A Lifetime of Goodbyes

by Samantha Touchais

  Standing before his grave now I realise what a ball of bitterness I have been carrying with me all these years. We had had some fun times growing up. I admired the way he could let himself go and be completely carefree. He had an infectious laugh which is why people loved him so much. They couldn’t help smiling when he was around. They felt good. I was the serious older brother who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. People didn’t laugh so much with me. What if I had learned to be a little bit like him? Sure, that wasn’t allowed or encouraged during our childhood but why did I let those years define me so much as an adult? Why did I let him affect me so much? I suppose when your children are involved it is hard not to react, not to take things to heart. You are the keeper of their hearts when they are little, and when someone breaks through that protective wall you feel you have let everyone down and you resolve to never let that happen again. But what if I had chosen to forgive him? What would that have meant?

  We view forgiveness as something we do for the other person, but actually it is the ultimate act of self-care. Forgiving someone is not the same as saying that what that person did was OK. Forgiveness can be a way of saying to that person that they can no longer hurt you. You are giving them back what they did to you as it is now their burden to carry. You can forgive in many ways, and it really depends on the depth of the hurt and the closeness to that person, but I could have forgiven my brother I realise now. Forgiving him at the time felt like I was letting myself and my children be vulnerable again, and there was no way I was going to do that. But I could have forgiven him without letting him back in my life. Forgiving him would not have absolved him of his sins. I truly don’t think he would have cared either way. He didn’t need my forgiveness and he certainly wasn’t seeking it. But what if I had chosen to let go of the feelings he had pushed me to create? What if I had imagined a conversation with him where I told him that while I didn’t agree with what he had done, I forgave him because he didn’t realise the depth of hurt he had created? What if I had been able to say that I no longer wanted to carry the guilt for destroying my children’s dream, for making them cry. That was his guilt to do with what he wanted, but it no longer infected our family. It no longer belonged to me. I was no longer its carrier. The relief would have been enormous.

  So as I stand staring at his gravestone, I do the ultimate act of self-love. I tell him that I fully forgive him for what he did to me and my family. For the years of injustices that I suffered at his hands. For the manipulations he had made of our family and in particular of our mother.

  I always wondered what our mother would have said about the money. I’m sure she would have found a way to defend him. She always did. She always thought I wasn’t forgiving enough of my brother and yet here I was offering the ultimate forgiveness. Again, doing what Mother wanted, but this time it felt right.

  As I leave the cemetery I decide to walk instead of taking the bus. It is such a lovely day and definitely worth slowing down for. The leaves on the trees are changing colour and splashes of red, orange and bright yellow shine through the dull brown. Leaves lie in wait on the ground ready for unsuspecting feet to make them go crunch. Birds sing songs to farewell the sunshine as they prepare to settle down for the winter.

  As I head along the main road I pass by a café with tables and chairs placed out on the pavement to catch the sun. Couples and families huddle together sipping on lattés and bottles of Coke. I watch as the waitress brings out a tray of drinks and cakes and places them carefully on the table of a young couple who barely look up from their phones to acknowledge her. That would never have happened in my day. How have we lost the ability to exercise simple courtesy to our fellow humans? Learning your Please-and-thank-yous was as important as mathematics in my day. A man was expected to raise his hat to a lady and open doors for her. Apart from the fact that no one wears hats anymore (such a shame as there is nothing like putting on a nice felt hat to really make you feel good), in my opinion the equality between the sexes has gone too far! I have literally seen men and women collide while entering a building as the social etiquette is no longer clear. I appreciate the women’s movement, and my wife was an armchair participant, but all I see is a confused generation of young people.

  I decide to stop by the café and watch for a while. There is nothing like the luxury of time and once dead one seems to have a lot of it. So I go from table to table observing every minute detail that would not have been possible when alive. The thing that strikes me is that everyone is on their phones. When I was younger phones were for calling people. Nowadays they seem to do everything but the laundry! I can see how society got to this point, but I can’t see how we can get away from it. Not one single person at this café is engaging with anyone else. They all have their phones up and their heads down and if they are not tapping away at the screen, they are so engrossed in what is on it that their minds and bodies have completely lost touch with each other. They have lost their wholeness and placed it in the safekeeping of a tiny piece of metal and plastic.

  I watch as person after person picks up their drink and takes a sip without taking their eyes off the screen. Their bodies may be present but their minds are elsewhere. What is the point I will never know. What is so important on that tiny screen of theirs to take away from a moment of pure enjoyment surrounded by family or friends? That first sip of a deliciously anticipated coffee while sitting in the sun, feeling the smooth liquid slide down your throat and warm you from the inside while the sun’s rays warm your skin. It’s one of life’s little pleasures that seems to have skipped a whole generation. These days I suppose everybody wants everything now. Instant Gratification they call it, and I don’t see how it is doing any good.

  One small boy screams suddenly as his mother tries to wrestle the phone from him. ‘Me, phone, me, phone!’ he screams as his mother nervously tries to calm him by explaining that they need to go now, and he can have the phone later. As his screams move down his legs, they slide him onto the ground, his face turns red, he takes in a deep breath and… silence. Silence before the storm I suspect, and just as I think this an enormous wailing escapes the boy’s mouth, so loud that it stops the workers on the building site opposite. As a few tut-tuts and disapproving stares are thrown the mother’s way, she quickly pulls her phone out of her bag and hastily gives it to the boy. It’s a miracle. All screaming stops, tears are quickly brushed aside, and the little body stops trembling. He scrambles to his feet, grabs the phone and happily walks away, eyes glued to the screen and oblivious to what is going on around him. What a wasted opportunity to teach one of life’s important lessons! I don’t really blame the mother as everyone is quick to judge these days, but I must say I feel she is making a rod for her own back. Imagine when he’s a teenager!

  I do worry about the children. They are no longer taught the art of conversation. One reads a lot about cyber bullying these days, and it is a terrible thing, but how can a generation of teachers and parents who have lost their own ability to truly connect with others teach the children to be any other way? The headlines in the newspapers scream about plummeting self-esteem and fast-rising rates of suicide in youth today, and at the same time talk about how loneliness is killing the elderly. We know what is going on but don’t seem to be prepared to do anything! If I were Prime Minister, I would insist on mobile-free days, just as they do with occasionally limiting traffic going in and out of the city. We seem to care more for the environment than we do for ourselves and our families and that is saying something!

  I walk off, having seen enough, and continue down the road. I pass by the local supermarket where we used to go to buy our milk and I see the owner putting up a Christmas display in the window. Christmas and it’s only October! Honestly, I sometimes think consumerism has made us all go a bit mad! He whistles to himself as he puts up the fairy lights and smiles at his statue of Father Christmas as he lovingly places him centre stage. No Baby Jesus in sight mind you, but I suppose Jesus doesn’t sell as we
ll as Santa.

  I smile as a memory I haven’t accessed in years comes to mind. Our daughter was only tiny at the time and we were putting up our Christmas decorations, a tradition that we always completed on the fifteenth of December. Why? Well, it wasn’t too close to Christmas Day to not be able to enjoy the decorations for a while, but it wasn’t too far away either as then I felt Christmas seemed to lose its impact. Carols were playing on our tape deck and my wife had made everyone hot chocolate. We had a rather large Nativity scene at the time, which we had set up in the corner of the lounge room. Of course, the Baby Jesus wasn’t in his crib yet as he technically hadn’t been born, but my daughter found him in the storage box still wrapped in paper. She pulled him out of the box quietly, no-one noticing, and took him off to her room. She dressed him up in a miniature pink doll’s dress she had taken from another toy and placed him lovingly in her tiny bassinet usually reserved for her favourite doll.

  When Christmas Day came, we couldn’t find the Baby Jesus! We searched high and low but he was no-where to be found. It wasn’t until that afternoon as we all piled into the car ready to drive to my wife’s sister’s place for an afternoon of eggnog and more present opening, that we noticed Alice clutching a doll very tightly in her tiny arms. My wife asked to see the doll and Alice produced a firm, and very two-year-old ‘NO!’ ‘Please darling, I just want to have a look,’ pleaded my wife to which Alice replied ‘No! My dolly. No show you. Me no share!’ My wife realised at that point what had happened, and we all laughed. At least the mystery of the Baby Jesus had been solved.

  The smell of fresh bread grabs my nose and leads it towards a shop window.

  Warm, freshly baked bread has to be one of life’s smallest but greatest pleasures. We didn’t eat it during the week, but it was a weekend ritual that the whole family loved. The children and I would go to the bakery, little squabbles breaking out over whose turn it was to pay the baker. Back we would go, mouths salivating with anticipation. We would come home to a table laid with homemade plum jam from the tree in our garden, and room-temperature butter served in a butter dish, and most certainly not out of the plastic container!

  On would go thick lashings of jam, fingers sticky and mouths grinning with pleasure. It was one of the only moments I would allow myself to let go and just indulge without consequence. My wife is an excellent baker and could have easily made the bread herself, but the trip to the bakery was part of our family ritual, and rituals are so important. They are the foundation for childhood memories in my opinion, and part of how we define ourselves.

  But bread makes me think of my ducks and so I turn in the direction of the park.

  Chapter 5

  The Ducks

  I walk up the road and through the old gate that takes me into the park. The shining sun has attracted many families and children run around shouting with glee. I walk down the slope towards the pond, past benches of parents with heads bent downwards, oblivious to the world. I continue past the ice-cream stand and the little coffee shop that hugs the far-east corner of the pond, and I take my seat.

  No longer having the ability to throw out bits of bread, the ducks don’t come to me, but I settle in and watch as their fog horn quacks and their grabbing beaks fight for treasure. There is a sign up near the pond asking people to offer frozen peas to the ducks instead of bread, but as I watch grandparents with grandchildren clutching the remnants of week-old bread, I realise that some traditions will never die.

  One little girl nearly falls in the pond and her mother grabs the back of her coat as her toes touch the water. The father puts down his phone and jumps up calling out something in a language I don’t understand, the mother nods and then he sits down on the bench again, back to his momentarily unattended business. The little girl laughs as two ducks fight over the one piece of bread, and when she turns to her mother for more, her mother shrugs and turns to walk away, the little girl not quite finished with her moment. She sits back on chubby legs, laughing and smiling at the ducks. Her mother rejoins her father and they both call out to her, ready to be on their way, the job they came to do completed. But the little girl doesn’t want to leave her new friends, and she is quite content to watch their antics as they chase after the next lot of weekly scraps being catapulted at them by a five-year-old boy.

  The father says something again, this time with impatient undertones, and the little girl slowly gets up, waves goodbye to her friends, and runs towards her parents full of stories about the things they have lost the ability to notice. It’s at this point that I tune in to two ladies sitting on the next bench over from mine. One seems to be doing all the talking while the other sits there mumbling a few mmm hmmms from time to time. One body is agitated and leaning forwards, widely gesticulating, while the other body is protected behind crossed arms and large sunglasses.

  ‘I just can’t cope anymore,’ says the first one. ‘What am I, a taxi service? Just call me Mum’s Taxi, available 24/7, to take you where you want to go with no thought for my needs’. She doesn’t care. ‘Mum, I need this, Mum I need that,’ is all I hear. No ‘thank you,’ or no ‘aren’t you the best mother in the world.’ I’m sick of it! My youngest is becoming even worse! She used to be the placid one, but she watches her older sister and seems to take what she learns and multiply it by ten!’ She pauses for breath.

  I get the feeling they don’t know each very well, but I don’t think the first one cares. She has found her outlet, pouring her heart and soul into it until she feels better, oblivious to the effect she is having on the other. She continues her rant about how exhausted she is, how useless her husband is and how he doesn’t do anything around the house, how tiring it is to take the children from one activity to the next, to pack their schoolbags every morning, to get through the piles of unclean clothes that seem to breed overnight. The second one emits another grunt of acknowledgement, never taking her eyes off the spot in the middle of the lake where they seem to have taken refuge. The first one goes on and on about how difficult her life is, only pausing as a child in an adult’s body is wheeled past by his carer. He is placed in the sun to watch the ducks and the complainer pauses for a moment while looking at him. The carer sits down on the bench next to me and lights up a cigarette.

  The reverie is broken when the First One’s daughter runs up to show her a pine cone she has found and the mother snaps at her ‘Can’t you see I’m talking!’ She’s then off again on her tirade about how difficult it is being her, how her children interrupt her all the time, how she never has time for herself and how no-one seems to care about her. I see the woman next to her uncomfortably shift her position, uncrossing and quickly re-crossing her arms.

  I worked with someone like this once. The Energy Vampire they dubbed her in the office. Always complaining about this and that, always needing to lean on people, always upset about something. Some people are just never satisfied. They are no longer able to see the world for what it is, to give thanks for what they have and to better things when they need to. Reading the newspaper used to give me perspective. It would help me see that perhaps things in my life weren’t so bad after all as I read about something awful that happened in another part of the world.

  My wife, on the other hand, refused to watch the news after she watched footage of a tiny little refugee boy washed up on the shore of the land that was supposed to keep him safe. She said she couldn’t cope anymore with the atrocities in the world and just wanted to focus on the happy things in her life. I didn’t understand her at first, and thought she was being selfish and self-absorbed, but I realise it was a safety mechanism that she put in place to protect herself from the things she felt useless to fix. I can see that now, and I understand why she would want to do this.

  I read an article recently about how world politics affects the everyday person; how the local housing market slows down as people hold on to what is familiar when faced with so much uncertainty. How workers stay in the same jobs, too afraid to let go of the security they fee
l they have, putting aside their aspirations for when times are better.

  What if we didn’t live like that? What if this ‘collective consciousness’ as the article called it really is a thing? I dismissed it at the time as new-age nonsense, but now as I sit here watching the sun shine down on a park full of very fortunate people, I realise that no-one appears grateful for what they have! Their children are able to run around happily and safely and in perfect health, longing for the eyes of their parents to be on them, and yet these same parents are absorbed in someone else’s moment or complaining about the hardships they have to face. I feel like screaming out to them ‘WAKE UP PEOPLE! You have so much good in your lives! Open your eyes and see it! Look around you! You are not running for your life or hiding your family out of fear. You are not selling your assets and handing over savings of a lifetime to an unknown person with a waterlogged boat! You are not dealing with a sick child, a dying relative or a mortgage you can’t pay!’ Or perhaps they are, but we only have this moment, and if we spend it thinking about the disasters of the world or the wolf at our door, we will perpetuate these situations and dig ourselves deeper into our perceived misery.

  The article talked about meditation and taking time to ‘just be’. About examining ourselves and our belief systems in order to figure out what is holding us back, what is getting in the way of our dreams. About forgiving past events and people, about forgiving ourselves, about creating space to allow our true selves to emerge and to shine in the sunlight. It all felt rather inwardly-focused and selfish as I read the article. Just another layer to the self-absorbed culture we are raising our children in. The ‘Look at me!’ culture of selfies and sharing your breakfast with the world. But I see now that I missed the point. Perhaps re-connecting with yourself and finding what truly makes you happy is the best way to heal the world.