by Petrea King
Ross has always been a wonderful support to me, even while living on and off in the United States for many years. After Brenden’s death, we realised we didn’t know each other very well, considering the time I had spent in hospital, his and my travels, and the fact that each of us had a relationship with Brenden but a more tenuous one with each other.
Since I had begun my work with people living at the edge of life, Ross often didn’t understand why I exposed myself to so much grief and pain, but he always stood by and supported me. On one of my early visits to him in California, he suggested I’d been teaching meditation for long enough to make recordings of the practices that could be helpful to a wider audience. On little yellow sticky notes Ross penned the financial advantages of making these practices more widely available. He gave me the confidence to believe in myself.
A couple of days later, I travelled up to the Sierra Nevada to visit with friends living at Ananda. On my first morning there, I was woken by the sound of a friend playing the silver flute. I thought Gopal’s music would be the perfect backing for the relaxation and sleep practices I was ready to record. There were recording studios at Ananda, and within forty-eight hours we had put down and mixed two practices called Sleep and Relaxation. Both are still available today, and Relaxation is still, after thirty years, the third most popular of my recorded practices.
Ross was delighted when I returned with the tapes. Thanks to him, I went home to Australia with the first of what were to become a dozen popular meditation practices for helping people with chronic pain, self-esteem, healing or forgiveness issues, or who wanted to learn to meditate, relax or fall asleep.
***
The boost to my income from the sale of my books and meditation practices enabled me to take on a larger home. The widower of a patient generously made this large, four-bedroom Federation home in Crows Nest available to me at a very reasonable rent.
This meant I now had a spacious consultation room along with a large sunroom where the meditation and support groups could convene, as well as three bedrooms, enough to house Simon, Kate and myself. The house was also more accessible—the few stairs to the Waverton flat had been difficult for unwell people to navigate.
Around this time, Leo was dealing with his own health issue, which meant he could no longer care for Simon. When Leo made this decision, I was in the United States visiting Ross and my Ananda friends, but Leo couldn’t wait for my return a week later and left Simon with my mother, who was also caring for Kate.
When I returned, the three of us were finally reunited as a single-parent family, and life settled into a new rhythm. My practice was full, I had increasing numbers of speaking engagements, and two hundred people now attended support and meditation groups in our home each week.
My children developed an amazing capacity to be present with unwell people. We frequently discussed how it felt for them to be surrounded by so many people with life-threatening illnesses; they told me that, for the most part, it gave them a heightened sense of understanding and compassion for people who were struggling with a variety of challenges. I admired my children’s capacity to see past the physical illness and connect with the ‘being’ of a person rather than be worried by appearances or challenging sounds, behaviours or occasionally smells.
Undoubtedly, it was difficult at times for Kate and Simon as I was often preoccupied with work and the phone would frequently ring—indeed, the telephone number in the back of my published books was for the one by my bed. People would call at all hours when they were feeling desperate.
Kate was known to disconnect the phone during dinner; I often wouldn’t discover this fact until much later, after we had enjoyed a rare undisturbed evening together. Kate was also known to say, ‘You have to be dying around here to get any attention,’ which I am sure was the case on more than a couple of occasions. At other times, unbeknown to me, she would take it upon herself to have long and in-depth phone conversations with people, and they often commented later that my ‘secretary’ had spent an inordinate amount of time offering them sage counsel.
***
On several occasions, young people with cancer stayed with us, and Kate and Simon would take them out for various activities. These experiences were challenging but also enjoyable for my children, giving them a deeper appreciation of life and its fragility.
At one time, two of my patients with AIDS were a couple with two small children, one of whom was also infected with the virus and subsequently much smaller than his younger sister. As the parents became sicker, it was difficult for them to care for their very active little children. Kate was about fifteen, and she loved children and was fabulous with them. We discussed the possibility of us having the children on weekends to give the parents a break, and Kate took on the major responsibility of looking after the little ones. She took them to the zoo, on ferry trips and to the park; she played games with them, bathed them, made clothes for them and generally cared for them as if they were her own. I so admired her capacity to take such loving care of other people’s children.
It was, of course, tremendously beneficial for the parents, who could rest and recover during the weekends instead of having to keep up with their children’s high energy levels.
Sadly, both parents died within a month of each other and, because the children were being adopted by friends of the family, we never saw them again. I recently heard through a mutual acquaintance that both children continue to flourish now as young adults.
***
There were a couple of instances when people moved in with us—after I’d discussed this with the children—so I could care for them.
Oliver had a terrible depression that would hold him in its tenacious grip, and occasionally he would sleep in our sunroom so that he would be safe from harming himself. I knew him well, having seen him weekly for eight years for massage and counselling. He had experienced a terrible childhood as a ‘different’ boy in a one-teacher school in the country. For six years, this teacher told him he was hopeless and would never amount to anything because he was interested in poetry and music rather than sport. The daily chiding undermined his confidence, and it was a lifelong struggle for him to make any increase in his sense of self-worth.
Oliver owned a music shop and traded two CDs each week for our appointment. In this way, he greatly expanded my appreciation of music as my repertoire grew. When he attended a weekend program with me, I acquired all of Mozart’s piano sonatas!
Soon after Oliver moved out, a long-time support group member, Julia, moved in when she needed care but wasn’t sick enough to be in a hospice or hospital.
Her three young adult children were weary of preparing for her death only to have her continue living—they’d had to galvanise themselves, over and over again, to cope with her imminent death. Each time Julia’s doctor had said she would soon die, they’d been wonderful in caring for her; however, after six years of this, they wanted to study, to travel, to get on with their lives.
So, after a family discussion, Julia moved in with us. I slept in the lounge room while she had my bedroom; this meant she could share her porridge with our pet dog, Bonnie, if she didn’t feel well enough to eat it herself and it was a far happier environment for her than being confined to a hospital or hospice bed.
***
Several times while Simon was visiting his father for the weekend, Kate and I moved in with a family when a young mother was dying.
Kate would spend time with the children, while I’d care for the woman and help her husband, children and extended family to say and do the things that allowed them all to gently take their leave—incredibly poignant moments where tender words or actions were enabled.
Peter, just four years old, looked at his mother’s face just after she’d died. He said, ‘Yep, she’s definitely gone. The light’s no longer in her eyes.’ Then, running to the mantelpiece, he retrieved a family photo and brought it to his father and me. ‘This is how I remember her. See the light in her eye
s?’
Several weeks later when I visited the family, Peter asked me a question. Sitting on my lap, he said, ‘Petrea, you know the light that was in Mum’s eyes?’
‘Yes, Peter,’ I replied.
‘How did the light get out of her body?’
‘Hmm, that’s a great question. I don’t know. I’ve heard that it leaves through the top of the head, but I don’t know,’ I said, hoping my fumbled response would be sufficient to assuage his curiosity.
‘Petrea?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Peter?’ I responded, unsure of what was coming next.
‘Now that she’s light, does she need to go through doorways or windows or can she just go straight through the wall?’
‘That’s a great question, Peter. I don’t know, but you know how you can feel her in your heart?’ I said hopefully.
‘Yes,’ he responded emphatically.
‘Well, I think she can be anywhere, whenever you think of her.’
Peter jumped off my lap and ran outside, seemingly happy with our conversation.
It struck me that we all have so much assistance in bringing life into the world but so little when taking our leave. I thought of this work as midwifery for the dying. Someone who is comfortable with the practicalities of caring for a dying person—and who also brings compassion, vulnerability and lightness into an often painful and difficult situation—can make a profound and positive difference to how a family experiences the loss of a loved one.
I’ve been blessed to accompany many, many people to the edge of their life and to have been present when they died. It is clear to me that someone ‘leaves’ at that final moment and I am convinced that we are more than our mortal remains. I have often explained to children that death is like the story of the balloon. What makes a balloon beautiful is the air inside of it. The air is invisible but when it leaves, all we are left with is a piece of coloured rubber. The spirit is like the air in the balloon. The spirit is what shines out of a person’s eyes and is felt in the warmth of their hugs; it is the love that has endeared that person to us. When it disengages from the body, it cannot be seen, but it can be felt. The more substantial part of a person lies beyond the form of the physical body.
So often when I have been with a person nearing death, I have noticed that everyone around them is focused on the body. And yet, it is clear to me that their spirit is elsewhere. Frequently people’s bodies seem almost to be on ‘automatic pilot’ where their breathing and heart rate are regular but they are unresponsive to any outside stimulus. It is especially at these times that I feel people are ‘elsewhere’, doing whatever it is that might need to be completed before they die—or in the case of Rachel, live.
Rachel was in such a state while in hospital awaiting a lung transplant from a disease called fibrosing alveolitis. The machines were keeping her alive but her oxygen levels had plummeted and, given the sudden deterioration in her health, she was not expected to survive the day. Her husband Barry and her two young sons had been summoned to her bedside.
Fibrosing alveolitis is a disease which causes a progressive thickening of the air sac walls in the lungs, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Rachel was on a respirator, as there was no cure for her condition.
While it was a tragic and sad gathering that day, Rachel suddenly found herself above her body, looking down on it and her family gathered around her. She experienced a profound sense of peace and knew, in that moment, that everything was going to be alright. On returning to her body, she began to improve. Over the coming days, she meditated as much as possible.
Unbeknown to me, Rachel used my meditation practices during this time and they became her lifeline. We met some months later, when she brought me a magnificent bunch of flowers to thank me for being a comforting voice in the turmoil of critical illness. The moment I spoke to her she dissolved into tears, as my voice had been her friend and companion during those days and weeks of her return to health and her full recovery from fibrosing alveolitis. Rachel’s life was transformed from that moment and since her own recovery she has radiated the presence of peace and calmness to many patients through her nursing and other activities.
CHAPTER 29
Hope and hesitancy
In the Eremo, Padre Ilarino had provided me with a safe haven in which I’d found a pathway to peace, and I was motived to create this sense of safety for others. I’d often thought of establishing a charitable foundation to further this vision I held for my work.
My hesitation in moving forward with the idea was based on the uncertainty of my health. An organisation seemed like such a responsibility to take on—what if I established such a venture and inspired others with a vision for a more compassionate way of caring for people, only to go out of remission and leave others to clean up my mess? But months had turned into years and I was still alive. Indeed, time seemed to be flying past. I couldn’t get my head above the parapet to see a clear path into the future because I was so occupied with the responsibilities of single parenthood and my work.
After a support group meeting, Pamela—the woman who’d once given me the keys to her Mooloolaba apartment—said to me, ‘I’m leaving you some money when I die. I want you to take a holiday, hire a secretary or start that bloody foundation you’re always talking about.’
Pamela’s words gave me the impetus to create the Quest for Life Foundation, a registered charity devoted to empowering people with the necessary education, skills and support to create healing, resilience and peace in their lives, regardless of the challenges they are facing.
Many wonderful people came together to help ensure that the Foundation’s legal and financial framework was in place; most of these people were patients, members of support and meditation groups, or they had been touched by someone I’d helped. When Quest was finally established, I called Pamela’s recently bereaved widower and told him that her words had given me the courage to establish the Foundation regardless of my own precarious health. Though Pamela never formally included the gift in her will, he knew she had wanted to leave $35,000 to me—and so he sent a cheque for $38,000, acknowledging the interest he believed would have accrued, and the Quest for Life Foundation had its first bequest.
***
In its first few years, Quest paid for a telephone line and some secretarial support, but my focus remained largely on providing services for people rather than fundraising or growing the vision I held in my heart. I didn’t feel I had either the skills or time to actively further the goals of the Foundation, and I was only just managing financially, so it survived on occasional donations or small bequests. Although I had been taking better care of myself, I was still often overwhelmed by the needs of the people who filled my life and our home—and, at the same time, I yearned to provide a better environment for them. Our home had become a safe harbour, but so much more could be offered to people living with significant challenges. However, while I dreamed of having a more appropriate and substantial place for people to stay, I was still hampered by a lack of time and financial support, as well as my uncertain health. I shared my vision of this place with our board, but the enormity of the project seemed daunting for all of us, so nothing concrete was put in place.
At least Quest was getting more organised. The Foundation employed an administrator, Geoffrey Colwill, who coordinated the support and meditation groups, set up the accounting procedures, and began a database of people who attended groups and retreats. With two hundred people passing through our sunroom each week, and so many of them and others attending regular weekend retreats, we needed to develop policies and procedures to ensure that people who availed themselves of our services were cared for appropriately.
Geoffrey brought a rigour to the accounting and governance procedures of a tax-deductible charity that was essential for it to grow and flourish. He also understood the necessity of keeping compassion and genuine care and support at the forefront of all the Foundation’s activities, as he personally knew many people who wer
e suffering.
Around this time, a prominent journalist, David Leser, wrote an article about my work for Good Weekend aptly called ‘Midwife for the Dying’. David spent weeks with me while he worked on this article; he attended support groups and one of the weekend retreats I conducted in the Southern Highlands. He was so moved by my work, he asked whether he could serve on the board of the Quest for Life Foundation, which he did for several years; he has remained a dear friend.
***
During the next few years, I continued my counselling work with people who faced an increasing range of illnesses, both physical and mental. Word of mouth was always the main way that people heard about the groups or became my patients.
I continued to see people in their homes, hospices or hospitals. I also started another voluntary massage program, this time at the Sacred Heart Hospice in Darlinghurst.
In time, other health professionals approached me to be trained as massage therapists for people nearing the end of their life. Other professionals wanted to learn the skills of group facilitation. The money from these trainings allowed Quest to provide more services for the increasing number of people who sought our assistance.
CHAPTER 30
More flesh and bones
Walking was again becoming difficult and painful, and my right leg was now bowing outwards. My limp, while not as pronounced as it was when I was younger, was still noticeable. I was also plagued with what I called ‘ants’: a deep, crawling restlessness that extended from my hips to my lower legs.
When a leg is in its correct alignment, a straight line can be drawn from the hip, through the middle of the knee and down through the ankle. That straight line didn’t pass anywhere near my knee—it was already well outside my body.
John McGlynn had long retired, so I needed to find another orthopaedic surgeon. I ‘interviewed’ a few of them, wanting to find one I felt I could work with to get as many years out of my legs as possible. I wanted to find someone skilled but with a sense of humour, who could advise me without being cavalier in his or her approach.
