19. Nov, 2018

Too many goodbyes

The sign on the garage wall says “Nicki lives here”. I painted it when I was about 10 years old. Written in small letters enclosed within the space of one brick is an accompanying note, “Megan too”.

Megan, one of my most treasured friends hung out with me a lot as kids. She lived five doors down the street from my childhood home. My house, perched on top of the world, or so it seemed to us, was a favourite of my friends. It was known as Nic’s place, or Mrs.B’s.

I still remember the day we did it. I knew I was being naughty…acting out my childhood frustrations, but with brush and paint tin handy, the temptation was too great.

Later that day after Megan had left, mum noticed it while executing a very challenging park, just the norm for our garage. It was positioned at the bottom of the drive and I remember mum used to be able to manage an incredible ninety-degree manoeuvre using a three-point turn, without power steering, to park our large silver Holden Monaro undercover at night.

I got into trouble. I think I was sent to my room as punishment, but seeing the writing on the wall the other day made me smile.

Mum was known to all my friends as Mrs.B. It’s funny how times have changed. Years ago we respected our elders, always referring to our friend’s parents by their surname…these days, I am happy to be called Nicki by my children’s mates.

For 52 years I have called my childhood home, home. It was my island, my oasis, and sometimes my prison, it was a place which held very happy memories and some not so happy. I can’t help think of it now, picturing my mum in her leather recliner, head back, peering out the window with its bird’s eye view of the city, and she wouldn’t miss a trick. I would call in often to visit and the stereo would be thumping out the melodic tones of Barbra Streisand or Joshua Groban.

I remember gathering in the garage to play spin the bottle with my adolescent friends. I loved when the bottle would land on me and I would get to kiss my latest crush. My friend Megs would go on to tell me that she was jealous because I would get all the boys…

I was popular back then, because I was the only one of my closest friends who had an above ground pool and every time we would jump in, Mum would sing out from the sunroom above “make a whirlpool…pick up the leaves”, so around and around we would run in circles, as fast as we could, then jump on our surfoplanes and float on our backs looking to the heavens  and make a game out of naming the shapes in the clouds. When we came to a stop we’d dive down to the bottom and scoop up all the leaf litter from the overhanging gumtrees and toss it over the side.

We’d run wildly down the deck surrounds and launch ourselves, skimming across the top of the water and argue over who had traveled the furthest. On the railing, we’d climb and dive from a height with little regard for the shallow four-foot depth. Bombs away and somersaults were the flavour of most days until mum would yell from the window above “stop wasting water”. I even mastered the backflip, managing to spin my body in the air before I even hit the water.

I recall on one occasion, with all our friends over, our German Shepherd Tasha, always by our side, running down the deck and launching myself headfirst with the skill of an Olympic diver (smirk) deep into its murky depths and surfacing to hear my sister screaming frantically. Me, oblivious to the fuss, pulled myself up onto the edge, only to watch the skin on my upper left thigh split open. My sister had touched the ripped flesh where the dog’s canine had sunk into my leg. It was accidental, Tasha, stressed that I was going to come to harm would prance back and forth trying to protect us. We even taught her to jump in and climb out without the need of a ladder. In fact, you could grab her tail and she would pull you back to the safety of the pool’s edge.

On afternoons when dad would come home, hot from working, he’d plunge in and we’d nag and pester him into launching us high into the air, where, across the pool, we would fly and land with a plonk on the other side. I loved those moments with my dad, I idolized him and any time I could snatch with him was precious to me.

Many years later, when I could get myself to the beach in my own car, the pool was drained and dismantled, but it sure was a source of great amusement and pleasure for me and my neighbourhood friends for many years.

I'll never forget, on my brother’s 21st birthday, the dog Tasha, appearing unstable and wobbly, was a cause of some concern for us all, until we found she had a penchant for beer and had been lapping at the beer keg slop bucket all evening. The dog was a tad tipsy.

Garden Grove Parade was home to two stray cats and a mongrel dog we named Rani, who after spending many hundreds of dollars on fencing, jumped it and followed a friend home, was struck by a car and killed. My dad and brother found her, took her up to the gun club and buried her in the bush.

But my most tragic memory of my childhood home was one Wednesday afternoon in Year 7 when I returned home from school and found my life shattered beyond repair. I was told the news that my mum and dad had separated. Life as I had known it had ceased to exist. Don’t get me wrong, not all my memories of the years leading up to that event had been rosy, but if you had asked me in primary school whether I would have ever considered that I could end up being the child of a broken home I would have said no.

I believe my mum and dad did their best to make their marriage work, but somethings broken can never be fixed. In a way, I am still recovering and continue with my personal quest to grasp and understand the fallout and consequences of their decision to part.

Children are impressionable creatures and I think that too often, adults fail to understand that kids are the innocent victims of the pain and loss of a rupture to the family unit. Divorce doesn’t just happen to adults…it happens to the children too.

Mum worked hard to keep the home I grew up in, the home mum and dad built and it has been in our possession for almost sixty years.

It has been a tumultuous year. I have laid to rest my most faithful four-legged friend. I have cared for and wept buckets of tears at witnessing my mother’s declining health. My dad spent many weeks on his back in hospital, but has fortunately somewhat recovered. Along with my siblings and close family and friends, I nursed my mother until her passing, and one would have thought enough is enough. I never imagined that on my mother’s deathbed our grief would be so acute.

Her death was not unexpected, just somewhat hastened by complications, but as I sit here thinking of her final moments, I find myself still squeezed by the vice-like grip of grief as we now mourn the loss of the family home. It is to be put up for sale this week.

Sometimes reality can really suck and to be honest, I will be happy to see the arse end of 2018.

I sit here both physically and mentally weary. An empty vessel adrift without an anchor, foundering in rogue seas content to now be at the mercy of fate. I’m tired…I’m done in.

So many goodbyes, so much loss, how do I let it all go?

I am told she is still with me, and I have also been told to let her go…but I did that, I gave her that gift on her deathbed as we reassured her that we’d be okay, never actually believing my words for a second, but I wanted her to be okay, to release her from her suffering, and I believe, in that moment, we gifted her with a future free of pain, fully aware that we were only in the midst of our own.

We let her go, but I believe its okay to be sad, to be angry, to cry, to sob, to curl up in physical pain at our loss. My clock still ticks, hers has stopped.

I have reached the conclusion life doesn’t need to be happy. It is just better tinged with it. But for now, I will go with the sadness, the loss, the emptiness, and all the goodbyes, because to live is to feel pain, to experience heartache, to process panic, to languish in loneliness, to reminisce and remember.

I am told in time my pain will lessen and life will get easier…I don’t want easy, I just want my mum back.

P.S The photo is of the last sunrise my mum saw. I photographed it and showed it to her the day before she passed.