I Came to Say Goodbye

by Caroline Overington

  Well, I didn’t die, obviously. It seems to me now that people don’t die when they want to die. Edna says it’s God that keeps them going because he loves us. I told her, if that’s so, he’s got a strange way of showing how much he loves us. Edna said no, he’s letting you find the edge of your rage and when you do, you’ll take a step back from it and I suppose that turned out to be true, because the day did come when I decided I’d quit drinking so much, and put a padlock on the bar fridge and thought, okay, enough with that.

  I tried to go back to the Shire but the pressure of it was a bit much. People are kind, but it seems like they always want to know things that I can’t explain.

  One example, a lady in the lift at work might say, ‘Oh, I heard what happened. I’m so sorry’ and I’d say thank you and then she might say something like, ‘Did she have a breakdown?’

  I’d think, Well, her mum walked out when she was a toddler, and her old man tried to raise her and manages to bugger it up. She hooks up with Haines and tries to be a mum and he sends her to work. At some point, she would have figured out that it was Haines who hurt Seth but she doesn’t dob him in. Why, I don’t know. Too scared, maybe? Couldn’t prove it, maybe?

  Welfare steps in but they don’t help her. They don’t support her. Then she gets pregnant again and she’s made to feel ashamed of that.

  Straightaway, everyone says, Oh, this can’t be happening. You can’t have this baby. Look at what happened to your first one. No, no, we’ll have to take this baby off you.

  Then Savannah is born and is thriving and happy but she’s not allowed to live with her mum, who gets shoved to one side.

  All that stuff coming down on her, it must have been hard.

  People have said to me, ‘What was she thinking?’

  She wasn’t thinking. I look at her now, and I can see that. She wasn’t thinking at all.

  But how do you say all that to a woman in a lift?

  It was too hard, so I quit work. I was pretty near to retirement anyway. I never wanted to work past 60.

  What I’ve done since I left the Shire is fix this place up.

  I started by digging trenches. Don’t ask me why. Digging felt right. The pain across the shoulders. The effort I had to put in. The sweat that poured out. I needed all of that.

  Then I had to put something in the trenches. I mean, what’s a trench with nothing in it? So I laid some pipes for an irrigation system. I put down some topsoil. I planted. I cleared crap that had built up over the years. The transformation, I’ve got to tell you, it looks good, and it gave me something else to think about. I might go to bed, thinking, First thing, Med, get that part for the tractor, and believe me, that was an improvement on what I’d been thinking for months, which was this: Savannah. Savannah. Savannah.

  Savannahsavannahsavannahsavannahsavannahsavannah.

  I remember the first day I realised I’d just thought about her, meaning I hadn’t been thinking about her until that point on that day, and I felt guilty, but I suppose if that hadn’t happened, if I hadn’t been able to pull myself together about it, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, writing this letter.

  Which brings me to the point of it. I mean, why am I writing all this down?

  Well, basically, Your Honour, because there’s been quite a bit said about my family – about me, and Pat, and Kat, and Blue – and some of it’s fair enough and some of it’s not.

  Now, I don’t know what kind of family you’ve got, Your Honour, but if you’re like every judge you see on TV, I’m guessing you are married, with grown-up kids, who ended up teaching you more than you taught them.

  If you’re around my age, you’ll also know what I know, which is that family is the only thing that matters.

  I’m raving now, but lately it’s been driving me mad. I’ll go to the bowls club or to the RSL, and I’ll hear people talking about their families, and they’ll be saying things like, ‘Oh, my sister-in-law, I just can’t stand her’ or else, ‘My mother’s husband, he’s hopeless’ or else, ‘My brother and me, we used to be close but we fell out, haven’t spoken for years.’

  You know what I think of saying to them?

  I think of saying, ‘Goddamn it, that’s your family you’re talking about there, and if family means anything to you, make up. You don’t have to see each other every day, but know this, they’re all you’ve got. Don’t abandon anyone, and don’t let anyone abandon you.’

  I think of saying to them, ‘The time will come, you’ll get a knock on the door, and it’ll be a cousin, or a brother-in-law, or an uncle, and they’ll say, “I’ve done the wrong thing. I’ve gambled all the money. I’ve signed a false cheque. I’ve had an affair. I’ve robbed a bank, or seduced the neighbour’s wife,” and do you know what I’d say to that? I’d say, come on in. I’ll make up the bed. Because that’s what family is. People get born, they carry your name, and you’re supposed to take care of them.

  And so I guess what I’m asking you, Your Honour, is whether you’re going to let me do that – whether you’re going to let me take care of my own.

  I know what it means. It means you’re going to have to forgive me. Not just me, but all of us – forgive Kat, and David, and Blue, and me.

  We know what people think of us. They think some of us are crazy and the rest of us insane, and those of us who aren’t either of those things still manage to make a complete hash of things.

  They think we haven’t supported each other in the way we ought to have done, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought that too. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear you say, ‘I’ve got no sympathy for that Atley mob.’

  Well, I hear you, and I’m saying, fair enough. We made a hash of things. All of us did, and we know it. But that was then, and this is now, and what we’re saying now is, can you forgive us? Not because we deserve to be forgiven. We know we don’t deserve it, so don’t do it for us. Do it for Seth. That’s what we’re asking you, forgive us for Seth, because Seth, he needs us.

  Chapter 21

  Kat Atley

  I’VE NOW READ MY FATHER’S LETTER in its entirety, Your Honour, and he’s asked me whether there is anything I’d add.

  I suppose I’d say only this. There was a time, and it shames me to admit this, when David and I probably wouldn’t have thought of adopting a disabled child. We would have been concerned about the effect it would have on our lives, and on our freedom to work and to travel, and so forth.

  I won’t lie and say that if we’d been asked to take Seth when he first got injured, those things would have mattered to us, and perhaps we would have said we really couldn’t do it, we don’t feel capable.

  Things are obviously different now. My sister had two children; I haven’t been lucky enough to have any.

  Both of Donna-Faye’s children were removed from her care. I do not believe there was ever any evidence that she posed a risk to either of them. It seems to me that she was driven to do what she did precisely because her children were being taken away from her, for reasons she couldn’t understand.

  I know something of her pain. I do not want to overstep, but I think it’s fair to say that Donna-Faye and I will forever be bonded by the loss of Savannah.

  Savannah was the love of my life.

  I’ve no reason to believe that she was not the love of Donna-Faye’s life, too.

  There was an afternoon, six or seven weeks after Savannah died, when David opened the door on Savannah’s nursery. We took a deep breath. We began moving things, one stuffed toy at a time. I went through Savannah’s drawers. I folded each jumpsuit, each singlet, each sock, each hat.

  We dismantled the cot. I took the adhesive turtle mural off the wall. I took down the teddy clock. I folded the plaster cast of her hands into bubble wrap.

  We put most things in the back of David’s car, and drove them to a storage shed. I could not bear to donate them. Who would take Savannah’s clothes? Who would dress their own baby in a jumpsuit from a child that died? No mother would do
it. We locked her things away. We pay the rent on a storage unit we have never visited.

  Perhaps one day we will.

  It isn’t only Savannah that is no longer with us, obviously. We’ve lost Donna-Faye too. We are permitted to see her once a month for an hour. What she knows of those visits, I cannot tell you. I leave too exhausted to enquire.

  I have obsessed about what I might have done to save Donna-Faye from her madness, before it was too late.

  My father has told you that long before Savannah was born, Donna-Faye wasn’t well. I knew that she’d been taken into care in Sydney, and placed under supervision in Tamworth. Why didn’t I do something?

  The only answer I can come up with is this one: I was obsessed, at that time, with myself. I was obsessed with getting out of the fishing town where I was raised and creating for myself a life that more closely resembled that of the girls with whom I boarded.

  I was obsessed with getting up the ladder. In the process, I abandoned my sister. Of course I couldn’t see how badly things would turn out, but that’s the fact of the matter and finally, I can face it.

  It seems to me that had I been available to Fat, and to my father when they needed us, in the courts, and when the first calamities occurred, I would have known what to do. I would have been able to find people that would have cracked open Donna-Faye’s faith in Paul Haines, and forced him to admit what he’d done to Seth.

  We would have found a way to keep Seth at home.

  What I did instead was sit back and listen, or half-listen, on the telephone, from 16,000 kilometres away.

  It’s no excuse to say I was away. That was a choice I made, to stay abroad when I was needed at home.

  In any case, we did not know, Your Honour, that there was anything we could do for Seth, not until now. I realise that’s another failing of ours – how could we not know? – but we had always assumed that the decision taken by the court, way back when, to take Seth away from Fat meant that we, too, were cut out of his life.

  Also, for as long as I can remember – from the day I first heard that Seth had gone into hospital – we were told that he was dying. Any day now, he’d die. But it never happened. Of course, we could and should have stepped up and said, ‘Well, as long as he’s alive, we’d like to be in his life’ but we did not do that.

  Perhaps we thought it was none of our business? More likely, we thought we don’t want to make this our business.

  Now, of course, with all that has happened – Savannah gone, and Donna-Faye, too, and our hearts completely broken – we are told that Seth is going to be put into State care, into foster homes, apparently because nobody in his family has ever been to see him, and therefore, nobody wants him.

  Well, it isn’t true, Your Honour.

  We do want him. In fact, we need him. I realise that’s going to be a problem for some of the people who come to your court. They are going to say, once again, it’s all about the Atley family and what they want and what they need and maybe there’s some truth to that. We do need him. But we also want him, any way he comes.

  Chapter 22

  Violet Bowen

  DEAR JUDGE JUDD,

  I am writing to you for one reason and one reason only, and that is to thank you. I’m sure you don’t hear those words very often so allow me to say it again. Thank you!

  What you have done is important. What you have done is special.

  I better explain who I am. For two years now, I have been a volunteer at Sydney Aged Care, and Seth Atley-Haines – Seth Atley, if you don’t mind me giving him the name by which he should be known – has been one of the children in my care.

  Several weeks ago, I had the enormous pleasure to introduce Seth Atley to a member of his family. For a very long time, I thought that would never happen.

  I hoped it would happen and I prayed it would happen but as time when on, I admit, I started to think, do they even care about this boy? Now I see, of course they do, and they always did.

  When I think about how close they came to losing him – how close he came to losing them! – well, it gives me the shivers.

  I have been visiting Seth at least once a week since he was moved from intensive care to the old people’s home or, as they call them now, the aged care facility.

  Now, before I get to how a beautiful little boy like Seth ended up in an aged care facility, let me tell you how I ended up there, caring for little children!

  While I’m at it, may I also say that we need more volunteers to visit children who live in aged care facilities?

  I want people to know how rewarding it is, to make a difference in a child’s life, especially a disabled child. People feel a bit daunted – they say, oh, I wouldn’t know what to do – but let me assure you, it’s doesn’t matter how old you are – I’m 72 years young myself – or whether you have any particular skills, we can always use an extra pair of hands.

  But back to how I got here. I was married at age 21. I am Catholic and my husband was Catholic too. We both thought I would soon fall pregnant – it wasn’t discussed, we simply expected it – and it took three years. That was awkward, because in those days, the pressure was on. A baby followed the wedding. My mother wondered what on earth I was doing. We were just at the stage where we were thinking about seeing a doctor when I fell in.

  Well, I was fit as a fiddle for the whole pregnancy, and I was actually outside, in my apron, picking apricots from the trees, when my waters broke. I went into the local hospital, but the baby wouldn’t come. Now, in those days, they put a little something under your nose and whiffed you off, and I don’t remember my son being born, and I didn’t see anybody take him out of the room, but I do think that I put my head up and said, ‘Is everything alright?’ and somebody said, ‘The baby …’ and I don’t recall the rest. I was under the ether.

  Later that day, my husband called for the priest, and when the priest came, I said, ‘Have you come to baptise the baby?’ And he said, ‘The baby is dead.’

  Now, don’t get upset. It happened to women in those days. I wasn’t the only one. My husband came into the hospital and left with the undertaker, and they buried the baby, and I was never told where, and that was the way things were done.

  I came out of hospital, and I saw my doctor and I said, ‘Am I to blame?’ and he said, ‘Certainly not’ but some other mothers in the town, they crossed the streets with their prams when they saw me.

  It was another three years before the next son arrived, and then two girls, and another boy, and then another girl, so in the end, I was blessed, and now I can say I have six children, five living, and nine grandchildren (and one on the way).

  After 51 years of marriage, my husband died. I thought, Violet, you’ve got time on your hands and you’re fit and well, you go out there and see what you can do to help. I’d been used to volunteering. I’d done the tuckshop at the children’s school. I’d taken Guides, until that fell out of favour.

  On the community wall at Coles, I saw a note that said the Probus Club was looking for volunteers to visit sick children that lived on wards among the elderly.

  I thought to myself, why on earth are there sick children living on wards with the elderly? I went along to a meeting and they said there are many children who have a disability, who can’t stay at home with their parents, and there is nowhere for them to go.

  The lady from the aged care told us, ‘These children really do need residential care’ but there aren’t any homes, not anymore, and the only places that have the staff to lift them in and out of bed and take proper care of them are the aged care facilities.

  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, Your Honour, but I think it’s not right. It’s not right, but that’s the way it is.

  I signed up for the training course. The first time I went out to the aged care facility to meet the children – well, I fell in love, didn’t I? There were six of them, sitting in those wheelchairs with the high backs and the head rests, and one had an oxygen tank and half had colo
stomy bags.

  They couldn’t walk, obviously. They had spina bifida or cerebral palsy and some other conditions – you give up trying to remember the names of some of the things they’ve got – and some were blind. There was no question of them being able to go to the toilet on their own, or anything else. They needed full-time care.

  In any case, each of us new volunteers was assigned a child to visit and I got Seth, and I don’t need to tell you this, but he was adorable. Adorable! He was three years old when we met – he’s now five – with hair as white as a butler’s glove, and his skin was very white, too. I suppose he’d never been outdoors all that much.

  He had a very large head, and at first I thought, oh, perhaps he’s one of the children with encephalitis – the water on the brain that swells up the forehead – but the nurse, she said, no, actually, his head isn’t that big. It only looked big because his body was small. He hadn’t been exercised.

  Like the other children, Seth didn’t stand up, and so he was often in his padded chair, which seemed a shame to me. Imagine spending all your time on your bottom, or in your bed? Seth’s not got a broken spine. He might stand one day and he might even walk. But in the meantime, I spoke to my son about it, and he had an idea. He got a plastic baby walker, the type with the seat built in, and he removed the wheels, so it wouldn’t slide about, and we put it in the boot of the car and drove it out to the aged-care facility, and my son picked up Seth and threaded his legs through the leg holes and Seth was standing! Not really standing. The nappy part took the weight of him, but he looked like he was standing, his little white legs were straight down for once, and it seemed to me that he was thrilled to bits! He went to clap his hands and missed – he always misses! – but he definitely went to clap.