stayed a long time, lost in the heady perfume and mesmerised by the combination of sounds. Finally we emerged, refreshed and soothed.
We purchased prayer flags to deliver back to my parents and Ross, and as a gift for ourselves. They hung for many years in our garden before the wind and rain shredded the fabric and delivered the written prayers for peace into the ether.
Back in Kathmandu, we went to the only English newspaper office to see if there were any records dating back to 1982. We ascended five floors of creaky wooden stairs and entered a small timber-panelled office where the four staff were very welcoming.
When I told them I was looking for news of my dead brother, their postures softened into the subtle language of compassion. They respectfully located editions from April 1982, and we scanned the pages of the days surrounding Brenden’s death. We found all sorts of titbits and news about tourists, but no news detailing the demise of a foreigner in such circumstances. We thanked the staff warmly and, with much smiling and bowing, we took our leave.
As we descended the creaking steps and emerged into the brightness of the day, I felt we had done what we could to find echoes of Brenden’s life and death, and this was enough to put it to rest. A weight had lifted from my heart.
***
Later that same year we travelled to Montreal for a conference on death and dying with the Dalai Lama and many other wonderful speakers, including Sogyal Rinpoche.
At this conference we met a researcher, Caryle Hirshberg, who had been looking for commonalities among people who had achieved a ‘spontaneous remission’ from their disease. Through funding from the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, Caryle and Brendan O’Regan studied two and a half thousand cases of people who’d been given three or fewer months to live and who were now—five, ten or twenty years later—alive and free of their disease. Brendan and Carlye were looking to see whether these people did something or had something in common, and they wanted to know if their findings could be replicated for others with a poor prognosis.
It so happened that a documentary about my life and work, A Year in the Life of Petrea King, was shown at this conference to wide acclaim. In 1992, the ABC and Channel 4 in the UK had jointly funded this documentary through their Visionaries series; two filmmakers had spent a year with me, from one birthday to the next, and also followed several of my clients during that time.
When Caryle saw the documentary, she sought me out. We realised that she had discovered from studying case histories what I had discovered in my clinical practice. Our findings supported the notion that there are similar characteristics in people who achieve unexpected remissions or far outlive their prognoses. I call them the four Cs—control, commitment, challenge, connection—and have written and spoken extensively about them online, on the radio, in articles and in books. These characteristics and their cultivation have continued to underpin my life
and work to this day.
CHAPTER 35
A dream come true
Wendie and I had only been living in Bundanoon for a couple of years when Killarney House came onto the market. It’s a beautiful property, right in the heart of the town, and it served then as a forty-bed guesthouse and motel, caravan park and theatre restaurant set in nine acres of lawns and gardens.
I was quite excited by the idea of finally offering a large, safe place of nurturing, support and education to people facing life’s greatest challenges. However, Wendie was less excited—or, perhaps, just more realistic. She agreed that Killarney would be ideal as a place to expand the work of the Quest for Life Foundation, but she reminded me of its price tag of $1.5 million. Quest had, at that time, $15,000 in its bank account—so we had the 1 and the 5, but we clearly needed a lot more zeroes.
Undaunted and still full of enthusiasm, I phoned the chair of the Foundation’s board, Chris Levy. Wendie and I have always considered Chris to be a trusted adviser, and he has mentored me through some challenging times in managing business affairs. He’s also become a dear friend, along with his wife, Anita. When I called him that day, he listened patiently and, towards the end of our conversation, reminded me of our limited financial resources. I said, ‘Yes, I know, Chris, but I’m sure this place is meant for Quest.’
Wendie thought I was ‘out of my tree’ in setting my sights on the acquisition of the property, given our poor record of fundraising. It wasn’t something I had any expertise or interest in. Anyway, we always seemed to have sufficient funds to do what we needed, and the accumulation of money for its own sake was never a priority for me.
I often drove to Killarney House on my way home from my practice to savour the possibilities in my mind. I told the owners that we didn’t have the necessary funds, just the certainty that this property was destined to be a safe harbour for many people, as the Eremo had been for me all those years ago.