Missing Christopher

by Jayne Newling

  As we drove through the arched gates all I could think about was Christopher’s cold flesh heating then melting, liquefying over his broken bones.

  It would take ninety minutes at about 900 degrees centigrade. There would be nothing left but calcified bone fragments which would be pummelled by the machine equivalent of a mortar and pestle into something that resembled gritty ash. The final, traumatic assault. Dead end. One day he was here, the next evaporated as though he never existed at all. Photographs, trophies, Mother’s Day cards and a bagful of ashes and bone particles—the only nebulous proof that I once had three sons.

  I would take his ashes home because I wanted something tangible to touch, to look at. I put a teaspoon each in four little jewelled boxes so Phil, Ben and Nic could have something, too. We all keep them on our bedside tables.

  The crematorium wanted me to put his ashes in a drawer, in a row, next to someone else’s grandmother. I could visit whenever I wanted, a middle-aged woman with tight skin wearing a pink knitted twinset assured me.

  I shook my head. I would be taking him home with me.

  She gave me that look of pity and empowerment to which the non-grieving feel entitled. She pointed to a booklet of urn choices and, after I chose a simple black marble box, she asked what I wanted written on the plaque.

  Christopher ‘Cricket’ Newling—22/10/1984 – 29/8/2002.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  I walked out among the manicured rows of the dead, the drawers, like spice compartments, layered and marked. Each drawer had its own little bud vase; most of them were empty, others receptacles for roses of every hue in various stages of decay. I was glad I wasn’t leaving Christopher here among the neglected, perhaps long-forgotten dead.

  I’d have to wait a week before his ashes were ready. Ben would collect the urn and bring it home for me, a duty I had performed for my parents when my brother smashed his motorbike into the back of a truck in 1984.

  chapter 11

  The memorial service: I opened my eyes as the sun shot a dagger through a gap in our bedroom curtains. Phil’s side of the bed was empty; I could hear him talking to my friend Deby in the kitchen. The kettle whistled and I closed my eyes. If only I could have just lain here. If only I could have folded and melted into the sheets, evaporated like steam into the high corners of our lives. I didn’t want to go to the service and have to face all those people. I didn’t want everyone to acknowledge Christopher was really dead. Deby came in and sat on the bed, holding a steaming mug of tea.

  ‘Drink!’

  I closed my eyes and sighed.

  ‘This is going to be a shit day,’ she said. ‘Somehow we’re going to get through it. I’ll be next to you all the way.’

  ‘I just realised I don’t have a dress. I have a plain white one and a blue one with flowers. I can’t wear those. Shoes! Shit, I don’t have any black shoes—except for my thongs and ugg boots. Why didn’t I think of this? What am I going to do? There’s not enough time. I can’t do this, Deby.’

  She told me to drink my tea and get dressed, she was taking me to Avalon and we would find something.

  ‘We need a black dress,’ Deby said to the shop assistant.

  ‘Day or night wear?’

  ‘Smart, not too fussy—and we don’t have much time.’

  The shop assistant sized me up, pulling three dresses from a rack.

  ‘Special occasion?’

  ‘No,’ Deby spat. ‘It’s for a funeral.’

  ‘This will do,’ I said, throwing the unwanted two over the back of a chair.

  ‘Don’t you want to try it on?’

  ‘It will fit.’

  ‘She hates shopping,’ Deby grimaced. ‘She never tries anything on.’

  There were four pairs of black sandals in the shoe shop window.

  ‘Which one?’ I asked.

  Deby pointed to a pair. We ran in and bought my size without trying them on either.

  At home Deby, a hairdresser, helped me with my lank hair.

  I tried to dress myself but my hands were sweaty and shaking. She lifted me from the bed and hugged my shuddering body. She took off my tracksuit then slowly pulled the dress over my head, clipped my stockings and shod my feet. It was time to go.

  There were cards and large bouquets attached to the school’s front gates. Crowds milled at the edges of the long driveway.

  Hundreds of chairs, like the tombstones of unknown soldiers, dotted the lawn. A sound system had been erected for the benefit of those who could not squeeze into the large chapel. Fifteen hundred people came to say goodbye to Cricket. Our family was the last to be led down the aisle. A floral arrangement in the shape of a nine, Christopher’s rugby number, was propped against the lectern. That was Murgy’s mum Trish’s gift to me. Phil gripped me fiercely to steady my shaking legs.

  We sat near the front. I stared down at my stupid black sandals with their sensible heel and counted to ten, then backwards, then to twenty and backwards, until I got to a hundred; then I started all over again.

  A prayer was read, a psalm was sung. And then his name was mentioned. Cricket. I clenched my fists and willed myself to stay strong.

  Headmaster Grant delivered the main eulogy, followed by Phil’s father Graham who bravely read on our behalf.

  Then it was Ben’s turn. My heart broke as he resolutely strode to the altar. I was amazed by his courage to get up before so many people and talk about his brother in such a raw and honest way. He spoke with a trembling despair about his pride for his brother but also the regret that, while they were so close growing up, they weren’t at the end of Christopher’s life because they battled over responsibilities.

  ‘Cricket was at times a troubled kid who was always searching for his place in the world,’ Ben said. ‘He found solace through his friends and rugby. We had our problems during our teenage years but I always loved him. I only hope he knew that. I had looked forward to the time when we would both be adults and our relationship would improve through our maturity. I only wish I still had that chance.’

  I couldn’t look at him as he took his seat. My brave, responsible, sensitive, loving, devastated son.

  At the last minute, Nic couldn’t read his eulogy but stood close to Reverend Pickering as he took over.

  ‘When I was lonely, Criddy let me hang out with him and his buddies. When I was bullied, he protected me along with eighty-five of his mates. He always looked out for his little brother and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it but I really did look up to him. I admired him. I wanted to be him.’

  Nic asked everyone not to mourn his brother but to ‘pick up the same Bible which Criddy did—read Mark—learn God’s word. Then one day we will all be together again with Criddy.’

  I lowered my head as another prayer was read. This was savage, so silent and surreal. We should be screaming, punching walls, throwing angry fists at the face of God, smiling down on us in glorious, leadlight colours. Our deeds should match the anger surging and blistering a pathway through our veins.

  Then suddenly it was over. Silence. Still as fear. Faces blurred, voices muffled and fell to the floor. Everyone stood with bowed heads as we made our way outside. Christopher’s rugby team formed a guard of honour. I wanted to go to them, to thank them on Christopher’s behalf for being such great friends, but we couldn’t move from the doorway. For more than an hour, we stood in the cold, hugging each person as they came out of the chapel. No one seemed to want to leave.

  The sun was just beginning to set behind North Sydney’s skyscrapers, enveloping the chapel with a rose-tinged aura. Phil put his arm around me and I smiled with exhaustion. Antony Weiss hugged me, as did Reverend Pickering, Bob Grant and Graham Robertson, and on behalf of the entire school, these four men, who had tried so hard to save our son, presented us with the school flag.

  That night I threw the dress and shoes into the garbage bin.

  chapter 12

  Silence enve
loped us in the days and weeks after the funeral. It wasn’t just a blanket of grief but the white shock of disbelief. Glazed and disorientated we floated in and out of every minute like zombies. Silence was hushed except in my mind. While nothing was said, a look that lingered a second more than was comfortable, or a hug which shackled me to an acquaintance, made my mind explode. The throbbing rhythms of pain and pity played on and on and on. People drifted in and out, leaving food, clawing at a memory or taking something of Christopher’s to ‘remember him by’—a photograph, a T-shirt, a book or his ring.

  And as they left they’d drop a seed of wisdom into the potted fig by the front door, wishing it would take root overnight to give us hope and to straighten our backs.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I know it was an accident—I’m sure Cricket wouldn’t take his own life.’

  ‘If he did, you have to believe it was his choice.’

  Guilt likes to write all over you, press you flat then encase you in an envelope with a lavish lick. And when you’ve been tossed and slotted and forgotten, it is guilt which will throw a return party in your honour. Guilt can kill you. It will chortle and rebuke you for not being able to save your son.

  That was when the hate began—self-hate. I felt isolated, even from Phil, Ben and Nic, and I watched and waited for others to hate me, too. I couldn’t save their brother, their friend, their boyfriend, Phil’s son. Christopher’s death cut me in half and I knew my life was over.

  I pushed everyone away so I wouldn’t see the disappointment mirrored in their eyes. If I couldn’t stop Christopher, how would I stop Nic?

  A few weeks after Christopher died I sent Phil, Ben and Nic to grief counsellors. It was the only practical thing I could think of to help them. I couldn’t be a mother and take care of Nic physically and emotionally and I was scared I’d make him want to die, too. And I couldn’t be a wife. I didn’t want to be touched, soothed, fondled.

  I didn’t want to sleep in the same bed with Phil and I didn’t want to make love—ever again.

  If I gave in to my grief I knew I’d be letting go of Christopher, bit by bit; the sound of his voice, the taste of sea salt on his neck, the smell of his Giorgio Armani. If the death of a child is the stab wound, grief is the first suture; acceptance, the salve. I wanted none of it. I wanted to keep him alive. Grief was his death certificate which I shoved at the back of my drawer with the paperclips and rubber bands.

  Christopher was in every room; on the blue vinyl couch where he languished one night too drunk to trek up the stairs, in the sunroom where he asked me to wax his legs so he could run faster, on my bedroom wall where, on the night after he died, a cricket chirped and chirped until I fell asleep and it expired. In the morning, and hoping I hadn’t noticed, Phil scooped it up and buried it in the garden.

  For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind

  and melt into the sun?

  And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath

  from its restless tides, that it may rise and

  expand and seek God unencumbered?

  Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top,

  then You shall begin to climb And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then you

  Shall truly dance

  KAHLIL GIBRAN, FROM ‘ON DEATH’

  chapter 13

  Most suicidal people are undecided about whether they really want to live or die. Sometimes when they attempt suicide they are gambling with death, and leave it to others to save them.

  FROM THE THE CRUELEST DEATH: THE ENIGMA OF ADOLESCENT SUICIDE

  BY DAVID LESTER PHD, A LEADING AUTHORITY ON SUICIDE

  By the time you finish reading this chapter, someone in the world will have overdosed on heroin, jumped off a cliff, drowned in the ocean, thrown themselves in front of a train, asphyxiated under a plastic bag, shoved a gun into their mouth, cut their wrists, thrown a hairdryer in a bathtub or hanged themselves. Nearly one million people suicide every year and that’s only the documented, known cases. That is more than those murdered, killed in war or on the roads. In Australia, more than two thousand people take their own lives and even that number is probably conservative as many suicides go unreported—like Christopher’s.

  His cause of death: massive head injury. The coroner could not ascertain whether he jumped or fell and because he left no suicide note he is not, like many others, a suicide statistic.

  When a parent loses a child through an illness, accident or even murder, the grief lasts a lifetime. Their only comfort perhaps is that their child wanted to live. For Phil and me and thousands of other parents of children who suicide, not only do we have to grieve their death and deal with the sudden vacuum it has left in our lives, but there’s the guilt and shame that they wanted to die. Parents want and need to protect their children.

  When you fail, you lose everything—your self-esteem, confidence, the ability to love and to care, and the will to live and to fight for life. The signs of wanting to die are often there but, in many cases, only after your child has killed himself. It’s an insidious secret. They’re not going to tell anyone and even if asked, it will almost always be denied. If a parent knew the intention, the suicide may be prevented.

  Any sudden death is shocking. It’s the randomness of it—a heart attack or being hit by a car. But suicide is inexplicable and more horrifying in that a choice is made, a decision which in an instant could be reversed.

  No one wants to talk about suicide. It always has been, and still is to some extent, a family’s dirty secret. In the Middle Ages not only was a person who died by his own hand not allowed a proper burial, his body was disgraced. It would be dragged through the streets, his head placed on a pole outside the city gates as a warning to others.

  Suicide became a topic of social interest between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This was reflected most palpably by Shakespeare’s works, where a host of his characters including Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Brutus died at their own hands. Famous people, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Virginia Woolf, Kurt Cobain, all committed suicide. There have been suggestions that Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley committed suicide but no one will ever know for certain. Many Jews imprisoned at Treblinka, one of the most notorious World War 2 Nazi concentration camps, chose to suicide as an affirmation of the freedom to control their own destiny.

  In 1897, French sociologist Emile Durkheim published the first scientific study of suicide—Le Suicide—in which he argued that suicide was not just an individual choice. He suggested society as a contributing factor.

  Then Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the concept of psychosis and suggested mental disorders were medical conditions.

  This helped pave the way for changes in civil, criminal and religious laws concerning suicide. Most European countries formally decriminalised suicide in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although it remained a crime in England and Wales until 1961 and in Ireland until 1993. It was only in 1983 that the Roman Catholic Church reversed the canon law that prohibited funeral rites and burial in church cemeteries for those who had suicided.

  Who knew Christopher was suicidal? I should have known. He was my son. Inside my head questions zoom in circles, round and round again. I can hear them. What if I loved him harder? What if I talked to him more? What if I had him committed to a mental institution? It never stops and probably never will. It stops when I close my eyes at night but sometimes, in my dreams, the questions return, only posed by a visual horror.

  I’m on one side of a thick floor-to-ceiling glass panel in one recurring nightmare. It separates my bedroom from the hallway and beyond. Christopher is a toddler and is banging his fists repeatedly on the glass wall. Something or someone is trying to get to him, to kill him. I can’t see what it is but I know I don’t have much time. I jump out of bed and try to break the glass. I hit the wall with my fists, I bash it with
the rocking chair, drawers from my bedside table. The glass is impenetrable and the more I throw at it, the more distressed Christopher becomes. He’s screaming at me to help him, to save him. I watch helplessly as he is dragged away. I always wake up screaming.

  It took two weeks to receive Christopher’s death certificate and a further five months for his autopsy report. I hoped there would be something to give me doubt it was a suicide.

  Phil didn’t want to know any details. It was as if he had shut down. He didn’t want to question the friends who were with Christopher that night, or give a statement to police. He didn’t ask about the coroner’s findings and has never asked to see the autopsy report. For him, he had lost his son and nothing would change that. That is a common reaction for many parents, but for others, like me, every detail had to be combed through, every question asked and answered. Maybe I had hoped I’d find a reason. Maybe he was drunk and he slipped or the paramedics didn’t do their job.

  When the autopsy report was finally delivered, I locked myself into my bedroom and slowly read through the thirteen pages. Unable to understand most of it, I made an appointment with Dr Eccles, who gently explained all the medical jargon.

  This is what I understood. His body was cold to touch and rigor mortis was present and lividity (the black and blue of congealed blood) had developed on his back. After death, when the circulation stops, blood pools, discolouring the skin. He had blood in his ears, nose and mouth and his body was covered in bruises. His brain weighed 1420 grams and due to the extensive head injury, his brain was placed in formalin for further investigation.