Standing on My Brother's Shoulders

by Tara J Lal

  I thought back to a conversation I’d had with my father during his visit to Australia. We had been walking around the beautiful rolling red rock formations of Kata Tjuta where the land exudes a spiritual essence that makes you want to reach out and touch life. I wanted to connect with my father after all these years, to finally talk of Adam’s death. I hoped that our two isolated bubbles might touch, just for a moment.

  ‘You know Adam wanted it, Dad.’

  I felt his body stiffen. ‘That’s rubbish. Somebody has to be held accountable.’

  My father’s voice simmered with suppressed rage, and I felt my own calmness dissolve.

  ‘Adam chose to do that. It was his decision.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tara … All those people …’ Now his whole body was quivering and his anger was frightening me.

  ‘What people?’

  ‘All those supposed friends. Just in it for themselves. They all wanted something.’

  I felt a sudden need to vomit.

  ‘Dad, they helped us. They all did. They loved Adam and they wanted to help.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody naive.’

  It was as if my father had dropped a chemical bomb on the beauty that surrounded us. How could he be so wrong? How could he blame the very people who had sustained us? How could he be so angry?

  I had to tuck it all away again, pushing it down.

  In the hours I sat with Hannah, we talked a lot about my father. Our relationship was one that I could still access, that could be changed. I knew I could not change him, but I might be able to change my reactions to him. And I needed to allow myself to have a voice, a chance to expel the cancerous toxins I’d ingested.

  When I was ready, I sat down and wrote to him:

  Dear Dad,

  I have been wanting to write you a letter for some time now. I just feel that there are a lot of things that I would like to explain to you. Things that are important to me, that I want you to understand – as my dad.

  First of all I want you to know that I love you, but often I feel that we don’t understand each other as well as we could. More than anything, Dad, I want you to acknowledge and respect how hard it was for me when Adam died.

  I know that your life has been hard and that you have suffered many losses and sadnesses. I can never truly know what your life has been like or feel the pain that you have felt, just as is true for you of me. By that token I am asking you to acknowledge and respect the losses that I have had.

  At times I have tried to explain to you how it was for me as a teenager and after Adam died. Your response has been that it wasn’t as hard as your life, or that I don’t understand. I found this really hard, that you didn’t seem to understand that I was in pain too. That’s why I want to tell you, by this letter, how it was for me during that time.

  After Mum died and when you were in hospital and unwell, Jo was off with Ben and then at university, Adam and I cared for each other, we understood and respected each other. He was a family to me and I was a family to him. Then he died, the person I loved most in the world, the person who cared for me and knew me like no one else, the person that filled a void after Mum died. And he chose to end his life.

  I was alone, completely alone as a teenager, having lost so much of what I loved. It was really hard.

  I can only imagine from those feelings how it was for you when Mum and Adam died.

  I have worked very very hard to come to terms with Mum’s and Adam’s deaths and even with your illness.

  To me, the biggest achievement of my life is to have come through all this, a normal, happy person, content with life and able to help others. I am proud of that.

  I guess, Dad, I just want you to understand that when I try to talk to you about the past, what I really want is just for you to say, ‘Well done, Tara, you survived a huge trauma and a lot of grief and came out without feeling full of regrets and still with the ability to love and care for other people.’

  I don’t want to take anything away from you and your experiences and I can only imagine the pain you must have endured. I wish I could ease that pain for you, Dad, take some of the sadness and regrets away. I guess all I can do is to let you know that I love you and that I am really happy in Australia.

  I remember very clearly when I was deciding whether to come and live over here, you saying to me, ‘Follow your heart.’ You were right, Dad, even though I’m sure it was hard for you to see me go. I thank you so much for that, for helping me to make the best decision of my life. This is my home – where I feel happy and comfortable and at peace with myself.

  I don’t want this letter to make you sad, Dad, but rather to build some understanding between us as father and daughter, because I do miss you, Dad, and I still need your love.

  Take good care of yourself, Dad. I look forward to spending some time with you and Jo at Xmas.

  With love

  Tara

  Writing was a gift that Hannah showed me. When things are confused and my mind torments me, writing helps. When I am unable to convey what I want verbally, because emotion clouds any clarity, I can write, just as Adam did.

  I feel I am writing again in my narrow fervoured way, it makes me quieten.

  I didn’t know what response I would get, but I had at least given myself a voice. A couple of weeks later, I received this letter from my father:

  My dear Tara,

  I got your letter today. I am glad you wrote to me. I’ll try and explain why I wasn’t able to help you and Adam after Mum died. Of course I love you and am proud of you. But when I was ill and in hospital I was unable to think and feel anything except my own worries and preoccupations.

  The tranquillizers they gave me did help but they also blunted the feelings and attitudes that I had. That is part of the reason I was unable to perceive and respond to the hurt that you, Adam and Joanna were feeling.

  There are other things too which I hope will explain the way I behaved. They have a lot to do with my upbringing, my past experience and very personal experiences which will be difficult for you and your generation to understand.

  I will not try to make excuses but I was astonishingly ignorant of all sorts of things like how to study, get a job, meet and talk to a girlfriend and the sorts of attitudes and motives and ways of behaving that were appropriate to any given social situation I happened to be in.

  My head was filled with all sorts of foolish and harmful ideas that bore little relationship to the world I lived in.

  It was lucky for me that I met your mother and we got married. Maybe it wasn’t as good for her. I don’t know. If I knew what I know now I would have behaved in a better way to her and to you, to Adam and Joanna.

  If you ever have any children you will understand that children will always matter more to their parents than parents can to their children, and this is right, it should be so.

  Only now, in my seventies, do I begin to understand and in a way come to terms with my own childhood and the parts that my father and mother played in it. They had horrific lives because of the malice and spite of others and other external circumstances. It is only now I have begun to appreciate what they had to cope with.

  In a way, the way I have written this letter reflects the inadequacies of my own upbringing and my personality. But one is what one is and I can no more escape the fact that I am your father or you that you are my daughter.

  Try and be happy. Happiness does matter. One can’t escape the past but one shouldn’t brood on it or let it run the present or the future.

  We all have regrets and one of mine is that I haven’t been able to and won’t be able to transmit to you and to Joanna and to those whom I may come to care for, some of the understanding (little though it is) of the way the world is and human beings are and how to live one’s life in a better way. But I am glad that you are content and believe that Australia is your home and where you wish to be. So let’s have a relaxed and pleasant Christmas.

  Life has to be lived. One has t
o earn a living, get food and water, wash, sleep and look forward to the next day.

  Lots of love

  Your father

  Though I have finished the letter by writing your father, I am your dad as well, but I belong to an older generation where intimate feelings were rarely expressed in certain situations or documents. This had both its downside and its upside. The downside was the depression of feelings; the upside, feelings when expressed meant more.

  I was mesmerized by my father’s words. Tears fell silently down my face. I had learned more about him in those two pages than I had in my whole life.

  Letters changed my relationship with him. Through them, I came to realize that he had insight far beyond that for which I had ever given him credit. When we talked, I heard only the projections of his inner world and his pain. His words did not reflect what he felt for me. He did not believe I was not good enough. It was I who believed that.

  My reactions, especially the feelings of self-doubt, were projections of my own wounds. Writing to each other gave us an avenue for connection which we could not attain verbally. I began to understand my father. I realized, too, that my pain was not his responsibility. He had enough pain of his own. My pain was my responsibility and mine alone.

  CHAPTER 26

  We often curb our instinct and this habit makes us lie, there can be no honesty in it. We have lost what we were born to do, to live and discover and question … I know not what I would naturally follow or in what way my mind would naturally function.

  I had asked myself the very questions that had been niggling Adam twenty years before: What is my instinct? What was I born to do? What was Adam’s instinct and what was mine? They seemed entwined.

  I loved physiotherapy but my need to ‘fix’ everyone had left me feeling drained. I had a thirst for adventure, for freedom. I thought of the computer program in Edinburgh and what it had divulged all those years ago: Number 1: Fireman.

  Adam had never felt he had the chance to choose his path. I had that freedom and I would use it. I waited patiently for the New South Wales (NSW) Fire Brigade to run a recruitment campaign.

  Before I knew it, I had quit my job as a physiotherapist and found myself walking into the state training college of the NSW Fire Brigade (now known as Fire and Rescue NSW), a trembling wreck about to embark on a new life as a recruit firefighter. I found myself in a bizarre new paramilitary world. All instructors and seniors were to be addressed as ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’. Our uniform had to be immaculate: caps to be worn at all times when outside; hair had to sit below the line of the helmet but should not touch the collar, no bobby pins allowed; bags should be held in the left hand when crossing the courtyard.

  I looked at my mass of thick curls and wondered how on earth I was going to restrain them. After much trial and error, I discovered that the only way I could secure my hair was to coil it up at each ear, Princess Leia style.

  ‘Firefighter Laaaal!’

  I heard the shout reverberate across the courtyard of the training college as my class of twenty recruits lined up for roll call. My heart sank. What have I done this time?

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Your hair, Lal.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, sir.’

  I reached up and tried to restrain a stray curl that had won the battle to free itself, bouncing around in an act of defiance as if it were laughing at me: Ha ha, you can’t catch me.

  It was week three at the training college, breathing apparatus week. This would involve navigating our way in the dark through a smoke-filled maze in a super-heated building. I stood outside the training tower, sweating already from the weight of the apparatus and the uniform, which, by its nature prevents body heat from escaping. I have hated confined spaces ever since I went potholing in Wales as a kid, where I’d had to crawl on my stomach in the darkness, jammed, with solid rock above and beneath. Or perhaps it was the memory of Adam’s face as we buried him in the sand. Why am I doing this? I thought. What was I thinking?

  ‘Firefighter Lal. You’re next. You’re going in!’

  I heard the door slam behind me and I felt the darkness and heat envelop me. It was immediately disorientating. The sound of my breath in the mask was deafening. I felt around for my partner. Never lose contact with your buddy. I knew that.

  We fumbled for an opening in the maze. There seemed to be blocks in every direction, as if we were trapped in a box, one metre square. I tried to contain the panic. We found an opening, knee high, somewhere in the chaos and lay down, scrambling on our stomachs, heading in an unknown direction, air cylinders clanging against the sides of the metal maze.

  We were supposed to be doing a left-hand search and rescue. That meant we had to keep contact with the wall on our left at all times, making a map of the route in our heads as we went. When we needed to return to the exit, all we had to do was turn around and keep the wall on our right. That way we shouldn’t get lost: simple. Except that in the darkness, if you happen to lose contact with the wall or your partner, you lose the connection; disorientation kicks in. For just an instant, my partner and I lost contact with each other.

  I was lost. Breathe, I told myself. Breathe.

  ‘You’re under the whole bloody maze, Firefighter Lal.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  I gasped through my mask, sucking in the compressed air from my cylinder.

  ‘If you can’t find your way out of here, how the hell are you going to find your way out of a fire? Congratulations. You’ve just killed yourself, your buddy and your victim.’

  The heat closed in on me, sweat cascading from every pore in my body. I felt myself shrinking, the same feeling I’d had as a child. Just stay upright, I told myself as we inched our way out of the maze.

  Even a small fire can create huge amounts of smoke. One garbage bin can fill room upon room with thick dark smog. It is the smoke, not the fire itself, that most often kills people. They become disorientated in the darkness, and they panic, before becoming overcome by the toxic fumes.

  I took off my uniform, pouring the sweat out of my boots, and went home. Once inside my flat, I let self-doubt consume me. The exercise I’d just failed had given me proof of what I had always suspected: that I was not as strong as others believed me to be. I wasn’t good enough. I had climbed mountains, run a marathon, jumped out of planes, completed degrees, won medals for rowing. I had built a body full of muscle in my desperate chase for some self-worth, but self-doubt always caught me, a predator that stalked me relentlessly. It was only some time later that I realized that no achievement, no gold medal, could give me self-worth, for it comes from the inside and you can spend a lifetime searching for it.

  A close friend counselled me through the night and I woke the next day with a dull sensation of defiance. I can do this, I thought. I wanted to stick two fingers up to my fear.

  I dragged myself into the college. Once more, I was thrust into the hot cell, the suffocating heat, the disorientating darkness. I looked for someone to rescue. This time, my partner and I found our victim, a hefty seventy-five-kilo dummy, and we dragged and hauled it out of the maze.

  At this point something shifted. The self-doubt remained, but I realized that if I could only conquer the physical fears, perhaps the emotional fears could be resolved in a similar way. I started to see that maybe my greatest challenges were actually my greatest gift, for they gave me an opportunity to grow and to discover.

  After I finished college, I was posted to the main station in Sydney, the biggest and busiest in New South Wales. I was barely even in the door of the station when the bells went.

  ‘You’re on the Flyer,’ another firefighter called out to me.

  ‘Flyer one, Runner one, automatic fire alarm,’ a voice announced as the piercing sound of the bells, which are in fact more like a siren than a bell, finally ceased.

  ‘Just follow me,’ the same firefighter shouted. ‘I’m Stick, by the way.’

  Before I knew it, I was sitting on the back of the truck,
flying down George Street in central Sydney, lights and sirens on, watching the peak-hour traffic part before us, like the parting of the seas.

  ‘Grab the high-rise kit and follow me,’ Stick directed.

  I did as I was told. I donned my breathing apparatus, hopped out of the truck and grabbed the high-rise kit, affectionately known as the ‘goat bag’ in the brigade. Very apt as I’m a Capricorn and have carried that twenty-kilo bag containing a hose and various other tools up countless sets of stairs over many years. Carrying the goat bag is the job of the junior man (or woman in my case). As it turned out, it was just a false alarm. A workman had set off a detector with the dust created by his power saw.

  ‘It happens all the time,’ Stick assured me.

  So began my life as a firefighter. Right from the start the guys taught me, guided me and helped me.

  One night, early in my career, the bells went in the fire station, jolting me out of sleep. I fumbled for my overpants, put on my shirt, pants and boots, clipped up my belt and made my way down the corridor to the nearest pole. As I slid down it, I became vaguely aware that something was amiss. Something just didn’t feel right.

  My feet hit the floor and I began to make my way across the engine bay just as my colleagues began to appear. Still vaguely aware that something was wrong, I turned to look behind me, only to see my queen-size yellow bedsheet dragging like a train from its anchor point in the back of my pants. I began frantically reeling it in as my fellow firefighters fell about laughing.

  ‘Hey, Linus, you bring your blanky with you on the truck this time?’

  ‘Yo there, Batgirl. Where’s your parachute?’

  I couldn’t help laughing. I call it my Bridget Jones moment. That’s the thing about the fire brigade. I always laugh. My life has become lighter. There is a genuineness about firefighters that is both refreshing and grounding.