Chase the Rainbow

by Poorna Bell

  ‘We instantly became friends and over the years I saw him do that same thing countless times, the last of which was a 69-year-old lady who was missing most of her teeth by the name of Susan at the Riverhead Tavern. This was one week before he died.

  ‘It didn’t matter what she looked like, where she came from or where she was going; within minutes he had turned a complete stranger into another friend, another in a long list of friends.’

  Although I can’t say I was always happy to be presented with one of Rob’s new ‘friends’ (one guy looked like he broke people’s fingers for a living), holidaying was one of my favourite ways to spend time with him, not least because there was no chance of Daisy wriggling her way in, but also because we loved doing the same things: eating new and strange food, reading, napping and going on the occasional nature trip.

  But it was on these early holidays as newlyweds that I started to notice the highs and lows that resulted from Rob’s depression.

  Our holiday to Portugal marked the first notable change. We spent the first two nights in Lisbon at a restored mansion set right by the castle, and planned to stay in a rural eco house near Sintra in the countryside, about an hour’s drive away, for the rest of the week.

  The first day, Rob couldn’t get out of bed. It was as if he had been stapled to the sheets, his face drawn and pale, his stomach churning.

  ‘Honestly, honey,’ he said, ‘I just need a day in bed and I’ll be fine.’

  I went down the stone steps to a little courtyard to have breakfast, and as I sipped orange juice, I mapped out my day. When I travelled solo I was used to exploring by myself, so this would be no different, I told myself.

  Except at dinner, Rob still wasn’t well. By day two, he managed to join me for breakfast and a bit of sightseeing. By day three, we hopped in our hire car and drove to the cottage we’d rented by the sea.

  For most of the trip, Rob wasn’t feeling great and was monosyllabic. The whitewashed cottage, though beautiful, with stained-glass windows, started to feel like a prison. It was freezing at night unless you sat right near the wood-burning stove and the sofa was only big enough to accommodate one person. Gunther, the German landlord, had also very considerately only paid for German cable TV.

  In the middle of this stunning nature reserve with its wild grasses and clear, blue sea, I felt so miserable. On the fifth day of showering in cold water because the solar panel heating was busted, I just put my head in my hands and cried. I had never wanted to be home as much as I did at that moment.

  And I couldn’t turn to Rob for comfort because there was none. He was like an Easter egg with a smile painted on. I could tell he was there in person but there was nothing forthcoming from within.

  ‘I’m sorry, honey,’ is all he kept saying.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s not your fault,’ I kept saying.

  I knew something was deeply wrong, so I Googled depression symptoms. Lack of energy, appetite changes, loss of interest in activities, insomnia. Again, I shelved my worries and set about trying to be cheery for Rob.

  When we flew to Sicily a few months later, we rented an amazing villa; burnt orange walls flanked by glossy green trees and a pool in the back. I couldn’t wait to spend the week with Rob, zip around in our car and go wine tasting, buy fresh fruit from the market and wind our limbs around each other for afternoon naps.

  ‘We’ll have to get up early,’ I mused in the car journey to the villa as I flicked through our Time Out guide. ‘Apparently the market closes at twelve.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ he replied.

  At 9am, I bounced out of bed like Tigger. ‘Can we go?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t sleep well, honey,’ came the reply. ‘Can I just have a moment longer? Half an hour tops?’

  I waited. And I waited. And every time, I was told: ‘Half an hour longer, I promise.’

  By now it was nearly twelve, and I was upset. I couldn’t get in the car because only Rob had insurance, and although we had some loaves of bread in the villa left to us by the caretaker, we needed to do a proper shop.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t feel well,’ he said.

  Again. I kept quiet and said: ‘Okay, don’t worry, we can go tomorrow. Just take it easy.’ I tucked my needs behind his, but I wished he had told me instead of making me wait like a child who every half an hour asked: ‘Can we go yet? Can we go yet?’

  This would become an established pattern. Rob, unwilling to acknowledge that he wasn’t physically capable of doing what it was that he had promised to do, drawing it out until the last minute, until I broke.

  We went out for dinner because we didn’t have any food in the house. There we were, at an open-air restaurant, the sea breeze lifting like ribbons and running through our hair. Other couples were leaning in closer, murmuring to each other, but he was bent over, barely touching his food.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just my stomach.’

  Again.

  I Googled ‘insomnia stomach cramps’ and, sure enough, chronic insomnia could cause stomach pain if the underlying cause was depression or anxiety.

  The next day, the same thing happened. And I snapped. ‘Rob, there is no food in the house. You promised we would go to the supermarket. I feel utterly trapped here – I can’t leave because I’m not insured on the car!’

  He eventually got up and we went to the market, spent time picking vegetables and looking at fresh fish, the morning almost forgotten. I cooked dinner and served it up with a great flourish.

  But the evening was yet again like dining with a ghost.

  ‘I’m sorry, I feel like I’m ruining your life,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you aren’t,’ I replied. ‘But please, let’s try to do something, go out and enjoy ourselves. This feels awful – like I’m just hanging around for you to wake up.’

  I don’t know what happened overnight, but the next day he was up. Sitting outside on a rattan chair, smoking a cigarette, squinting at the sun and drinking coffee.

  We drank wine in Marsala. Two bicycles sat outside the villa, so we hopped on them but after five minutes the strong sun humiliated us into turning back. We experimented with shaving his beard into mutton chops.

  By the time we finished our last meal of the trip, at a restaurant called Da Vittorio by the sea, him in white linen, me in a yellow silk dress and sapphires from our wedding day, I had completely forgotten our inauspicious start. The sun was setting, casting us in gold, over a scene of white tablecloths and glasses of fizzy wine.

  ‘We’ve got to come back here in a couple of years,’ he said. ‘It’s perfect.’

  I smiled, and felt our life coming back to us.

  The remains of a perfectly cooked sea bass sat in front of us, and it seemed like this was all that had ever been, and ever would be.

  When you’re dealing with a loved one who has depression, it can be hard to know how to behave and what to say.

  You know it’s an illness, but that doesn’t alleviate your loneliness any more than it alleviates their loneliness when you say: ‘Hey, I’m here for you and you can talk to me about anything.’

  Your emotions aren’t allowed space. There is resentment but you can’t focus it on them, because you realise that, as frustrating as it is for you, they are going through something far worse. But that doesn’t mean your emotions don’t exist. There is anger, very raw and real anger, that you’re dealing with a lot of it on your own, that you have to ask a stranger to get a bottle from the top shelf in Tesco because your own tall person is back home lying prone on a bed.

  And at the same time you’re not allowed to express that anger, not to your friends and family because you don’t want them to feel sorry for you, and definitely not to your loved one because it’s not their fault this is happening.

  When you don’t have depression, and you see them in bed, or unable to get up, you want to say: ‘Get up! Go for a walk! Come with me to the gym!’ because you think they’d feel better if only they could push themselves a b
it harder. Even if you think you don’t think it, there’s a part of you that does.

  I would not go onto a cancer ward and shout this out to patients who are recovering, so why did I expect it to work with Rob?

  ‘Honey, are you sure you wouldn’t feel better coming out with me for a bit?’ I’d ask hopefully.

  I kept asking. Did he want to walk Daisy? Did he want to get out of bed? Was he sure he didn’t want to go to the cinema or out for dinner?

  I mean, was I complicit in the bollocks attitude towards depression that maintained if he just got moving he’d feel better? Of course I was.

  Sure, I did the shop (mostly) uncomplainingly. I washed the sheets, I cleaned our house, I represented us both at events. When he couldn’t leave the house, I cooked huge dinners for him – goat curries swirling in tomato sauce, vinegary pork cooked with garlic, chicken in soy sauce and green chillies.

  I tried to burn the depression out of him with spice like a zealous preacher.

  I was so sure that if he came to the gym he’d feel better. I was adamant that eating bags of sugary crap was contributing to his insomnia. I didn’t go on about it daily, but my frequent suggestions were useless, and based on a) a lack of understanding about the illness and b) Rob’s inability to talk about how the depression was truly making him feel.

  And when the response is: ‘I just need to be left alone for a bit’ or, worse, no response at all, it takes the thickest of skins not to take that personally. If you love someone, and you are connected by an invisible cord, you feel shut out and rejected.

  Worse, you feel helpless because this illness is trying to rot them to death; it is whispering in their ear that they are worthless, that nothing will ever be good again, and you cannot go in there and kick the shit out of it without hurting them in the process.

  You also believe that if anyone could coax them out of a depression it should be you. Haven’t we been taught, from the moment we are plonked down in front of our first Disney film, that love conquers all?

  But when has the love of a person ever been able to do battle with illness?

  What we don’t realise is this: it’s not that they don’t want to do the things we are asking them to do, it’s that they can’t.

  Rob’s parents Prue and David live in Orewa, about a thirty-minute drive north from the centre of Auckland. Like other suburbs in the city, the houses are new builds, set neatly on their own plot of land with carefully tended gardens.

  The air is clean, the sky wide and blue, shot through with lenticular clouds that form like white, wispy cigars rolling endlessly against the dome.

  Orewa started off as a retirement community and, while it is filled with spry elderly folk, property prices in the city are going nuts due to foreign investors buying up houses, so younger commuters are being drawn to the area by osmosis.

  The sea, always present in Auckland like a heartbeat, casting the sound of thudding waves and a salt-tipped breeze through nearby homes, is a five-minute walk from their house.

  The vast, beautiful beach, which turns golden on a summer’s day, is very dear to me. During our first trip to New Zealand in 2013, Rob had flown a week earlier to settle in, as jet lag seemed to affect him more than it did me. He and his father met me in the early morning at the airport, the sky still pink and newborn, the air warm and humid.

  As we walked to the car, I saw that the licence plate said ‘M1lady’. I looked at Rob.

  ‘It used to belong to Gran,’ he said, referring to Prue’s mother Lena Lynch. Lena was basically the template for all of the Lynch women – strong, fearless and with a sense of humour that could cut you down and make you laugh, so I’ve been told.

  Her husband Cletus went through a phase where he thought personalised licence plates would be the next big thing and ordered a bunch of them. When they didn’t sell for thousands of dollars – who would’ve guessed M1lady wasn’t a big hit? – they were distributed among the family.

  ‘Big Rig’ sits on Felicity’s jeep while Gabrielle’s car is ‘Farlap’. There is nothing more satisfying than when you’re driving around Auckland and you see Big Rig, M1lady or Farlap parked up and realise someone you know and love is in the area.

  Rob and I wanted some alone time, so we went for a walk along the beach, holding hands, nattering about what he’ d been up to. The sky was like blue glass and the tide had long since tugged the sea back to its furthest point. Tiny white birds darted from one patch of sand to another as if they had a nervous tic.

  ‘What are they?’ I asked Rob, half-wanting to know, the other half of me just loving that the answer would roll off his tongue so effortlessly.

  ‘Oystercatchers,’ he replied. ‘They look crazed, don’t they?’

  Standing in the living room, where his coffin once sat so we could say goodbye to him, look at the hair on his beard, take in every last detail of his face, remembering the shape of his chest, the curve of his thumb, wishing wishing wishing he’d wake up, please wake up, why won’t he wake up, it is impossible to believe that this was barely a year before.

  With soft carpet under my feet, sunshine flooding into the room and the distant strains of David playing classical music, it doesn’t feel like anything bad can happen here.

  ‘Tea?’ I hear Prue call. ‘Yes, please,’ I reply.

  I look at the back garden, at the soaring pohutukawa tree that will burst into flames of red at Christmas time, and if I close my eyes I can almost pretend Rob is just out there on the wooden deck, smoking a cigarette and sitting in the sun.

  Prue hands me my tea with a smile, and I look at this woman who is full of so much strength and grace she doesn’t even realise it. We are about to embark on our first trip without Rob, to Rotorua further south, and, although he isn’t here and I miss holding his hand, there is nothing sad about this.

  That I am here, that his mother is one of my dearest friends, and that I feel as if this is my home, is more than I could have asked for. Despite the terrible events of the last year, we have held on to our love for Rob, and turned it into love for each other, and at times that outshines all of our darkest moments.

  Chapter Five

  Seven nights and eight days had passed since we returned from Sicily in 2012. We had settled back into our lives, dog walking, making dinner, taking out the rubbish, going to work, intermittent insomnia.

  I went to the gym and found I couldn’t quite catch my breath while on the cross-trainer. This happened sometimes when I was coming down with a virus, so I stopped, went home and didn’t think much of it.

  Then it happened the next day, and the day after that.

  ‘It’s weird,’ I said to my dad when we went round there for dinner. ‘I don’t feel ill, but I just can’t seem to take enough air in while I’m on the cross-trainer.’

  My dad is a former surgeon-turned-GP, and he asked me to go see my doctor.

  So I did, and she said: ‘Don’t worry, it’s probably just a virus.’

  ‘SEE,’ I told my dad on the phone.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said.

  An hour later he called me back. ‘Look, you’re not going to like this. But tomorrow morning, you’re going to go to A&E, and your mother and I will meet you there.’

  ‘But the doctor said it was fine,’ I said, growing increasingly angry that I was being ordered about like a child. I didn’t have time to go to the hospital; I needed to go to work.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, not sounding remotely sorry at all, ‘but I don’t know your doctor. We’re going to A&E.’

  ‘I can’t BELIEVE HIM,’ I huffed to Rob.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey,’ he said, ‘I’m sure it’s fine.’ Rob had a good way of being the calm mirror to my explosive rants.

  The next morning, I stomped to A&E and, as I was waiting to be seen, my parents arrived. My dad clicked into doctor mode and went over to talk to the receptionist, his gait strong and purposeful. My mother was what I always needed: comforting, warm, the smell of her, all that comes with nine m
onths of carrying me, baby blankets and milk, happiness, worry and love.

  ‘This is all a waste of time,’ I said, my jaw set in a defiant clench.

  I was called to a cubicle and explained my symptoms to the doctor. ‘Any family history?’

  ‘Not much. History of heart disease and diabetes. Oh, and my mother had a hole in her heart when she was a child.’

  The doctor looked at the nurse.

  ‘We’re just going to run an ECG on you. Just to check.’

  ‘I’ve always been fit and healthy,’ I said as they made notes on a clipboard.

  I sat in the cubicle and was asked some more questions while my parents waited next to me. Had I ever smoked? Ohgodohgodohgod.

  Yes, of course I had smoked. I bloody loved smoking from the age of fourteen to about twenty-seven.

  Davidoffs when I was feeling fancy, Silk Cuts when I was trying to cut down, Benson and Hedges Silver when I was drunk and sloppy, Camels when I was desperate and cadging. But I had quit for the last five years and had done so smug in the knowledge that my parents never had to know. In a time-honoured tradition dating back to my uncles and aunts, Indian children never, ever tell their parents the truth when it comes to smoking.

  This was probably not the best time to start telling porkies, though.

  ‘Yes, I used to smoke.’

  My parents’ eyes goggled. At least it distracted them from going mad with worry.

  ‘Hypocrites,’ I said. ‘You both smoked.’ I looked pointedly at my mother. ‘Yes, you too, broncho-lungs!’

  The ECG looked into my heart and wrote its findings in sharp, secret zigzags on a page. ‘We’re now going to run an echo cardiogram,’ the doctors announced.

  I lay on the table in a dark room, goop spread over my chest. Then I heard my heart. It spoke to me in desperate thumps, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying.

  An hour later, I was back in a different cubicle. I felt like this cubicle had moved up a notch in terms of seriousness.

  ‘We need to talk,’ said the doctor. She pulled the curtains closed for privacy. Unless she was about to communicate via sign language, I didn’t see the point. I could hear the woman next to me being bollocked by her family because she had a drinking problem.