by Lucy Palmer
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ he said.
Half an hour later, Julian could no longer walk. It seemed all the strength had suddenly gone from his legs.
‘When I can no longer walk or care for myself, I won’t be here for long,’ he had said to me a few days before.
‘I don’t think you get to choose,’ I said.
Julian gave a quiet smile. ‘Well, that’s what I have decided,’ he said.
•••
The boys supported Julian up the stairs to bed. The next day, our neighbours, Greg and Trish, organised for a local priest, Father Terry Herbert, to give Julian the last rites. Whether he could hear anything being said by this point was hard to tell. But it gave me comfort to hear someone speak about the journey of his soul. Then the long vigil began.
•••
The following afternoon, as Julian drifted in and out of consciousness, Celeste rang to see if I wanted to go for a swim in a local pool.
‘I think I need it,’ I said.
Celeste had nursed her first partner, Damon Courtenay, until his death from AIDS in 1991. (His father, the author Bryce Courtenay, wrote about Damon’s life in his book April Fool’s Day.) Even at the time of Damon’s death, Celeste was only twenty-two, but already poised and compassionate beyond her years.
By the time Julian, George and I moved back to Australia I already knew about a woman called Celeste as Edward had given me a copy of the book as a gift, insisting that I should read it. As fate would have it, Celeste and I met at a yoga class in Robertson, where she and her husband Stephen had moved not long after our arrival, and discovered we had children of the same age – George and their daughter Jasper went to the same preschool.
A deep friendship was gradually forged – Celeste was the only contemporary I had met who really understood the deeper layers of what was happening in my life. But standing on the veranda waiting for her to arrive, I was in turmoil. Although Julian was stable and the children were being cared for, I felt terribly torn about leaving. I was needed, always needed.
‘It’s okay,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll ring you if there’s any major change.’
The swish of tyres on gravel broke my indecision and I hurried to the waiting car.
We climbed the winding country road towards the town, the sun setting in a bruised purple sky. My discomfort mounted with every moment that we sped away from the house – despite the glorious vistas of lush paddocks and stands of magnificent eucalypts which flashed by in a blur, in my mind’s eye, I continued to watch over Julian.
There was an openness between Celeste and I, an honesty forged through the many painful conversations we had already had and an unspoken understanding of the increasing bond we shared.
At the water’s edge, I hesitated, wrestling with a sense of panic. How could I be standing here when my husband might be dying? What sort of person would leave her family to go swimming on a night like this?
Celeste was already in the water, the lone swimmer. She had already faced something of the void that I feared so much; she had survived and lived on through all the pain, the betrayals and the anguish of the bereaved. Her arms rose and fell in long, graceful arcs. I watched, mesmerised by her steady strokes. Guilt came in waves.
Between thoughts of Julian, there was a split second of peace. I let my body lean forward to the point of no return, and in the instant that I hit the water, it pulled me down into a shock of coldness.
There was no time, no world, no other reality but the slow and steady beat of my heart as I ploughed up and down, water sluicing over me, all dreams of past and future forgotten.
•••
When I climbed into bed next to Julian that night, I just held him.
‘I love you,’ I said. A slight pressure from his hand reminded me of the words I had always loved to hear, I adore you.
•••
Death came in small moments.
It came in the sound of cars pulling up at the house, a toilet flushing, a telephone trilling and the soft steady heartbeat of a morphine pump. It arrived in the soft touch of a hand on my shoulder and the wide-eyed gaze of a child. It moved quietly, like a lover, in the safety of the dark.
Julian lay upstairs, drifting, dreaming.
Jean arrived and put in a catheter to make Julian more comfortable and left some vials of morphine to cope with breakthrough pain if the pump was not adequate. She sat us all down and explained what was likely to happen.
She said that Julian would probably die within the next two days and briefed us on what to do if there was an unexpected haemorrhage, or if he developed pneumonia. Her matter-of-fact words floated around me as we walked outside towards her car. She gave me a heartfelt hug.
By early evening, Meg and Charlotte had fallen asleep, seemingly oblivious to the events around them. George’s eyes quietly betrayed his unspoken concern and he would barely leave my side. Nestled on a small mattress in front of the fire watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, he refused to let me leave him until he finally drifted off.
The telephone rang again – a relative, a friend. ‘How is he?’
Oliver, Charles, Henry and Edward stayed with Julian. Mary and John had already arrived, their faces tight with apprehension.
As the evening unfolded, miraculously, a meal appeared. We ate in shifts.
I sat at the table with Julian’s long-standing family friends, Meg and John Bell, who were visiting from England – without hesitation they had driven five hours to be with us, to offer comfort, support. In every room there were candles burning, warming the sacred space.
My body ached and my mouth was dry. I stared down at the remnants of my uneaten dinner while above us doors quietly opened and closed. I wanted to stay there, safe and cocooned, away from what was waiting for me upstairs.
Then I caught Meg’s kind gaze and read her unspoken thought: You need to be with him.
I moved slowly, as though tranquillised; the journey to our bedroom was the longest walk I’d ever taken. Ten tall steps. I knew there was no turning back now, no miracle, no ambulance to call. There was nowhere left to hide.
Opening the door I saw a room full of figures; alongside the family, half-formed shadows now inhabited our room. I had a strong intuition that these were the spirits of people who had loved Julian and I was mystified, but strangely relieved, that such loving help in the only form that was of any use now, had finally arrived.
The bedroom was full of candles; faint lights threw unsteady patterns on the walls. From somewhere I could hear the swirling voice of Andrea Bocelli. I kneeled by Julian’s side, put my cheek against his chest and drank him in.
My love, my dearest love.
•••
In my mind’s eye I saw him, striding up Paga Hill in Port Moresby, a colossus full of vitality, stamina, determination. I thought I heard his deep, joyful laugh as he made fun of my short legs. ‘Come on!’ he called. His greying hair glinted in the afternoon light as he disappeared over the brow of the hill. The sun was impossibly bright.
•••
In the dimly lit bedroom, his breathing was becoming more laboured and he sounded uncomfortable. But was it pain? It was hard to tell what it meant. We were not doctors. We hovered around him, looking at one another.
‘Should we give him some more morphine?’ someone asked.
‘I’m not sure. Do you think he needs it?’
We began to rummage through a wardrobe drawer full of prepared syringes, vials of mysterious drugs, endless crinkling packets of unpronounceable pills.
For a moment we could not quite remember which syringe was which or where we were supposed to inject him. The moment bordered on farce as we stumbled around in the gloom. Finally, someone made a decision.
We waited, watching Julian. It was hard to tell if the morphine was helping.
Another hour passed.
Gradually his breathing changed again. This time it was slower, heavier. From somewhere came a quiet internal nudge. It’s time, be with him.
‘Jules, I love you,’ I said. ‘We all love you.’ As his breathing dropped again, I leaned in closer, my mouth brushing his cheek.
‘It’s okay if you need to go. We’re all going to be alright.’ I gripped his hand, my eyes intent on the soft folds and fine lines of his beloved, living face. And all the while I could sense he was slowly receding, being pulled away by some vast, unseen current, taking him somewhere that none of us could follow. I pressed down on a volcano of tears.
Don’t go. Don’t leave me.
There was a long, quiet, lingering exhalation. The seconds passed as we waited for him to draw another breath. The beams of a passing car lit up the arc of intertwining roadside trees like a cathedral and the smell of jasmine, sickly and sweet, floated up through an open window.
There was a shift in the air, so brief, and then I felt my heart fill with the most profound sense of happiness. I looked around the room, imagining I would see something tangible to explain this unexpected exhilaration. The living faces I saw around me appeared frozen in sadness but I hoped this feeling was not mine alone.
Then I suddenly knew, without any hesitation, that this was not my joy at all. It was Julian’s. It was his relief that I felt, his absolute lightness now that he was free from the heavy pain of living. I stared at his face. He was absolutely gone.
I felt a soundless scream. At first it was slow, gathering like a storm in my belly. It surged upwards towards my throat then hurtled through my head, filling my ears, tearing at my hair, smothering my mouth, trapping me in silence.
The spirits who had inhabited the room only a few seconds before, faded into darkness. There were quiet prayers and then we gently washed Julian’s body with lavender oil and water and removed the intrusive tubes and needles. Not knowing what more we could do, the boys went in search of a sofa to sleep on.
I walked around the house in a daze for a while, then called ML in the Solomon Islands and Ian Boden in Port Moresby to tell them the news. Their voices comforted me. Ian was working at the time as a columnist and deputy newspaper editor. He finished work around midnight, often taking several hours to wind down after the crescendo of the deadline. I would often call him in the middle of the night when I could not sleep and, despite my inability to articulate how I was truly feeling, he was always able to divine the exact timbre of my underlying mood.
Eventually, just before dawn, I lay down next to Julian, careful not to disturb the sheet we had placed over his body. There was no strangeness in this at all. It felt just like any other night, creeping back to our bed after settling a child who had woken in the night. Waves of exhaustion, after several days with little sleep, carried me away.
•••
As morning light filled the room I became aware of the sound of feet drumming up the wooden stairs. Three small, anxious faces appeared bedside me.
I struggled out of a deep slumber, my mind coming to life to remember death. The events of the previous night pushed me into the day with a jolt.
‘Mum?’ said George, placing his hand on my shoulder. His wide eyes asked me the question I did not want to answer; it seemed he already knew.
I got up and quietly ushered the children out of the room, closing the door behind me.
I’d not had time to really think about what to tell them. What should I have said to children who were only five and two? I crouched down and gathered them into my arms, and inhaled with gratitude the sweet earthy perfume of their bodies, their tousled, sleepy hair. We sat on the stairs while they waited for me to speak.
‘Dad died last night,’ I began. I could not say any more.
The children all began to wriggle into me, their bony limbs jostling for space on my lap. I held them; held them tight.
‘Daddy not here,’ Meg said finally, putting her arm around Charlotte’s shoulder. She gazed out of the window into the clear spring morning. ‘He in the sky. I see his legs.’
FOR JULES
The hidden heart, inside you
The unled life, beside you
The unknown dreams, above you
The greater path, before you.
part two
Boroko, Papua New Guinea
Dearest Lucy,
I have been part of the death of so many people but the transition of Julian last night has been like no other. His reserve cloaked a depth of perception and a sense of the immutable destiny denied most. And your joint quest for an informed spirituality has been a spur to those of us also prompted by our own aching need and who, no matter how falteringly, reach out to the same timeless mysteries.
My dear, you are not now required to perform. What the host of friends and acquaintances ‘expect’ of you now is entirely a matter for them. Forget the proprieties, the baked funeral meats and the appalling humbuggery with which humanity can surround this moment of supreme achievement by you and Julian.
‘Nothing became him in life so much as the leaving of it.’ Julian’s exhausted body may have bowed to the inevitable but I know that his ineffable spirit is with you now and will always be with you.
The ache to feel the strong clasp of those familiar arms just once more will twist the very core of you. All the intimacies will crowd like spectres into your mind and you will often feel overwhelmed by them.
Stop when that happens. Ask yourself why those memories are so pervasive. If they are the casual debris of a passing passion they would twinge a regret here, twitch a wry smile there. But your memories are the true delineation of the quality and the vastness and the spirituality – yes, spirituality – of your relationship. Head up.
Know that your closest friends are beside you, day and night. Draw strength from us as we have often drawn from you. For what you have gained through the death of Julian is immeasurably more than what you have lost. Cruel words?
No – not if you believe as you do in the primacy of the spirit and the transparency of death, for you and Julian have conquered that artificial spectre and he now has the full measure of ‘the peace which passes all understanding’.
And so, my dear, do you.
I ache for you and I am here for you, whatever, whenever.
Ian
19
In my garden there’s an imperfect, serrated rose with
a forest of stamens reaching upwards like towering
suns and jagged edges like a torn memory. I can crush
it in my hand like a truth that can’t be faced.
One of my first calls that morning was to our friend Maur and her teenage daughter Charlotte. They soon arrived to help care for the children as the activity in the house increased. Drivers arrived with bouquets of impossibly beautiful flowers, and the phone rang constantly as friends and loved ones tentatively asked if the news was true.
Yes, I repeated like an automaton, Julian died last night. This was a strong, palpable fact, my only confident reality on that strange day. Oddly I felt no trauma in saying it; the strong sense of peace I had felt only a few hours before still remained.
Meg and Charlotte appeared in the hallway chasing George, who was at the wheel of an ancient, squeaking tricycle, perfectly designed to squeeze through every doorway if correctly steered. There was a sound of splintering wood.
‘Me go now.’
‘No, me!’
George raced off again at high speed, his little legs pedalling madly, pursued by shouting toddlers.
•••
Our family doctor, John Barnett, arrived to hear the stories of the previous night, conduct his examination and sign the death certificate. After he had gone, I stole away to sit with Julian while the children were distracted. I sat and soaked in the comforting, suspended air of our bedroom.
As Julian had begun to decline during the previous months, I had started to read many books about the care of the dying – The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was one of my favourites. It had helped me to remember to move more c
onsciously into the spiritual space Julian occupied, beyond his body and mind, and connect with him there. According to the philosophy of this fascinating book, after death the soul hovers in a kind of limbo known as the bardo, a word meaning suspended in between, a transition.
The job of the living was to consciously nurture the passage of the spirit to a new, more fulfilling existence. Far from the idea of one’s life ‘flashing before your eyes’ like a film on fast forward, this alternative vision of Julian’s death allowed me to imagine his soul slowly and naturally expanding, his future a deliberate choice of his highest intelligence, beyond our immediate world, unencumbered by the burdens of an earthly ego. It also suggested in very powerful terms that there was no real division between this world and any other – a liberating and comforting thought which fully resonated in every part of me.
By lunchtime, Charlie suggested we ring a funeral home. I was reluctant – surely there was no hurry, I said. The truth was I did not want to face Julian being taken away from the house; it would be the first step towards acknowledging that he was truly gone. While he remained at home, where he lived and where we had a life, I could reassure myself that nothing had really changed at all.
As with Oliver, Henry and Edward, Charlie and I had grown closer over the past few difficult months. Like his brothers he was someone with enormous sensitivity, someone I could always be honest with and by whom I never felt judged. I instinctively knew that we understood one another – he would have guessed why I did not want to make that call. But when I saw the kind and fearless expression on his face, I acquiesced. I regarded Charlie as the likely barometer of how everyone was probably feeling, and clearly, for everyone’s sake, this was something that must be done. I began to trawl through the numbers in the local phone book.
•••
In the middle of the afternoon a white hearse arrived with two burly, friendly men. I followed them upstairs. I had already chosen the clothes I thought Julian would be most comfortable in but when I suggested I stay and help to dress him, they ushered me out of the room.