Missing Christopher

by Jayne Newling

  Nic loved Christmas. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to celebrate it, Phil decided to take him to America. They had a white Christmas in Colorado with Bill, a friend of my brother Tom, then went to Disney World in Florida. Phil said Nic was still very unwell but being away from home made him happy. Nic wanted me to go with them and Phil was wary of leaving me on my own that first year.

  But I couldn’t. How could I tell them I had to stay back for Christopher? By some miracle I didn’t quite understand yet, Christopher could still come home. I sat on the deck each night, watching the top of the driveway just in case, and for years to come I would refuse to travel or venture far from home. Phil went overseas three times, twice with Nic.

  Nic returned to school at the start of the next year, 2003. Although he tried to fit back in, he struggled with his tiredness and ‘fuzzy’ brain. One teacher berated him because he fell asleep on his desk, despite school counsellor John Burns’ order to allow Nic to go at his own pace. I knew he also missed his brothers and Christopher’s mates who had graduated the year before. Ben was in his second year studying music at Newcastle University.

  After a few months and on advice from John and Headmaster Grant, it was decided Nic could no longer continue his high school education.

  He was never going to be a vet, a lawyer or famous violinist. Suddenly, he had nowhere to go, nothing to do. He filled his days with computer games and comedy shows on television.

  We kept a vigilant eye on him but as the weeks turned into months he became more animated and confident and we tried to give him breathing space. He knew he couldn’t go back to school so he taught himself the intricacies of computers, their design and technology. He spent hours every day scouring IT websites. He’d find broken computers, take them apart, then rebuild them.

  We had a long way to go. The effort of watching Nic, being a mother and a wife when all I wanted was to sleep, was starting to rankle me. I felt like a pawn in Nic’s world, beholden to his moods. Resentment and ennui were layering as I was forced to listen to Nic’s monologues and to endure Phil’s silences. I couldn’t escape and if I did I was pulled back into Nic’s world. Tension built and demands pricked like insults. I didn’t want to be here but I had nowhere else to go.

  chapter 21

  A daddy-long-leg spider has spent the night under the lip of my printer. As I fire it up for the day to write, it stretches its back, unfurls its legs and scurries on an invisible thread to the rose-etched cornice.

  Outside my study window in Leura in the Blue Mountains, thunder rumbles behind the tall pine trees. Suddenly, after two dry months, the heavens finally weep; the tiny white pebbles in Christopher’s garden jump like popcorn. Hooded and warm I go to sit among the bustle. I grab handfuls of pebbles then let them slip through the gullies of my cold fingers. Christopher’s concrete sentinels—bunny, wombat and the weeping Buddha—turn to slate as the rain soaks and spills and runs in tributaries down their spines. Somewhere over the range, close and high, lightning cracks, splitting the gunmetal sky in two. I jump.

  When I was a child, lightning meant God was angry. His electric finger always pointed at me and I knew I’d done something very wrong. But then I grew up and a storm was just a storm which frightened me.

  As a child, lightning frightened Ben, too. Thunder made him run to my arms and when the jagged cracks rattled a window, he’d bury his head under my shirt.

  When he was a baby, he cried almost all the time. No one knew why. Maybe his brain hurt; maybe tiny seizures were giving him headaches. He was four when he had his first epileptic fit. He had many more and was eventually given Epilim, an anticonvulsive drug.

  His crying decreased when he started to walk at eight months. He became master of his little body. He was a quiet, loving, gentle toddler who never got into trouble.

  We wrestled, painted and made mud pies for the goblins hiding under the cubby house. We sang, read stories and made up silly rhymes. I was in love with him. I had never known that love before, the aching, constant need to touch, kiss, hold. He became my reason for everything.

  When Ben was born my brother Jim bought him a toy carousel. Its hood was striped with red and blue and when the key was turned, four delicate horses rose and lowered on a yellow totem pole. A lullaby played a slow, melodic carnival tune which stilled our little boy every night at bedtime. Then Jim died and Ben couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to hear the lullaby anymore.

  It was a rainy, early summer morning when a truck turned left and Jim, on his motorbike, skidded into the back of it. I was visiting my mother, Ben on my hip, when my father tore up the driveway, his face a tortured mask. In the following days my father raged and my mother shrank further into her psyche. She started to drink again.

  We didn’t have a funeral; my parents were too distressed. The crematorium wasn’t expecting my older brother and sister and I as we placed flowers on Jim’s coffin minutes before he disappeared behind the black velvet curtain. My father wanted his ashes buried under a tree in bushland not far from my parents’ house. He bought a tree and we all traipsed down a track and then through dense bushland.

  I went several times to the makeshift memorial but then the tree died and I couldn’t find the site.

  Before Jim died, death was someone else’s misery. I didn’t know death and I gave it no thought. Other people lost their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. I didn’t. After Jim died I was scared of it but only in the way that it cut me in half.

  As horrifying and painful as it was, I found some solace in that I now had my loss, my one death, and it couldn’t happen again.

  Death was now my misery. It wrapped itself around me like a pungent ether. It nudged me when I smiled. I closed my lips over my teeth to keep it from seeping inside of me but it still hovered around my senses like fermenting food. The chasm between life and death—a narrow gully without a safety net.

  Born only eighteen months apart, Jim and I were very close. After returning from the crematorium I held Ben tightly while he slept. I closed my eyes and imagined a world without this beautiful, healthy son. My parents had four children, Phil and I only one.

  Christopher James was born ten months later. He had blond hair and bright blue eyes. He was beautiful. If I had believed in God or the spiritual world and reincarnation, I would have hoped my gentle, loving brother had resumed his life in the soul of my new baby. I looked for signs but after a while I stopped searching for Jim in Christopher’s eyes.

  When Nic entered the world twenty-one months later, Ben became the family’s lieutenant, taking the role of father when Phil was away. He told Christopher not to climb too high, Nic not to spin too fast. He let them have the biggest piece of cake. He was proud of them. When Christopher was the first one to ride a bike, Ben patted him on the back like a chuffed dad. When Nic beat them both at a spelling test, Ben told him he was smart. We encouraged their friendships, wanting them to always have a strong fraternal bond.

  But when they grew apart in adolescence, when Nic became manic and Christopher was running wild, Ben lost his authority. He had suffered his own depression and was already weakened when the unknown and sinister force invaded Nic’s head; he was dazed by the fun-loving, sporty Christopher who became a stranger by his own demons.

  They all saw themselves in each other during their individual periods of illness. Christopher and Ben were scared of Nic’s mania, walking around him nervously. Nic wanted to be in their circle of friends, anything to appear normal. Ben stood by silently as he witnessed the strain on Phil and me, as we struggled to keep Christopher out of trouble, at the same time scared to death of losing Nic.

  When Phil and Nic were in America in 2003, Ben and I had a rare night together. It was a warm January evening and we stood on the deck, throwing meat to the kookaburras and butcher birds.

  ‘How are you, Ben?’

  ‘Good,’ he said as he pulled the top off his beer.

  ‘Really?’

  I looked at him
deeply. He looked down, knowing his answer wouldn’t satisfy me.

  ‘You have to get it out, Ben.’

  He breathed in deeply as one tear fell matched by another bulging in the acute angle of his eye. His chest heaved and he swayed on unsteady legs as he took another sip. He sat down next to me and I grabbed his free hand.

  ‘Talk to me, Ben.’

  ‘I can’t, Mum.’

  But the sadness was there, etched in his brow, his stormy eyes and at the commas of his downturned lips. He hated what Christopher’s death had done to our family, how we had been serrated into individual entities, our souls silenced into stones.

  ‘How are you, Mum?’

  ‘It’s hard.’

  ‘I know.’

  I nodded because he did know and I knew I could never take his pain away. He was only nineteen. Like me, he would never get over losing his brother.

  He would always wonder what Christopher would have become. Would they have sailed together, gone to the pub, taken their kids on holidays together? Would they have become friends? Grief prevented Ben from continuing with his music degree. He came home and eventually moved into a flat with Sarah, who loved and nurtured him. He found a job marketing a Sydney basketball team. During the season, and without him knowing, he was being watched by one of the supporters, the head of a leading bank, who offered him a job.

  Ben drained his beer and stood up in front of me. He hugged me hard; his intensity squeezed my heart.

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  I felt his tears run down the back of my neck and I buried my face into his shoulder. He cleared his throat then released me.

  I watched the slump of his slow stride, the sorrow and defeat in the way he held his head. I couldn’t help but feel guilty.

  When Ben cries, his face contorts, reddens and folds in on itself as he fights against it. He doesn’t like to cry; he is strong, the big brother, protector. He cried when Christopher died and a year later when his beloved Shadow was diagnosed with cancer.

  I know Ben cries at other times—when he’s alone. Perhaps on his one-man skiff out on Sydney Harbour. Drenched by the waves, no one would ever know if the vertical streaks which stain his tanned face are slashes from the sea or salt-encrusted tears.

  From too much love of living

  From hope and fear set free,

  We thank with brief thanksgiving

  Whatever gods may be

  That no life lives forever

  That dead men rise up never;

  That even the weariest river

  Winds somewhere safe to sea

  ALGERNON SWINBURNE, FROM ‘HEALING AFTER THE SUICIDE OF A LOVED ONE’

  chapter 22

  AUGUST 29TH, 2003

  The heavens and stars were invisible above a thick canopy of black clouds as we all gathered at the headland for the first anniversary. The full moon, the night’s sleepy eye, winked an intermittent glow. Ben and I, Daisy and his wife Mandy, Trish, my close friend and Murgy’s mother, and a large group of Christopher’s friends and rugby mates stood underneath the floodlight near the edge of the precipice. The cliff face and the pool below looked like an eerie moonscape under the harsh, fluorescent glow. The only sound was the crashing of the waves and a distant car horn. We were quiet for a long time. Troy, a rugby mate who read the eulogy at the memorial service on behalf of Christopher’s friends, filled our glasses with wine then we raised them to make a toast to Christopher, Chris, Cricket, Criddy, Crick, Newls. We sat down and held on to the person next to us. Silent sobs and whispered regrets filled the air on that cold and wind-free night. The silence was broken as Troy played Christopher’s favourite song on his car’s stereo, a signal to stand, all of us clutching our single-stemmed red roses. We raised them and in one quick motion, threw them over the cliff. With a loud crack, the floodlight snapped shut, whipping the light back into its domed head. I heard a collective gasp.

  Not wanting to leave us on our own—Phil and Nic were in Ireland—everyone piled into cars and went back to our place. We drank more wine, talked and reminisced then fell asleep where we sat.

  AUGUST 29TH, 2004

  A full moon danced on the horizon’s brim, unsettling the midnight blue ocean which shimmied under its spotlight. The night air bristled across our skins as we sought refuge in each other’s touch. Nic put his arm around me in the car park outside our favourite restaurant in Avalon across the road from the beach. There was a faint smell of garbage mingled with sea spray from a gathering southerly. Departing diners gave us a cursory glance before diving into the warmth of their cars. Nic suddenly let go of me, raised his gym-booted foot and crunched the life out of a scurrying cockroach. Yellow pus oozed out of the flattened insect. He giggled. I groaned.

  Phil, Ben, Nic and I walked across the road to the headland and were joined by last year’s group. I was so grateful they were there, that they still remembered their friend. Ben and Phil walked away to a private place to stand in silence. Nic and I sat down together, our bodies touching in the frigid air. I laid my head on his shoulder. We were silent for the longest time.

  Then Nic cleared his throat and whispered something but his words fell away, taken by the eddying breeze and thrown to the crashing waves below. The irony knocked the wind out of me. I gulped, releasing a tiny whine. Nic leaned in closer and tried again.

  ‘Criddy sacrificed his life for me.’

  I hugged him tight and shook my head furiously.

  ‘He did, Mum. I didn’t know until the next morning what happened but that night I was suicidal. I wanted to die, too. I rang Kids Helpline. A woman talked to me for hours. I didn’t know you and Dad weren’t home. I didn’t know you were here with Criddy.’

  I felt the familiar rip in my heart.

  ‘Is that why you’re still alive?’ I whispered.

  He nodded sadly and pulled at a tuft of grass. I heard his quiet sobs.

  Other friends arrived, gathering in a group under the floodlight. I was glad Nic and I were at the other side of the verge, in a quiet, dark corner. His body quivered as he quietly explained.

  ‘I think Criddy wanted me to live. It was always going to be me or him. You knew that, right?’

  I wiped my nose across my jacket sleeve and breathed in deeply.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t bear to confess I had no idea Christopher wanted to die.

  ‘You don’t want to live either, do you?’

  ‘No. Not really, Nic.’

  ‘Why, Mum?’

  ‘I failed. I couldn’t save Christopher and I’m probably going to lose you, too.’

  ‘But you saved me.’

  I threw my head in my hands and sobbed. The group came over and we were both lifted by strong arms.

  ‘And I’ll save you,’ Nic added.

  ‘You’re taking away my choices,’ I whispered in his ear.

  ‘And all mine have been taken from me.’

  I understood then what he meant. Nic felt Christopher’s sacrifice had to be honoured and in turn I had to honour him.

  Flowers were handed out and once again we stood in silent prayer on what would become an annual ritual. We raised them in harmony and threw them in the air.

  Dozens of red roses, like rubies on a black cape, dotted the sky before falling to the rocks below. Then the floodlight went out with an audible whoosh. Nic found my hand in the dark as we walked back to the car park. He led me to a spot under a streetlight and took off his jacket. He lifted the tattered sleeve of his T-shirt. On his left bicep was a tattoo, still raw and raised from the day before’s needle. A red heart, about 10 centimetres in diameter, was surrounded by red rosebuds and in the middle, a small trail of ivy wound around a word in dark, black ink—‘MUM’.

  He smiled at me proudly. I shook my head with disbelief.

  ‘That’s there forever,’ I admonished.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Several weeks after Christopher died, his friend Sam tattooed ‘NEWLS’ on his lower back in big, bold letters. Phi
l saw it when Sam’s T-shirt lifted while he was slam-dunking a basketball. Murgy tattooed NEWLS on the left side of his chest. Our nephew Dan, who was very close to Christopher but living in America, had his initials, CJN, tattooed on the inside of his arm. That’s all there was. Inked memories of what could have been.

  AUGUST 29TH, 2005

  The quarter moon hung in the eastern sky like a hammock, affording a minimal glow on the dark horizon. The waves crashed on the rocks below.

  I had been sick for days in anticipation of reliving another anniversary. Three years. I clutched a handful of roses as we made our way up to the windy headland. It was cold as it always was at the end of August.

  We climbed over the white fence and sat cross-legged on the grass.

  Ben filled our plastic glasses with red wine as we huddled together in silence. We were all deep in our private thoughts, the floodlight casting an eerie pall on this sad gathering.

  A car arrived, lighting up our backs. Four of Christopher’s friends, whom I hadn’t seen since his death, jumped out and climbed over the railing to hug me. I gave them each a rose as we stood to throw them to the wind.

  The floodlight died. I heard the intake of breath behind me as some of the boys witnessed for the first time the phenomenon others had already seen. Annabel gripped me tightly. Trish put her arm around my neck; I could hear her smiling knowingly.

  After a while we got up to go home. Troy put his strong arms around my waist and hoisted me over the fence before helping Trish and the other girls. He’s always been a gentleman.

  ‘It happens every year?’ one of the boys whispered to me. ‘The floodlight?’

  I nodded. His eyes were wide and there was a tremor in his voice.

  I knew he’d come back the next night on his own.

  Murgy was studying at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst but rang me on every anniversary when he couldn’t be there. We shared a warm and childish friendship since he and Christopher became best mates in their first year in high school. Murgy is as charismatic, naughty, athletic and beguiling as Christopher was. Often they’d compete on the rugby field and with girlfriends but they always remained close. Trish and I became best friends through the deep relationship our sons shared. Together, Trish and I were as naughty as they were and they’d often laugh at our antics.