This is Gail

by O'Brien, Gail

  After that first meeting with Suzy, Gail’s enquiry into faith, spirituality and consciousness became all-consuming. Her search for meaning became vast, meandering and at times frenetic, and it took her to many places. She learned about the international Jain communities practising the reformation of Brahmanic Hindu tradition, was immersed in the Buddhism of Bhutan and discovered Santa Fe in New Mexico — the city of St Francis of Assisi — where leaders in Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity came together for a meeting of minds on paths to spiritualism. She learned about central Australia and New Zealand, exploring respective Indigenous spiritualities and investigated the spiritual teachings of the Essenes, the knowledge of the kabbalah and the collective unconscious.

  But perhaps the greatest application of everything she learned was at mass, where she came to understand the rituals in the context of ancient traditions. More than ‘incense, bells and fuss’, she saw the sweet-smelling smoke emanating from the swinging thurible as not unlike the smoking ceremonies of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples or Native American Indians. The priest’s laying on of hands to call down the Holy Spirit, the pervasive concept of light, the use of holy oils — it is all interconnected with the ideas of consciousness and spirit that she had explored and experienced.

  As time passed she knew she was getting stronger. She didn’t have to cling any more.

  When the first anniversary of Chris’s death arrived, we marked it with loving family and friends, laughing and sharing memories, while making new ones in each other’s company. The same little rose bush over Dad’s ashes now had roses in bloom that were a pinkish colour, not yellow. They had indeed changed. We were buoyed. We had survived.

  But the universe was not done with us yet.

  Christopher Adam

  Adam, my elder brother and Gail’s first-born child, was a strapping, affable young man. As a child he had angelic features of blond hair and blue eyes, and in his twenties he was good-looking in a rugged style. He usually had a few days of rough stubble on his chin and one front tooth was slightly darker than the other, having had it capped after he broke it falling off his skateboard as a child. While James and I inherited our father’s dark colouring, blond hair covered Adam’s arms, chest and back. He spoke with a broad Australian accent.

  Adam cultivated his brawny physique by means of weights and resistance training. He lifted 160 kilograms on his bench press and worked his ‘door gym’ until it squeaked. The sound of metal clinking against metal and the occasional crash as weights fell to the floor meant Adam was home. His powerful build made his presence in a room known, even though he was of average height. As a teenager sitting next to him in the back seat of the car with James on my other side, the space felt much smaller than it actually was.

  His hands were like blocks of knuckles at the ends of strong forearms. His fingers were so solid that I was amazed at their ability to manoeuvre tiny objects into tiny places — sim cards into phones, for example. A slight tremor was evident when he was undertaking such tasks, but it was never a cause for complaint. In fact, Adam was uncomplaining altogether. He was never sick. You could count the total number of his days off school on one hand.

  Growing up, he didn’t know his own strength for a while. As kids he, James and I would occasionally scuffle, which a couple of times resulted in Adam accidentally knocking my head against a table or James’s against a heater. Another time I pinned a provocative note to the transom window above my bedroom door and he leaped up to hit the glass, shattering it onto me below. On such occasions, James and I were as responsible as he was for the damage. But, lacking cunning and slow to accuse, he was apologetic for us all.

  Ad was a man who would let his hands hang by his sides when he talked to you. Sure, he had the tendency to rub his knuckles, and one hand was usually holding a beer. But there was no affected stance about him. He was a man who stood with his hands by his sides and his feet firmly on the floor. I don’t think it occurred to him to stand any other way.

  He could have been described as an introvert. He didn’t seek attention or talk over others, nor was he demonstrative in his emotions or worries. But he was also gregarious and loved by friends for his crazy antics. He once sculled a bottle of chocolate sauce for a video camera and usually raised an eyebrow for photographs, mimicking his favourite wrestling star, The Rock. He had a raucous sense of humour and loved English comedy in particular. Sometimes he couldn’t make it to the end of a joke he was telling as his blue eyes squeezed themselves closed and he laughed in a machine-gun patter. He had a loud, blokey voice and great ability to recite comedic scenes, as well as lyrics of songs in his favourite musical genres — heavy metal and gangster rap.

  Adam was huge outside, but he was huge inside as well. His brow creased and furrowed as his mind wandered to daydreams or circumstances that remained a mystery to me. He had some obsessive-compulsive tendencies, making sure each car door was locked and checking on the front door a few times before leaving. For all his blokey-ness he was a loving and affectionate son, brother, boyfriend, friend. He’d pull us close for photographs, draping his arms over our shoulders so that his hands hung over us like big paws.

  During his school years, Adam had witnessed some bullying and had perhaps even been the target of it himself. The bullies weren’t the gargantuan lowlifes you see in cartoons, but self-entitled teasers who treated their peers with disdain. Adam was not a match for this kind of behaviour as slighting people did not come naturally to him. Perhaps as a result, he loathed arrogance and upstarts. Watching the news at night he would extend his middle finger at the television whenever these types of characters appeared, such as a teenager wearing yellow goggle-like sunglasses and a fur-trimmed hooded jacket boasting about his house party that cost the state thousands of dollars in a police response; or a unionist who played a lead role in ousting Kevin Rudd as the sitting prime minister. Ad’s response was the same for these people and more — the bird at the screen until their faces were gone.

  As he progressed through school it became evident that his strengths did not lie in academia. But from a young age, those strong, knuckly fingers would wrap around a pencil with finesse and work it with natural precision. He was a gifted artist, with the ability to replicate objects and images in front of him and the creativity to draw from his own imagination. When he graduated, Mum and Dad encouraged him to pursue something in the field of design. He did for a time, studying an apprenticeship in digital graphics, but was not enamoured with this chosen direction.

  At times, Ad could be frustrating. If asked to take off his dirty shoes as he stepped through the door, he was likely to acknowledge the request and moments later proceed down the hallway with his shoes still on. But if Mum ever became exasperated with him, he would just hold out his arms and smile. ‘Come ’ere,’ he’d say before wrapping his bear-like arms around her. She’d look up at him and he’d look down, both of them laughing in their embrace. I think that my mother saw something of herself in her elder son’s dreamy tendencies.

  While he was studying he worked at a big, popular pub and was quickly drawn into the group of bouncers at the place — towering blokes who were older than him and who exerted quiet but powerful dominance over ‘troublemaking pipsqueaks’, as he’d call them. He had an innate sense of justice and was a proud and dutiful citizen. More than anything, he respected and admired police, the armed forces and those who were protectors and guardians in some way. Built like a workhorse and with a disposition more like the majestic, magnanimous Boxer in Orwell’s Animal Farm than the cerebral and cynical pigs, Adam was made for security work with its protective ethos and long hours.

  When he joined a security company that provided bouncers to pubs and clubs, he started working with a mountain of a man named Junior. Adam loved Junior’s cheeky personality and how, with his stern face and commanding size, he would put the fear of God into any pub-goer he pleased. The first time Adam showed up for work — a white, blond guy, younger and smaller in build — Junio
r told him they had all thought Adam was the new boss. But Adam was one of them, and Junior, of Tongan background, called him a ‘white brother’ and ‘Acama’, Tongan for Adam. A few years older than Ad, Junior had his own wife and children to look after, and Ad came to regard him as an older brother. Junior was a God-fearing man who didn’t allow swearing and wouldn’t even touch Coca-Cola, teaching Adam not to touch the stuff either. Junior looked out for Ad, trained him in boxing, and Ad helped Junior move house and went to barbecues with his family.

  Ad was happy enough doing security work, but he did not consider it his career. One day he was talking to Mum about seeing a few police cars nearby, and she saw how impressed he was by them. ‘Do you want to be in the police force?’ she asked, the thought only occurring to her as she spoke the words. His eyes lit up. But when he told Dad he wanted to join the police force, our father wasn’t particularly enthusiastic.

  I had always observed a deep love between my father and my elder brother. They were both strong, robust men who kissed and hugged each other at every greeting and farewell. Growing up, I’d regularly hear their voices coming from Ad’s bedroom, long talks about how Ad was doing at school, whether he was achieving what he could and wanted, how he was helping around the house — all the things a father might try to bring out in his son. Dad and Ad had regularly had ‘talks’ — ever since Ad was young. Ad would always sit and listen to advice or criticism. If you had something to say to him, he’d always hear you out and respond graciously.

  Dad understood Adam and worried that his twenty-three-year-old son’s gentle personality wasn’t suited to the police force, an environment of crooks, thugs and maybe bullying colleagues. But Ad insisted that it was what he wanted to do, so Dad did everything he could to help him get into the Bachelor of Justice Studies (Policing) at Charles Sturt University, which matriculated into the police training academy.

  On 16 February 2004 Mum spent her and Chris’s wedding anniversary with Adam in a sweltering motel room in Bathurst, ahead of the new university year. The Redfern riots were on the television and the town was dead quiet. Gail wondered whether police college had been a good idea. Adam told her that night that he wanted to be known by his first name, Chris. ‘I hate the name “Adam”,’ he said. ‘It’s like a little boy’s name.’

  ‘Well, it’s your life and your name,’ she said. ‘So you can do what you want.’ The next day they drove to the orientation day at Charles Sturt University, where the air was cooler and a breeze blew through the green trees of the campus. Friendly faces and a festive atmosphere welcomed them. Adam approached the orientation desk.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked a senior student.

  Adam and Mum looked at each other. ‘Chris O’Brien,’ he said and smiled at Mum. She knew then that this was the right place for him to be.

  I had never seen my elder brother better than when he was studying at Charles Sturt in Bathurst and the Police Academy in Goulburn. He was healthy and fit from the physical training regime, relaxed from the country living and astute from the mental stimulation. He seemed to have found the right path in life and everything else was falling into place. Mum and Dad were proud and relieved.

  Adam was finishing the second year of his degree when Dad was diagnosed with his brain tumour. He took the news hard, his protective nature helpless against this threat in his father’s brain. In January 2007 he graduated from the Police Force Academy in Goulburn. The heat sizzled over the bitumen parade ground in country New South Wales and sweat dripped down the graduands’ faces as they stood sharp and tall in long, straight rows, dressed in smart blue uniforms while their families watched from tiered seating. The O’Brien contingent was large, as nearly ten of us picked Adam out in the line and trained our eyes on him alone.

  The ceremony ended and the newly minted officers let out a cheer as families and friends swarmed onto the parade ground. Dad stepped through the crowd tentatively, having recently undergone his first operation, searching for Ad among the sea of blue shirts. ‘Addy!’ he called. Ad heard and turned around. They walked towards each other and clasped in a long bear hug.

  Mum and Dad had encouraged Adam to seek a placement at a police station in a country town. But he wanted to be where the action was and applied for five inner-city postings. He was stationed at Newtown Local Area Command and returned to live at home. His shift work created some free time during weekdays and he would often spend quiet afternoons with Dad. Through the gap in the sliding doors to the sitting room where Dad often napped or read, I would see Ad sitting by Dad’s stretched-out body, both talking quietly and solemnly. They often had these private conversations. I don’t know exactly what they were about. I imagine that Dad was giving Ad advice, or a bit of a pep talk. They always seemed loving and tender.

  Back in the rush of the city, the clarity and balance Ad had developed living in Bathurst and Goulburn seemed to diminish. His fitness routine waned and he drank more. The traffic caused him road rage. Most of all he worried for his father, and his anxiety about this translated into his work. He was not performing as well as he wished and decided to resign towards the end of his probationary year to focus on the family and himself. A short time later, Dad died.

  Stoic and brave, Adam returned to his security work. He was living in an apartment in Drummoyne with his partner, Jaya, whom he planned to marry. He came to the house often and spent many hours sitting on the curved seat by Dad’s ashes in the secret garden. Sometimes I would find him sitting in the living room with his brow furrowed and rubbing his knuckles, mulling things over in his mind.

  Adam came to me one day and whispered, ‘Hey, don’t tell Mum, but . . .’ They were words I’d come to dread. Previous conversations that began with that phrase ended with me being made an unwilling accomplice in matters like tattoos, skydiving ventures and a driving infringement.

  He took off his T-shirt and turned around to show me his back. ‘Look at this.’ It was another tattoo. On his left shoulder was the inked image that I’d previously seen — a grotesque illustration of the scales of justice with skulls in place of the weighing dishes. Now he had a second tattoo covering his entire right shoulder. It was Dad’s face, there on my brother’s shoulder, smiling back at me, with a waving sash that sang ‘Hero’ flowing across it. Adam looked over his shoulder at me, smiling like a big kid. He seemed thoroughly satisfied with this means of displaying his adoration. ‘Do you seriously plan to hide this from Mum?’ I asked. He had already managed to hide the first tattoo from our parents, always wearing a surf shirt if he went swimming. He didn’t plan for Mum to see this tattoo either, even though I’m sure he would have loved to show her.

  He was working sixty-hour weeks as a security guard and seemed sleep-deprived. He would come over to our place on a Saturday afternoon after a busy morning with Jaya at Paddy’s Markets or a Westfield shopping centre and collapse into a bed to have a nap. He wanted to get back into the police force or maybe even apply for the Australian Federal Police. He began examining his options and navigating the bureaucratic process and personal hurdles on his own.

  He had to undergo surgery on his lower back for a very painful pilonidal cyst. Jaya, who was by this stage studying nursing, cared for him beautifully, dressing his post-surgical wound, which was more serious than Gail had anticipated. The wound didn’t seem to be healing well, and Gail encouraged Adam to come back and live at home. But he wanted Jaya and himself to have their space.

  He was protective of his widowed mother and when he stayed overnight would always make sure to kiss her goodbye in the morning, even if they had quarrelled or he had to leave for work before the sun was up. He would kiss her before he left without fail. If he didn’t, he would get as far as the top of the driveway and have to turn around and come back down to the house to find her. One morning before leaving for work, he told her, ‘Mum, it breaks my heart to see you sleeping in that bed alone.’

  Then Adam suffered his first seizure.

  Seizures


  One night, about a year after Dad had died, Adam was in bed asleep when Jaya woke to find him having a fit. His rigid body was convulsing violently, his muscles were tense and his jaw clenched. She screamed and slapped him but he was unresponsive. She dialled Triple 0 and he was taken by ambulance to RPA.

  When Gail arrived in the emergency ward, Adam was sitting up, smiling and chatting with Jaya, who told Gail that they were waiting for the results of a CT scan. James, Gareth and I arrived, and each hugged Adam tight. We couldn’t understand what we were told had happened; he looked so well and healthy. We dragged chairs close to his bed, and drew the curtain around our area. The five of us huddled close within the tiny room with flowing walls we had made for ourselves. There was nothing to do but wait, and we took our cues from Adam, who was cheery, relaxed and cracking jokes.

  ‘I’ll give Dr Glen a call to tell him you won’t be there for your appointment today,’ Mum said. Dr Leslie Glen, a general surgeon, had operated on Adam’s lower back and had known Chris and Gail for years.

  Gail told him what had happened and Dr Glen expressed concern. ‘Those tattoos are a cry for help,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, did you say tattoos?’ Gail asked.

  Gail pulled aside the curtain and sat down. She was half-smiling as she said, ‘Dr Glen said something about tattoos.’ Adam’s lips pursed as his eyes darted between James and me. Gail raised her eyebrows at her three guilty-looking children. We all laughed so loudly that from behind our blue curtain the other people in emergency must have wondered how people could be having such fun in such a place. Mum pulled aside the flimsy white gown and looked at the skulls of justice and then the image of Dad. ‘Oh, Addy,’ she said. ‘We’re going to get you all fixed up.’

  Two specialists appeared at the curtain’s entrance with images in their hands. The neurologist greeted Gail and swung the curtains back to make more room. James, Gareth and I left the bedside so that he could speak with Adam, Gail and Jaya. He told them that the CT scan revealed something — fluid on the frontal lobe. ‘Why would that be there?’ Gail asked, with some urgency. She had not expected them to find anything and was shocked to hear that they had.