I Found My Tribe

by Ruth Fitzmaurice

  When all those I love live in pain, sunrise holds a new joy. Michelle and I join the swimrise crew from the local Happy Pear Cafe most mornings, swimming early when the sun first soaks the horizon. They bring a carnival atmosphere, so sometimes we swim by ourselves at twilight when we’re feeling solitary and tragic.

  Most days I stumble from bed with a gasp, my throat dry and jaws sore from teeth grinding. Crawling to the car in blankets, I am a sleepy beast, heavy with dreams and longing and every damn thing. I drive in the dark to the cove, windscreen wipers swishing, my head still busy from last night’s dreams. I love these early morning swims. They are all I’ve got outside of stinky hospital world, strung-out kids, and dying Simon.

  Driving to the sea, the sky is marshmallow pink and fluffy and my soul glimpses a short glow. Fellow swimmers congregate and I wade in full of cold reluctance to shock this sad body back to business. I smile and there is sunpath on the water. We stare at the sea and our faces shine. I am literally bathed in a rising sun as my body rattles with sea shakes. The vampire is slain and maybe I am reborn.

  Michelle finds a new dive spot. We both find the goodness of other people and company. There’s Deb the sheepskin lady and Niall who swims with seals. Al puts turmeric in the tea and Orla grows giant pumpkins. Ed almost got hypothermia when he swam too far and we covered him in blankets. Cool Katie paddles a kayak out to sea. Julie carries a pet rock around and the twins host everyone with energy bars and hot tea. Susan and her husband have seven children and wiggle their gloved toes in five-finger footwear. They have hands for feet and run marathons. Raj brings shouting energy and big smiles. Hugo stands on a rubber mat to keep his feet warm and Casper the dog takes a bite out of it. They call Casper Wolfie. Hearts cannot inviscate for long. Sunrise still happens among clouds and the sea is busy with people. This energy will get me through the day and I will deal with lonely nights when they come around again.

  It occurs to me that beachcombing has turned me into a bit of an oddball. Sea pottery is my new obsession. Blue willow makes my heart sing. I see signs in the intricate pottery patterns, solve deep mysteries among the cracks and grooves. There is sea glass and strength at the cove. I stroll on a drizzly beach, stones shiny from soft rain and find an explosion of treasures. I still have that staunch, stubborn belief in magic, because it’s worth pursuing, trying, worth getting your heart broken, worth every goddamn risk of human existence. It is worth it to me.

  Sometimes I get so tired. Last night I was beat. My limbs hurt. It’s the hardest thing, that kind of beat. The drum is silent and I am buried alive. Hold me, I need to be held. There is no one to hold me but the sea. The morning light has a coy smile and I grin back, but I’m late. I have almost missed the sunrise swim, shit fuck, I race out of the house before my brain can stop me. This action is all heart. Pure desperation. This is all I have right now and clearly I crave it. Does this mean I haven’t given up? Stones are numbing my toes. The autumn chill is creeping into my bones and it feels good.

  I watch my bare feet walk their own path over scattered gems and pebbles. Sea glass and maybe even pottery are found beneath my feet. I follow them like the yellow brick road. Such an eclectic mix of things. I must believe in all of them as we are forced to inviscate in illness. Sea shakes and coffee are still the highlights of my day.

  Hold me, but I might crack and crumble in your arms, bones weakened to dust, rotten parts crushing me to the core. Hold me, sea, let me disappear in your embrace, salty and glad.

  We swim from darkness towards a burning furnace sky before dawn. The sea is dark choppy velvet, large waves sideswiping the rocks. I simply love these mornings. The water’s got bite, but not too much. Your body numbs in an instant to bliss. How many swim strokes to numbness? Michelle and I ask. Every morning we count the strokes and each day the number climbs higher.

  It was a glorious swim this morning, but I had to run from the cove. The sadness in me was corked and fizzling. My tears are like the goop in Simon’s lungs, chest tube clamped, pressures building, filling the chest cavity. He doesn’t get the release of tears. He simply gets more septic and sicker.

  I run home. A happy unicorn and serious shark wander up in their themed dressing gowns, tangled in their own intense imaginative game. A chubby hand touches my face. ‘Why is there water in your eyes Momma?’ asks the shark as Sadie snorts unicorn stardust. ‘I’m sad about Dadda,’ I sniff, and they both stop their game to give me hugs.

  October chills, a sharp morning sky, and a line of tiny silver fish wash up dead on the shore. They trim the water’s edge like a curve of pie crust. These small fish are called sprats. The mackerel chase them and they race towards shore to their own doom. Seagulls circle gleefully. Silly old sprats.

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ say the doctors. ‘Now it’s just about making him comfortable.’ I hear the words and feel my heart crush. Is there any more of my heart left that’s crushable? I believe so. I believe the crush will go on forever.

  I went to the cove at full tide, full of longing and sadness. Hunter found some friends and Sadie found her bare feet. I walked the shore in stocking toes, hoping for sea glass, hoping for pottery. One tiny bit would be enough. I am low maintenance that way. ‘The sea looks so neat today I could stand on it,’ shouts Hunter, and we laugh. Little did we know it was the calm before the storm.

  Hurricane Ophelia comes raging into Greystones with operatic force. Winds are picking up outside. The grim reaper is surfing on the crest of a twelve-foot wave, sickle pointed straight at Simon. On TV news bulletins, the Taoiseach looks jittery. Simon’s vent pressures are building like big winds and oxygen litres are climbing up the spout. I washed a spider out of the shower two days ago and left it half drowned under a cup. It was a beast of a thing. Perhaps this is retribution for aiming a hot showerhead his way.

  We have rosy apple grins in a rough post-Ophelia sea. It is wonderful to feel afraid, your landlocked body shivering against the thought of waves, the wading into crashing surf, the pull, the abandon of a strong sea carrying humans as lightly as sprats or strands of seaweed. We are at its mercy as we rise up on a swell, feel the drag in your legs and tummy. Waves of sadness, waves of joy, I don’t know which will hit next, moment to moment. It’s grief, it’s hope, it’s beauty and despair rolled into one. I am feeling each salty wave and at least I can say that I am living. We have abandoned our souls to the sea, so do with us what you will.

  There is a party atmosphere after the storm. The sky has lost that heaviness and blushes in delight. Stumbling out numb, I like to linger in the foamy surf as it sucks around my sea-stung legs. The sun is rising and my eyes are blinded by white sparkly pebbles.

  Hurricane Ophelia felt like an interlude from real life, says Aifric. We huddled indoors staring wide-eyed at trees contorting in strong winds. Every sunrise swim feels like an interlude. It is the most beauty a day has to offer. It makes me feel alive.

  I was convinced that Ophelia had come to take Simon, but he lingers on. How long? How much longer must he suffer? I plead to the skies and then scold myself with the real answer. Surrender yourself to the waves, feel the drag, know in every moment that control is a mere illusion. We are all sprats in a mad dash for the shore. Caught in the sea, we’re lucky if we can laugh at danger. Get swept along and survive the crash. Emerge with wobbly legs and play in the foamy surf. Let go of it all and just be here. Sad to lose your husband, sad for this broken family, sad saying goodbye, sad because it is so fucking sad. I’m just a silly old sprat philosopher.

  I sneak to the hospital chapel not for holy God, but because Michelle told me to meditate. I whisper strands of Deepak Chopra and feel my heart throbbing in my face. Let go, Simon, let there be peace, I beg to the altar, to the air-conditioning hum, to the soft carpet and smooth pews, to anything that might listen. I beg them all and feel better. On the way out I stop at a table of neatly placed psalm books. Opening a random page I read, ‘The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with
linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them unbind him and let him go.’

  Simon wakes up and we spend hours deciphering his blinks into words. I tell him of domestic things and he asks what kind of soup Arden had for lunch. Marian painstakingly spells out each letter. Love you, he says and we both cry. ‘Love you too,’ I reply. Go home and make Arden soup, he says and so I do. I make tomato, his favourite.

  The kids come in to say goodbye. They tell Simon about the jelly bean jar in school. Whoever guesses the right amount will win the jar. The school secretary has to count them all out with gloves on. This new principal is awesome, Jack laughs and talks loudly, relaxed with his Dad. The twins sing Halloween songs about witches and pumpkins. Simon is too sick to talk so I tap out Dadda-type words on his computer and hit speak: ‘My five crazy cake ningcompoops. Remember Dadda loves you forever.’ They all cry on the way home. ‘You mean he’s just going to be a faraway Dadda? We’ll only have you?’ wails Sadie. ‘My heart is broken,’ whispers Hunter. ‘He won’t be there when I come home from school,’ pants Arden between gulps. ‘I’m most sad he won’t see my school play,’ sobs Raife. I tell them Dadda will be free of a stupid body that doesn’t move. He’ll be free and dancing. Simon was always a dodgy dancer. He’ll be dorky dancing in the sky. The five nod.

  Arden mitched off basketball and went to the cove with Aifric. He was so eager to show me his treasure bag of sea glass gems and a shell in the shape of the moon. I know that treasure helps. Hold me, sea. Hold me in your cold embrace.

  Will he push breaths into next week? Simon wakes intermittently, lungs bubbling and squeaking with the effort. It’s Michelle’s birthday and the wave angels come to greet her with white-tipped wings, swelling and soaring to huge crescendos, crashing to shore without mercy. We are thrown like helpless amoebas, sprats swimming to their doom. Meeting swells on the horizon, we greet them with loud gasps. We get jostled at the mercy of this mighty sea. My laugh sounds like bellows and I’m not even cold. Rough waters really are warmer. Swimming to shore, the pull is mighty, I tumble in the surf and lose my footing, eyes dazzled by vanilla foam frothing through pebbles on the shore. The suck is surreal, like motion sickness, and my eyes wobble. I have a seaweed fringe, our hair and bodies are dirty with sea grit. Tiny weeds stay stuck to skin and hair. Michelle, Aifric, and I huddle together and looked skyward. Crepuscular rays stream through the clouds. We call these long shafts of light God’s fingers. ‘He might die on your birthday, Michelle,’ I say. ‘He might,’ she replies.

  Simon doesn’t die on Michelle’s birthday and we are glad. He struggles on in thick lung soup. The vigil by his bed fortifies. Days and nights are passing but he is not. Grief hits like a heavy stone. It cracks down on my head and I see sparks. Every day I wake and heaviness bangs like a brick. I light candles at night and fall into deep sleep, but then waking is a violent gasp. We find an ugly breeze-block on the beach and stagger carrying it home. The kids and I decide to make it pretty. Jack is the design leader. They put pine cones all over it and tiny houses into the crevices. Sticks and leaves lean at childish angles. I read an Emily Dickinson poem that ends ‘Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.’ We need to carve pumpkins after school and bake cookies for the school Halloween party. We need to do these things, but we never do, because on 26 October 2017, aged forty-three, Simon dies.

  After

  He died. I saw it happen. We fumbled with his eyelids. He went from a colour photo to grey black and white. I watched the life and colour seep right out of him. His heart was so strong, I clung to him counting beats and stayed with my ear stuck to his chest until they faded. Long after his face looked dead and his mother threw open the window shouting, ‘Fly away son!’ his heart still beat strongly. I stayed there for a very long time.

  There is no gentle death. Death has hurt me badly, like nightmares. His body scared me in the coffin, so cold, so hard, it wasn’t him. There was no secret crevice of Simon left, no crack of warmth to nuzzle into, near the crook of his arm, the groove and pulse of his temple. No warmth at all.

  We swam naked the morning of the funeral. Three mermaids slipped into smooth silky waters. It was an unspoken need, a gift in the half dark. Luckily, we swam minutes before the swimrise crew turned up. Most of them have the wrong body parts to join in naked tragic wife swimming.

  The very next day, the water was rough, just for me, I thought, needing to get thrown around. I surrendered to the swell and let go. Afterwards I was so tired I took to my bed. At regular intervals, I snuck quietly out of rooms filled with chatting relatives, just to rest my head, but sleep eluded me, my thoughts racing.

  We have lived with limitations for so long. Mechanical breaths are all that I am used to. This fresh air is dizzying. New heights give me vertigo. I can’t breathe at all. After the funeral I pulled my wedding rings off so hard the skin went pink. They were stuck and I panicked. I would have cut my own finger off to remove them.

  His soul is gone from this world and there is a sad space. It makes no sense. Despair hit and I couldn’t speak in company. Family stayed and I stared at my dinner plate to avoid their worried looks. I didn’t expect any of this. The feeling of being cut loose is terrifying. Like floating into space.

  I phoned for a death certificate, called the insurance company and talked to a guy called Gary. He was really nice. ‘We will look after you,’ he said. ‘Thanks,’ I replied. I hung up and sobbed. The widow Fitzmaurice. Sorry for your loss. The widow wears a costume. It definitely has a black hood. Floating into space is preferable to this. I would rather drift among the stars. I will have to rip this hood off and redecorate. Let’s get painting. I dragged furniture and painted Simon’s room a burnt orange colour like sunrise. The boys moved their bunkbeds in.

  ‘You must do the things you think you cannot do!’ we screech at dawn, shivering on shiny steps, prepared to plunge into icy 7 a.m. waters. It’s calm as a stagnant pond and the sea laps under the ridge of the bottom step. We hurtle in head first without even a preemptive toe dip and oh man it is cold.

  The Saturday after Simon’s mass, I go to another funeral. My dear friend Helen’s Mum has died. Her cancer spanned roughly the same years as Simon’s MND, but her ladylike soul was gentler and more measured. She planned her funeral carefully. Curtains close around her coffin and music swells. They put Simon in the ground. I saw his body, an empty thing. He is gone, we are here. I walk alone with my wolf pack. We should have cremated him, I think, fraught as the curtains gather. I don’t want him left in the ground. I want to creep behind those curtains and watch her wicker basket burn. I watched Simon die. Rip my face off and see sinewy tendons and raw flesh. The curtains shield nothing from me.

  Simon raged against death to the end and it burned me. I have scars and can never be the same again. I cry because I was frightened. I feel guilty that he suffered and I couldn’t stop it. I want to crouch behind those curtains and sit with her wicker coffin, hot by the furnace, watching shadow shapes dance on rippling fabric. I see a silhouette of mourners sitting in their pews, consorting in dark clothes and chit chat. I could survive behind those curtains if only someone could crouch in there with me, but they won’t. I will wander outdoors instead, in wind and rain and weather and feel my own soul. I don’t want to huddle indoors missing Simon. Hold me. I need the sea like a deep breath.

  Casper the Wonderdog has sired six Swiss white shepherd puppies and Michelle brings them all to the cove. They screech like seagulls and chase their mother. Six chunky white ducklings race around in pure joy.

  An army of do-gooders descend on our home with an arsenal of crumbles and hot dinners. Bless their goodness but I can’t go on like this. Batten down the hatches. Close the drawbridge. Pour hot oil from up high. Endless aluminium tray bakes only serve to weaken me. We’d rather eat fish and chips in our underwear and build a moat around the front door.

  There has to be hope and there is always chaos. I find hope in small children and puppies. I
put down my orange paintbrush one day and decide on a heart whim that we are puppy ready. I meet Michelle at the cove for a cold sharp swim. Wind whistles in my ears and slaps the sea surface. ‘I have puppies in the car,’ she grins afterwards. All six look the same so she dresses them in different-coloured ribbons. Three boys and three girls. I pick girl yellow and drive home with her resting on my arm. I weep the entire way. The kids want to call her Hachi, but she is not really for them. With the turn of an emotional key, Hachi is just for me. Sadness and beauty can co-exist, leaning together like tent poles. I will take shelter.

  Getting up this morning I greeted a Hachi pup and then ground some coffee beans. I put on the radio and hummed along. For the first time in years, I liked the tune. Sadie burst into the kitchen shouting, ‘Momma! Christmas is everywhere!’ I peeked into the future and felt hope. It’s a warm feeling in your tummy, outside of grief, which is so empty. The healing power of a shepherd. I carried my wolf cub outside to my red bench and smiled. When all is lost I have the outdoors in my ears. I got my words back. I will forge ahead with the words in my head. Thank you, bench, thank you, Hachi, thank you, tree.

  Acknowledgements

  Aifric Aiken and Michelle Griffin, I’ve said enough nice things about both of you but thanks for putting up with a friend who insists on writing about her friends. She did what? Such a bitch.

  Our superheroes in Australia: Cath, Daragh and Theo Monaghan. Phones are crap but you all sing loudly in my soul every day; probably some warbly indie-girl song that Cath and Simon would love.