Ten Doors Down

by Tickner, Robert;

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It was just a scrawl.’

  ‘Show me, please. Right now,’ she demanded.

  I passed her the note. We fell into each other’s arms and comforted each other until, a long time later, the tears stopped flowing.

  When we returned to the ward, I blurted out, ‘We love you, Dad, and you’re going to be okay,’ and put my head gently on his side, trying not to cry again. It was about as close as I could get to him, because every other part of his body seemed to have a high-tech medical device or tube coming out of it.

  After that, things were never the same again. Dad and I were suddenly free to show our love for each other, verbally and physically. I could hug and kiss him on the cheek with open warmth and affection. He was freer with his displays of affection to my mother as well. So when the cancer returned as a brain tumour in 1985, my ability to show my dad effusive warmth and love knew no bounds. Together, my mother and I showed him our immense love and support.

  I recall one hilarious experience when Dad was in St Vincent’s Hospital having radiation treatment after his brain tumour had taken away the use of his arms. They lay useless by his sides as he sat in the hospital chair waiting for a shave from the hospital support worker. My mother and I spotted the wardsman approaching with an old-fashioned razor blade in hand, and we saw that he was Aboriginal. I suddenly realised that Dad, with his old prejudices, might be seeing himself as the man from Ironbark, about to get his throat cut by the barber. Instead, to my delight, Dad’s sense of humour was still strong, even though his brain had been affected by the tumour and the heavy drugs he was taking. He pointed to the wardsman and said to Mum and me, ‘Rob’s mate, Rob’s mate,’ then gave his new-found friend a warm and welcoming smile. My mother and I completely cracked up. Dad had finally got it: we’re all part of the human family. I’m delighted to report that the shave proceeded with no loss of blood and with all four of us laughing together.

  I think that most of us remember, or will remember, the circumstances of the death of our parents, and I remember the passing of my father with vivid clarity. It happened in June 1985, at a time when political commitments had taken me away from him — something that still causes me pain now. Dad had finished his radiation treatment in Sydney and was flown back to Forster hospital in poor shape, but expecting to live for some time. As a backbench MP, I was active in the campaign for an independent Timor-Leste, and was invited to go to Darwin to participate in a radio link-up with the Fretilin fighters, who were still in the country’s mountains all these years after the Indonesian invasion in 1975. We went to a remote location in the bush where the radio link was successfully established, including with the Fretilin leader and future president Xanana Gusmão. Afterwards, instead of flying back to Sydney and heading to Forster to be with Dad, I had to go straight to Canberra for an unusual one-day sitting of the House of Representatives.

  I was in my office in the House of Representatives side of Old Parliament House when the bells rang for a division. During my years in parliament, I was respectful of and close to the attendants and support staff, and, on this day, when my mum called the main switchboard, they recognised the urgency of her call and tracked me down en route to the division.

  Mum simply said, ‘Rob, we’ve lost Dad. He passed away just now.’

  At first, I didn’t believe it. My father couldn’t die when I wasn’t there with him and with my mother. I hung on to the phone, hearing my mother’s distressed state, wanting to give her comfort, and not wanting to let go. All the while, the bells for the division kept ringing loudly and relentlessly just above my head.

  A mob of my ALP colleagues surged past, heading for the chamber for the vote. Unaware of my situation, they told me to drop the phone and get into the chamber or I’d miss the division — almost a hanging offence for a member of parliament. And still the bells kept ringing.

  I had no choice but to tell Mum, ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go,’ and in a mix between a state of shock and a trance, I ran towards the chamber. I got there with just a second to spare. As the Speaker of the house called, ‘Lock the doors,’ the old glass doors of the House of Representatives slammed shut behind me.

  I was in a daze and struggled to find my seat. Despite the chatter and commotion of the house, I was somehow weirdly sensitive to every sound in the chamber. I could hear the whip, Ben Humphries, a long way away, telling the ministers on the front bench, including Prime Minister Bob Hawke, ‘Tickner’s father just died.’

  I’d already had strong disagreements with Bob on policy, even though I’d only been in the parliament as a humble backbench member for a very short time. So I was greatly touched when, after the division and the conclusion of the vote, he immediately came to the back of the chamber where I sat, stunned and distressed, between my colleagues Jeannette McHugh and Peter Baldwin, with tears streaming down my face. Bob hugged me, and I was deeply comforted by that small but genuinely caring gesture. It again reminded me of how important it is that people shouldn’t be afraid to show emotion and affection, to reach out to comfort those who may need it. We should never be afraid to show our humanity.

  When Dad died, Mum lost her soulmate and partner of 50 years. In 1991, she moved, with my support, out of the family home and into a more convenient and easier-to-manage unit in Tuncurry. She bravely soldiered on, but life would never be the same.

  I was absolutely devoted to her, but I was a federal MP, working in what became a marginal seat as the result of a redistribution. Life was busy, and, from 1988, I had additional demanding responsibilities as the chair of the Joint Standing Committee of Public Accounts, as well as being very involved as the chair of the Amnesty International Parliamentary Group. I did my best, but I couldn’t always be with her in Forster, much as I wanted to support and care for her.

  In early 1990, following the election of that year, I was allocated the role of minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and my life became even more consumed by a whirlwind of travel and responsibilities. These demands left me only able to spend one or two nights at home in Stanwell Park, and with very few opportunities to get to Forster-Tuncurry, although I was on the phone to Mum regularly to monitor her wellbeing.

  Sadly, after Dad’s death, my mum developed dementia, and it came hard and fast. I returned from a short trip to Tonga and phoned her as soon as I landed to check she was okay, as I always did. However, this time I found the phone disconnected. I quickly organised with Telstra for an immediate reconnection and was able to confirm that Mum was fine. I worked out that she’d forgotten to pay the account, which seemed very unlike her, so I immediately dropped everything, jumped in the car, and drove to Forster-Tuncurry to take stock of the situation. I am grateful that I caught things just on the cusp, as my mum was about to descend into a critical phase of decline. While I had noticed some different behaviour over that past year, I didn’t appreciate the pace of the deterioration, and Mum had been cleverly giving me the impression that she was coping.

  When I got to her unit in Tuncurry, I discovered the cheque for the Telstra account in her purse. She had forgotten to post it. I then found that there was virtually no food in the fridge, and the budgie I’d bought her for company was lying in its cage, apparently starved to death. It was a sad situation indeed, and I felt terrible that I could have been so blind to the signs of rapid deterioration caused by this wretched condition. I think my mother was just so proud, so heroic, that she’d continued to push on with her life while it was falling apart around her.

  Through the wonderful Dr Sanders, I was able to secure immediate accommodation in a nearby aged-care accommodation complex called GLAICA, just around the corner from the unit in Tuncurry where Mum had been living. She had her own attractive self-contained room there, but moving her into it was one of the hardest experiences of my life.

  At first, she refused to even consider leaving the unit. I stoo
d with her in her small kitchen, pleading with her to move.

  ‘Mum, please can you understand, it’s just not safe for you living here on your own anymore. What if you left the stove on by accident?’

  I marshalled every angle of persuasion at my disposal: ‘Mum, it’s what Dad would have wanted’; ‘Doctor Sanders thinks it’s the best thing to do.’ But I failed miserably.

  By now, Mum was crying, and my heart just melted. She looked so tiny and vulnerable standing there in her kitchen. But despite my best efforts at persuasion, she was still point-blank refusing to consider moving.

  And so I broke down, too. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I despaired of what to do. How on earth was I going to convince her that it wasn’t safe for her to continue to live alone? I’d already immobilised Dad’s old car, which she’d still been driving just six months earlier, but now it was no longer possible to be confident of her walking to the local shops alone and finding her way home.

  To my amazement, my waterfall of tears brought a new response from my wonderful, compassionate mother. ‘Well, Rob, if it’s upsetting you that much, I will do it.’

  I was bowled over, and filled with relief and love for her. But the worst was yet to come.

  I had the move organised like a well-oiled machine, or so I thought. I took Mum to the aged-care accommodation for a cup of tea as a first step, as advised. The staff told me that I had to get Mum to make the shift, and that whatever way I did it there would be a degree of trauma. I knew they were right, and that it was now or never. So while Mum drank her cup of tea and chatted to the staff, I jumped into the car, rushed back to the unit, and packed as many personal items as I could into some large cardboard boxes. I grabbed clothes, photographs of Dad and me, and ornaments and pictures to make the new room as homely and familiar as possible. I crammed the boxes into the car and rushed back to GLAICA. In a matter of half an hour, I had completely furnished Mum’s new room.

  It looked very welcoming, but after I’d got Mum settled and was preparing to leave, she began to cry.

  ‘Rob, please don’t leave me here,’ she pleaded.

  I thought I would die then and there on the spot. I’d prepared the room so well, but to no avail.

  ‘But, Mum, we agreed you’d be safer and happier here,’ I said, trying to reassure her.

  But her tears kept flowing. ‘Please don’t leave me, Rob. I don’t want to be here. Take me home — this isn’t where I live.’

  It was hard to argue against her logic, but I knew that allowing my mother to live on her own with rapidly on-setting dementia would be both cruel and irresponsible.

  The nurses looking after my mother saw my raw anguish, but told me that there was only one way to do this: leave and come back the next day.

  I don’t know how I found the strength to leave my mother that day. I was so distressed I barely found my way to the car. Even now, over 27 years later, I don’t know if I did the right thing. Like all of us who are confronted by this wretched condition in our beloved parents, the only possibility is to stumble on with the best advice available. I’m not proud of the fact, but I self-medicated that night with most of a bottle of Scotch and cried myself to sleep, riddled with desperation, guilt, and shame.

  The next day, to my utter bewilderment, I found Mum relaxed and completely settled in her new home, with no hint of unease or unhappiness. The room looked great, the staff were attentive and caring, and, most importantly of all, my mother was happy. She was pleased to see me, and at the end of my visit she farewelled me with a reassuring wave at the front door. It was as if she had lived there for years.

  Mum settled even more over time, and I continued to visit her regularly and keep in contact by phone every couple of days. I often took her out for a drive and to buy her favourite ‘frothy coffee’ by the water at the little village of Smiths Lake, near Forster. Through some strange twist of her mind, Mum never again mentioned the unit she’d left behind, even though she’d lived there for years. When she did occasionally speak of her longing for her home, it was for our family home, which she’d moved out of almost ten years earlier. I can only surmise that she’d been so desperately lonely in the unit without Dad that she suppressed all memory of it, from the day she left it to the day she passed away two years later.

  7

  Beautiful Baby Jack

  In 1986, my life had changed again when I had married Joanne (Jody) Hutchings, who was the granddaughter of one of my mother’s sisters, and therefore my first cousin once removed. Because I was adopted into the family, there was of course no genetic relationship between Jody and me. I had first seen her back in 1960, when I was staying at my grandmother’s house in Merrylands as an eight-year-old boy. Jody was a tiny baby then, and her parents left her with my grandmother while they went out that night. I think it was the first time I had significant contact with a baby, and I found it intriguing and memorable. After Jody’s parents divorced, her mother, Jenny, took her and her brother, Danny, to live in Forster, and later married a local Forster identity, Maurie Burton. I had left Forster by then, but met Jody again through her father, Don, my cousin, who provided personal comfort and support to me when my father died in 1985.

  When Jody and I married, I became the instant and devoted father of her daughter, Jade, who was then six. That Jody, as a single mother, was able to keep Jade when she was born, and build such an amazingly close relationship with her, is a testimony not only to Jody’s parenting skills, but also to the complete change in social attitudes since I was born in 1951.

  Then on 28 September 1992, Jack Edward Tickner came into the world. To say his arrival changed my life is such an understatement; the day of his birth was one of the most remarkable I have ever experienced. I know it’s a big call, but that day I got a huge insight into the meaning of life.

  Jody’s contractions began the night before at about 11.00 pm, and so all three of us bundled into the car for the 45-minute trip to Sutherland Hospital. Progress was brought to a screeching halt on the Princes Highway at Engadine when a huge huntsman spider appeared on the inside of the windscreen, just in front of Jody. Remedial action was undertaken, but it must have looked funny to passers-by seeing a heavily pregnant woman bolting from a car by the side of the highway.

  We got to the hospital in plenty of time, and Jade and I took up residence in the waiting room until I was called into the birth in the early hours of the morning. It was another world to me, as I’d been unable to attend most of Jody’s birthing classes due to the pressure of ministerial and electorate responsibilities — and when I had attended, my mind was usually elsewhere, as it frequently was during those years in public life. I did, however, take a strong interest in the baby’s development; I even asked the gynaecologist to take a sound recording of the baby’s heart in the womb, which I still have. He said he’d never been asked to do that in 40 years of medical practice, but it seemed like a good idea to me.

  Not only had I flunked the birthing classes, but babies generally were a relatively foreign species to me. The closest I’d got to one in recent years was when a new mother, and one of my strong supporters, proudly introduced her baby to me at a community function and asked me to hold it for a while. I jokingly declined to kiss the baby for fear of being labelled a sleazy, vote-grabbing politician by the media who were present. I didn’t have any family or close friends with babies, and of course there’d been no baby sisters or brothers in the house when I was growing up. Nevertheless, although I’d been a failure at birthing classes and knew next-to-nothing about babies, I tried to be a good support person at the birth. I’d had no prior conception of how incredibly hard giving birth was: I was full of admiration for Jody and the way she kept her cool.

  When Jack was born, I was asked to cut the umbilical cord. Overcome with joy, I hammed it up, pretending we were at an official event, like the opening of a building or a new road. I took the scissors, said, ‘I am h
onoured to be here as your local member of parliament, and I have great pleasure in now declaring Jack officially open,’ and cut the cord. I still have a media clipping from The Australian the next day, reporting my impromptu speech.

  Jody took Jack in her arms, and I gazed in awe at this little person we’d created. Later that day, holding Baby Jack myself, I remember being in an almost transcendental state, absolutely amazed by his existence, and so very privileged that this life-changing event had happened to me. It also came to me that this little person was the first human on the planet who I knew was biologically related to me. It was a very special feeling.

  Like many adopted people, it was the birth of my child that drew me into new territory. Until now in my life, I had honestly discounted the significance of blood relationships; for me, my mother, father, aunties, uncles, and cousins were an integral part of my life. I never felt other than a very connected and engaged member of my family, which just happened to be an adopted family. But right from the beginning, there was something about this tiny baby in my arms that was different. I had helped create this little person, and I was deeply moved by the intensity of my feelings for him. I began to think about what looks and characteristics he may have inherited from me, which in turn took me gradually on an introspective journey to ponder my own genetic inheritance over time and the link that Jack would have to that inheritance. Indeed, I began to consider the meaning of my own life and my wider place in the greater human family. Jack’s birth was therefore, in many ways, the catalyst for my change of heart and my increasing resolve that perhaps the time had come to lift the veil and see if my birth family were still alive — and, if so, whether they were remotely interested in meeting me.

  I would not have taken this step if my mother Gwen had not by now slipped into a world of her own because of dementia. In fact, only two years earlier in 1990, when the adoption laws had changed in New South Wales and it became possible for an adopted person to search for his or her birth parents, I’d been quite hostile to the idea. I’d felt, as I had all my life, that my mum and dad were my parents, and that, while Mum was alive, I would never seek out my birth family. In my mind, that would have been an act of betrayal and potentially hurtful to Mum. Not that she ever did or said anything to make me think this would be the case, but I didn’t want to do anything to risk causing her even the slightest pain. I owed her everything, and my loyalty to her was absolute. It was with all these feelings in mind that I’d stopped in at the Rockdale office of the Department of Community Services on 22 March 1991 and lodged a contact veto, which prevented my birth mother or anyone else contacting me, should they be alive or interested. I had no concept of the extent to which my birth mother could be still grieving deeply for the child she gave away all those years ago.