Learning how to Breathe

by Neil, Linda;

  I refuse to curl up, though. I am a silent storm in the corridor, pacing up and down beside the nurses’ desk until I work up the breath to speak.

  Did he ever actually intend to come? Or was he just trying to mess with my mother’s mind? I ask petulantly.

  My sarcasm is ugly; my disdain is ugly as well. The whole scenario, as far as I am concerned, is, as my grandmother might have put it, as ‘ugly as sin’.

  She depends on him, I say through a gritted smile, trying to calm myself down through long, slow, deliberate yogic breathing. And if she depends on him, we all depend on him.

  The nurse, trained to remain neutral in the face of irate patients and their families, watches me impassively as I rant at her. She asks me politely if I would like to fill out an official complaint form. I feel futile, useless, hopeless, helpless. I shrug my shoulders and walk away, the fight, like hope, gone from me entirely.

  31 December: On New Year’s Eve I visit Mum on my way to a party. She is in her room wearing a dress as blue as her eyes, flat tan shoes, and socks that make her look like a girl about to head off to school for the first time.

  Her mood, for the moment, has brought her up out of bed. She greets me with a smile, links her arm in mine and walks with me down the corridor.

  I’m much better today, she tells me.

  I hate myself for not trusting what she says. Hate that the whole cycle of mood changes and drugs has made it harder to trust her, wondering always when the next crash will come.

  She can tell how tired I am and this time it is she who leads me along, swinging my arm high up in the air as we walk towards a seat in front of a window that overlooks the city. It is a balmy evening, one of those Brisbane nights that catch you by surprise during summer, when things cool down and bodies unfurl from the effort of coping with the heat.

  Mum puts her head on my shoulder and tries to rouse me out of my dark mood. Come on, Linda. Smile. Remember it’s the face you show the world that’s important.

  It sounds so absurd hearing her say it that I have to laugh. Absurd to still believe in showing a face to the world after everything she’s been through. I admire her, though, for still trying. And I love her for still believing in what her mother told her, despite all evidence to the contrary.

  For a few moments I enjoy our shared happiness as we watch the Brisbane skyline in the distance. I suggest then that we exchange our New Year’s resolutions. Mum resolves to not be so negative – about life, about the future.

  Perhaps the negativity is just chemical, I tell her. The moods could just be chemical.

  Everything’s chemical, Mum replies, even music. It’s all about arranging and rearranging chemicals. Now how about you? What’s your resolution?

  I tell her my resolution is to do with her: I would like her to trust herself more and speak to the doctors as if they are her equals and not her superiors.

  But that’s the way we were brought up, she tells me. To trust in those people.

  It’s not like I think they’re always wrong, Mum. But they’re not infallible either. You stood your ground with music. You made a stand there. Why can’t you do that with your own body and mind?

  Now I’m a sick old woman, she tells me, burrowing closer into me.

  I am prepared, of course, to excuse her, forgive her anything, for the pleasure of this burrowing, for this moment, and for all the moments we have shared since I came home, to finally know her and to be known by her.

  As we sit together on New Year’s Eve, I am in no hurry to leave. I am in no hurry to go anywhere. I am even too serene at this moment to fret much about what might have been if, at the beginning of this whole saga, we had known what we know now.

  Mum senses my disquiet and rubs my arm. You can go mad with regrets, you know.

  I know. Mum herself never believed in them. She rests her hand on mine: All that matters is that we’re here now. And just think, you never would have come home if I hadn’t got sick.

  Oh, so that’s why you became ill, is it – I laugh, pinching her – just to get me to come back?

  She is suddenly serious: Mothers will do almost anything to take care of their children. You know that. I wonder if I do. You do, she continues, as if she is reading my mind. You’ve been like my mother. I can call you Mum if you like.

  Look where you’ve ended up with me trying to look after you, I say, suddenly stricken by the thought of all the things I haven’t done – and still don’t do – well.

  In the loony bin, you mean, Mum? she laughs.

  Now that was crazy, I tell her, not exactly laughing with her. Except I don’t think you were the one who was mad.

  We are quiet for a little while longer. I take in a deep breath. I think of how many more such conversations are left for us to have and also of how many conversations I didn’t have with my father before he died. Sometimes I feel I should apologise to you, I tell her. To you and Dad – for not living a more normal life. I know it wasn’t always easy for you both.

  She squeezes my arm as she says quietly: Maybe we weren’t always easy for you either. Just because we’re your parents doesn’t mean we know what you need to do. I could see you didn’t belong to me, you belonged to the world.

  I am still surprised when she speaks like this, as if there has always been a secret self in her – among the hundreds of other selves – that only hinted of its existence while she went about the business of her life.

  What’s normal anyway? she continues, echoing the question that I have put many times on her behalf to doctors, nurses and carers.

  I don’t know, I laugh again. You tell me. I turn to look at her; her face is bright pink in the neon light reflected from outside onto her pale skin.

  Can I share a secret with you? she whispers, leaning in closer to me. I’ve seen a lot of things during the last few years. Things I would never have dreamed of in my whole life. And all these things have taught me one simple thing: nobody knows.

  Nobody knows? I ask, looking back out at the skyline.

  Nobody knows at all. She squeezes my arm as my face falls again.

  So don’t worry. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t waste a second. You just had different things to do. And look what you’ve got to show for it now.

  And what have I got to show for it? I play along with her, smiling once more.

  Smiling and falling, I think. Up and down. That’s our life now.

  She sighs. I can tell she is growing tired.

  Mum … I ask, tapping her on the arm.

  Mmm, she mumbles, drifting off with her head on my shoulder.

  Tell me … Mum? I prod her.

  She doesn’t say anything else, but I don’t mind. I am growing more used to fragmentary things, snippets of dialogue that begin and end before they are finished. I even enjoy the lack of conclusions in our lives. I am just happy to be sitting there with her, thankful that we can share any kind of conversation with each other as one year turns towards another.

  31 December 2003: At midnight I am playing my songs at a small gathering beside a swimming pool at a block of units in St Lucia. The party takes place close to our old home, which has recently been bulldozed to make way for high-priced rental apartments. I don’t drive up Warren Street anymore. I always take the long way around so I have never seen the construction site. I hear, though, that the hoop pine trees my grandmother planted at the edge of the property over fifty years ago are still standing after it was decided that they were too tall and strong to safely cut down.

  There is a clairvoyant at the party who tells me I was a troubadour in a past life and that I will not be fulfilled until I find my voice again in this life. She tells me my songs are like poetry and that they could make a stone cry.

  HOUSE OF LOVE

  Mum felt that a singer should be an actor and a poet. A singer should be facially alive, phy
sically calm, and musically confident. Interpretation can be, in some respect, spiritual. It should come from the heart and soul of the singer. She was also very sensitive to the position of the singer in any kind of competition. Although she adjudicated at dozens of eisteddfods all over the state and was actually writing comments for some nervous competitor when she first experienced rigidity in her shoulder, she never forgot her own humble beginnings as a frightened young singer hoping for the best as she stepped tentatively into the spotlight for the first time. She even wrote a special note for examiners and adjudicators at the end of one of her last articles for the Music Teachers’ Association newsletter: ‘Remember to always try to put performers at their ease with encouragement and kind words as singing is such a lonely and vulnerable art.’

  * * *

  In June 2004 I travel to Scotland to attend a conference. The last time I had been to Scotland was with the Youth Orchestra tour when we stayed in Aberdeen and played Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. This time I will stay in Stirling and perform my own words and music. Byron is still in my life and is excited to see me travel for the first time. Even though I have never fully committed to our relationship, we are still in contact intermittently throughout 2004.

  Two weeks before I am due to leave for Europe, Mum falls and breaks her hip. She is given a hip replacement operation and sent back to the Garden of Eden within days of surgery, with no rehabilitation or physio program in place. Her hostel has assured us they will attend to her rehab, but when she arrives there has been no notice of her coming; her bed is unmade and her room unprepared. Mum waits alone in a corridor for hours while a staff member is found to attend to her needs. Three weeks later little has been done towards her rehabilitation. I make terrified phone calls. I threaten the occupational therapist in charge of Mum’s rehab with legal action, accuse her of moral negligence. I dream I am mad, demonic, hateful. I dream that my own mother – and everyone around her – hates me and what I have become.

  As usual, Paul steps in to soothe the troubled water. It is time for you to have a break, he tells me firmly. I do not, as I usually do, disagree.

  The conference goes well. I spend three weeks in Paris and am dazzled by the city of lights and by an artist who lives there. There is no romance, though: he is married, and I am still too worn out to love. Towards the end of my stay a friend introduces me to a French sculptor who looks into my eyes and tells me knowingly that I must not let my family’s sadness penetrate me one moment longer. I tell him I understand the French like the sensual life too much to be connected to suffering for very long, but that I come from stoical Anglo-Saxon stock. We endure; we persevere, I tell him. It is not sexy, but it is our nature. We suffer because we know how to. He agrees with my cultural stereotyping, but disagrees with my decision to go home. He tells me my liberation is in my own hands, but I miss my mother too much and feel her pull on my heart still. He hand-feeds me morsels from his kitchen and invites me to model for one of his sculptures, but I am still too connected to things back in Australia to be tempted by his offer. Before I fly home from Europe, I promise to return soon, to pick things up, he assumes, from where we left off. My immediate plans, though, are to get back home in time to attend a meeting with Paul about Mum’s upcoming transition from the independent living section of the Garden of Eden to its nursing home.

  Paul carries a foolscap pad as we sit together across a table from a nurse who tells us that, due to Mum’s worsening condition, this will probably be Mum’s last move. He talks briefly about our brother Stephen, who has phoned the previous evening with an offer to care for Mum full-time if we need him to. I wish I was more like Steve, who is like our father, or Paul, who is round faced and friendly like my mother’s side of the family; wish I hadn’t been pierced so deeply by Mum’s suffering; wish I had learnt to become detached and smooth like a proper, functional person. I remember a time when I was smoother, less ruffled, before I became so attached to Mum and her illness. I try to suppress the feelings of shame and regret that arise in me when I feel like the devil in the family, marked by the dark shadow of instinct and uncontrollable emotions.

  Cheryl, the kind, efficient woman in charge of nursing, takes us for a tour of the nursing home. The rooms are smaller than the rooms in Mum’s independent unit and in greater disrepair. Paint is scrappy on the doors and walls and the toilets are noticeably smelly.

  Later, outside, Paul says he cannot even notice the upcoming scents of spring: I have no sense of smell at all, he admits to Cheryl, laughing. He is such a cheery man, I think, just as Mum always said he was: happy-go-lucky, seemingly unmarked by sorrow, still believing the best of everyone and everything. Compared to him, I feel wrung out, joyless and – just as Mum sometimes said about me – guilty of taking everything way too seriously.

  Before we part, we sip tea and water at the coffee shop. He tells me that my approach to things is not always productive. It’s not like I don’t care about Mum, Linda, he says, smiling. But I don’t like conflict and don’t think it’s necessary.

  Afterwards we walk together down to visit Mum. She’s been moved to a facility with security locks after developing a habit of ‘wandering’ and falling in the grounds of the hostel, away from the watchful eyes of the nurses. Her face is bruised from a recent fall; she is sitting in a crooked line of women silently watching television. I resist the temptation to run to her and hold her. Stifle the impulse to call out: This is wrong. This is wrong. This is all wrong.

  I smile quietly as Paul embraces Mum; when it is my turn to say hello I stroke her cheeks. She is happy to see me; she looks like a bruised and battered child smiling up at me with her sad blue eyes. When Paul leaves, we kiss goodbye for the first time in months. Afterwards, Mum and I walk outside on a path around a caged bird in the middle of the hostel’s concrete patio. We talk about Paris and Toronto, Mum’s other favourite city. She has not healed properly from the hip replacement operation; her head is now noticeably bent at an angle and she walks – or shuffles – with a distinct limp. I hold her close to me. I hold her up. She is restless, hardly able to talk. I feel the life force less and less in her body.

  That night I pray that she doesn’t linger. I pray that she doesn’t fall again.

  She does fall again. Two days later. She falls in private and calls out for help. I am unable to find out the exact time between her fall and the arrival of help so I don’t know how long she lies on the cold concrete with her eyes closed and her forehead swelling. According to her neurologist, she will fall again and again until she stops walking, stops moving. We are advised to buy her a wheelchair and teach her how to use it.

  She is lolling in this new wheelchair when she receives her commendation from the Music Teachers’ Association of Australia. Miss Betty Del Fuego, a nationally prominent singing teacher, attends this ceremony, which takes place in a little alcove off from Mum’s room in the Garden of Eden nursing home. Lyndsey Parker is also there, as well as Marjorie Anderson, Paul, Finn and Kel, and some family friends. Betty and Lyndsey haven’t seen Mum for years and are visibly distressed by the large discoloured lump on her head as well as her inability to open her eyes or speak.

  We only find out later that her system has shut down from the shock of the fall. At the time, though, all we can really do is reassure her old friends that she is worse than normal. They go through the ceremony with tears in their eyes, and after cakes and tea they leave hurriedly so they can cry and grieve out of Mum’s sight.

  It’s an absolute tragedy what’s happened to Joan, Lyndsey and Betty whisper through their sobs after they place the framed certificate in Mum’s hands. After all the work she did for so many in her life. It just doesn’t seem right.

  What seems right or wrong isn’t really that relevant to me anymore.

  Byron is at the ceremony too, to support me and to honour Mum. We still see each other, although we are more off than on. He is still fond of Mum as she ha
d been of him. I think she hoped – as he did – that we would marry. She said once it would be good for me to at least try it. Byron tells me he is planning to go to Vietnam to work with orphans, to help develop business plans for the locals. He doesn’t quite know what he is going for, I suspect.

  He and I walk together outside for a while, around the neat circles of carefully groomed flowers, up and down the long slabs of concrete and across the green clipped lawn. He stops suddenly and takes my hands. You could come too, you know. They need people to help them too.

  Byron’s shaved head and angular, Eurasian face makes him look like some exotic animal. I remember a childhood photograph he once showed me, of a boy with dark brown glowing skin, standing beside a pale, fair-haired woman. It wasn’t easy in those days being dark skinned with a white mother, he told me, shrugging off my wonder. But it wasn’t the contrast of his Indian looks with the Celtic beauty of his mother that had startled me. It was how he was now as white as his mother had been in his boyhood pictures. I did not understand how that could happen, how dark skin could become white skin; how one dominant strain could be replaced by another. Could you will yourself to change colour? I wondered. Had he? Or had it happened incrementally, over time? A slow evolution from one shade to another, caused not by will or attrition, or even by desire, but by some mysterious internal process. When I asked him about it Byron put it down, in his cosmic new-age way, to meditation, and to becoming, over the years, more like his mother than his father.

  Outside the entrance to the nursing home, Byron is suddenly serious. Why don’t you come with me to Asia? We can have an adventure. Your mum doesn’t need you so much anymore.

  I don’t reply as I look at how the sun shines off his smooth round skull, how at certain angles he looks like Gandhi looked in his later life.