In Danger

by Josepha Dietrich

  In the end my mother was going to die of organ failure brought on by a medically induced coma, not by the creep of cancer’s throttling tendrils.

  In the last week of Mum’s life three Canberran friends had flown up. Ngaire and two others: a psychologist and talented painter with his wife, who worked in promotions and made people welcome as if she’d harnessed some of the sun’s warmth.

  The day they all went to see Mum in hospital, I took them out to lunch on a cliff top overlooking a sparkling Gold Coast beach. I’d driven down that morning with Ngaire and hadn’t had much time alone with my mother. Before I left to drive them to a seafood lunch I leant over the hospital bed and hugged Mum tightly and she said, You don’t have to go.

  I smiled and replied, I know, but they’ve come all this way and I should take them out.

  Mum nodded then hugged me again. You’re being so brave, my darling.

  Not really, I replied, then left for lunch.

  These inane words turned out to be the last I ever spoke with my mother. If only I’d known, I would never have taken her friends to lunch. I would’ve stayed and said all the bottled-up things I realised I wanted to say after she died, like: I loved my childhood, thank you for that, you were a wonderful mother and life teacher, I’m so proud of you and you’ll be okay.

  When my mother died, so too did my history. I was marooned in the present without a past storyteller – my co-truthteller. Now the only past I had was my own recall of events – no new baby stories or anecdotes. Orphaned to the present.

  Three days before Christmas – five years after her death – I put my mother’s collection of postcards into a display folder. They dated back to the early 1970s. On the back of a lot of them were scrawled words from men who’d loved my mother. One in particular, a man who’d met her when they were both students doing the extra postal rounds at Christmas, wrote 60 postcards. He also wrote multiple letters which hadn’t survived. My mother didn’t have much luck in her later relationships but at least she inspired great passion and love in the men she did hold close. No small thing. I remembered when she handed them to me from her stationery drawer and I said, Cool, I can use them.

  Don’t you dare, she’d replied, these are my collection.

  I turned over a postcard of a brightly coloured teddy bear and it was from ‘Janette’, congratulating Mum on her daughter’s arrival into the world. It was addressed to Heather and Roger: this was the first time I’d seen evidence of my parents on the same page, proving, finally, that they had once been a couple in a public way. On another card was a 1920s-inspired art deco image of two women dancing – inside was the message: Happy 21st, may you be successful in all your endeavours.

  Christmas Day

  Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

  William Shakespeare, Hamlet

  Next of kin? asked a triage nurse, as I stood swaying with nausea. I was having an allergic reaction to prawns, one week after my mother’s death. It was close to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Next of kin?

  My mother died at 8 p.m. on Christmas Day. For all the years I’d put her name down, automatically, on all official documents. I could no longer do that.

  B, my partner, is my next of kin. I’d responded with a full sentence to reconfirm and sound it out in my head for the first time – my mother was dead. My father, and every other remaining relative, lived in England. I felt more than orphaned. I felt the weight of my mother’s death rest again on my chest. Motherless.

  I supported my mother with my physical presence as she died. I prepared her Tibetan chants for death (on CD) with a mantra placed over her heart, as advised by a Tibetan Buddhist nun, Thubten. My mother took refuge in the Buddha in the last year of her life, which is a ritual similar to baptism for Christians.

  I touched her one last time. Holding her head next to mine: cheek to cheek. You can go now, Mum. I love you. I kissed her warm forehead and felt her short curly hair. To look at my mother was like looking at a part of me – I knew her better than any other human being.

  Two hours before my mother’s death we’d taken a break at a coastal lookout. The sun was setting and a flock of birds was returning home. Tess took a photo of B and me sharing a kiss; it’s still on our fridge. On the drive back to the hospital an ultra-real glow of burning orange illuminated the inside of our car as the sun finally went down. Every moment in that car trip back to her bedside felt like levitating. I was encased in a film so otherworldly that any question directed at me was muffled, as if it was spoken through a thin wall.

  I entered Mum’s room expecting her to be in the same position. She wasn’t. A nurse had set a sheet so that it no longer rested upon her body, but over the bed’s sidebars. The nursing staff had turned Mum onto her right side. Music was playing, not hers, but the nurse’s. The room was cocooned. The curtains were drawn, the lights turned low. I stood as close to Mum as possible, searching her face for her presence, my chest wracked with sobs. My mother was dying, the time had come, and I was scared.

  A nurse came up behind us and said something about making her comfortable. It was a clear message that my mother was going. The nurse stepped delicately into our grief and out of it.

  At that stage I only wished for Mum to die in grace, something she’d wanted. I didn’t think of what it meant to no longer share a cup of tea or hear her voice.

  The last year of my mother’s life was a real ‘journey’. Heather, what cleansing! Thubten had said in response to the year’s difficulties and the awareness Mum brought to her impending death. To which Mum had playfully responded, Yeah, great. What’s Buddhism ever done for me?

  I sat in a chair next to the bed, staring directly at Mum’s mouth and face. B was next to me and Tess was on the other side of the bed, watching Mum’s ribcage. We kept vigil, remained silent and didn’t touch, as in Buddhist practice.

  Breathe in. The sound was audible as her life force struggled in one of its last remaining activities. She was Cheyne–Stokes breathing: her ribcage would expand in a deep breath then deflate like it was sinking to the bottom of a pool.

  Breathe out. I sighed with relief as my mother’s lungs kept working.

  Breathe in. I didn’t capture her on video for her future grandchildren.

  Breathe out. My mother was still in the room with me.

  Breathe in. The gap between in-breath and out was growing.

  Breathe out. Mum’s face was white and still but her presence was warm.

  Breathe in. Her grey-black curls framed her face gently. She appeared peaceful.

  Breathe out. I wondered if she knew where she was.

  Breathe in. Mum had taken refuge in the Buddha from a Tibetan high priest. Was it helping her to leave life?

  Breathe out. All financial loose ends were tied up.

  Breathe in. Mum knew I had a wonderful partner, whom she’d dubbed the golden boy.

  Breathe out. She was a great mother.

  Breathe in. Where are you going, Mum?

  Breathe out.

  Tess and I looked up at one another and half-smiled in recognition.

  My mother was dead.

  She was so brave. It was easy to focus on the complexity of Mum’s emotions and panicked fears in her relationships with men, but when big stuff happened she was calm; she was strong. She died with dignity and grace, as she’d wanted. I was so proud of her.

  Worrying: am I on the right path?

  It’s okay to keep hearing your worries, so long as you

  stop talking to them. Shun them like a double-crossed Quaker.

  Imagine how quiet it would be, like shutting off the droning ocean.

  That’s how our parasites must feel about our hearts.

  What a racket, all that pumping. shut up shut up

  Jennifer Michael Hecht, ‘My Hero’

  If
only I could shut up this gnawing doomsday script in my head. After I finished my cancer treatments and I was given the all clear, I flipped from I’m cancer free to My chances of remaining cancer free are low anxieties. I had a whirly rumination track that repeated conversations or thoughts – including one I wished I’d never had.

  When I was 21 I decided to meet with my mum’s psychic and have a session. Her home was in the Blue Mountains. At the time my mother was living in North Richmond at the base of the mountains. It’s a small town on the flat near Bells Line of Road, a main road up into the mountains. When you drive up this steep road the bellbirds call to one another across dense trees.

  At this time Mum was still a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. In a few months she’d end the disastrous relationship she had with a faculty professor who loved porn. And she’d also be diagnosed with cancer.

  The psychic seemed a rational woman with a stable family life and comfortable home. She was grounded and kind. In fact, that year she stopped doing readings to focus on her art, as according to Mum she found the responsibility and burden of her psychic connection too much. I have a dim memory of Mum saying the psychic didn’t want to tell people about their futures anymore. Had she really been able to, anyway?

  I sat down in her room; the psychic connected with her guide then started the tape recorder. I have a copy of this conversation on tape, moulding away in a box under the house. She told me that I’d make a wonderful mother. There was a hint of sadness in her voice, which I wished I’d asked about. I remember just thinking, Yeah, I know I will. Nothing wrong with this; I liked this information about good mothering. Then she said that at around 40 years of age I’d say That’s enough to mothering and write poetry. At the time I just shrugged and thought, Cool, I have kids, not sure about poetry though. Next I asked about the children’s father and she said I’d spend the rest of my life with him.

  Back in the cancer present this conversation played again and again in my mind: the comments about poetry and the rest of my life. I projected my son’s situation onto it and questioned, Was this destined? Could I have changed this? I dropped this thinking quick smart.

  The thing that kept bugging me was poetry at 40. I was terrified, as if my life depended upon it, that I wouldn’t get to write again until I was 40 or, worse, that my writing would lead nowhere. Plus I was no poet.

  When I was told, You have invasive ductal carcinoma, I didn’t feel I’d achieved what I was capable of or wanted out of life. My mother felt the same.

  Throughout recurring bouts of breast cancer Mum struggled with letting go of her near-complete PhD so that she could focus upon her joy, which was felting. I used to joke that if she could have felted her PhD, it would have been completed in one year.

  Mum stretched out her PhD until it flaked at the edges. She died with a chapter and a half left before submission. So much of her research and years spent thinking and writing went unrewarded. Mum was supposed to write her PhD while living in the Northern Rivers, recovering from cancer. Five years on from my mother’s death I was about to pick up my master’s after finishing major cancer treatment. I didn’t want to die with unfinished work. I didn’t want to die at all.

  Physical intimacy: what is sexuality?

  The saying is true: ‘The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.’

  William Shakespeare, Henry V

  No one – not even breast care nurses – told me my vagina might shrink to the size of a raisin. When my oncologist explained the barrage of drugs required to suppress my body’s natural production of oestrogen, I dived into the literature on sudden menopause. Anything vagina-related took third place or lower in medical literature and personal accounts of psychosexual issues for women post-treatment. The focus was on hot flushes and low libido.

  The heat surges I’d covered; the dry martini I had not.

  In daily life you’re rarely aware of your vagina, snug and warm between your legs, unless, of course, it’s titillated or develops thrush. However, after chemotherapy I noticed a chafing sensation. Or worse, after my first forays into riding a bike, a sore feeling, as if I’d been cut. Basically she had a dry throat and thin skin that only false lubrication could quench.

  I returned to the vagina literature. There were a few lubricants recommended for women with hormone-positive breast cancer. I only needed the occasional KY to make myself comfortable but there were others: Replens was an oestrogen-free, long-lasting moisturiser. Sylk was a natural personal lubricant that helped end the ‘dry spells’, as it said on their home page. Or there was Astroglide personal lubricant. This lube had the most interesting backstory.

  Dan Wray stumbled on the product while working on the cooling system of a space shuttle at Edwards Air Force Base in 1977. He tried to remove the oil from anhydrous ammonia and ended up with this substance. As a joke he gave a colleague some in a glass jar. The colleague later returned, red-cheeked, for a refill. This was the beginning of his multi-million-dollar affair with gliding gel. What I wanted to know was: the caustic ammonia bit was gone, right?

  Part of saying goodbye to my sex drive and part of my sexual identity as a woman was recalling my sexy 20s, when I did experiment and have sexual partners. My body was very fit and healthy from rock climbing, and I revelled in sharing its pleasures.

  Chemotherapy and my maintenance drug regimen made me blasé about a diminishing sex drive. I never thought this possible. Who? Me? My falling libido meant I didn’t care that it was lowered because, well, it was lowered.

  In a way it came as a relief. Our sex drive can drive so much in our daily interactions. An attraction at a party can lead to an animated conversation, and jealousy in a partner. Now, it was like I’d stepped off the hormonal needs cycle and stood back like a great-grandmother with all of ‘that stuff’ behind her. Another focus drove my interactions.

  Do you still find me attractive? I made a funny face at B. We were sitting on our click-clack wooden couch in the lounge room.

  Of course, he replied and smiled. The three casement windows with bobbled glass let in a subdued light from the overcast day outside.

  I pointed to my Hollywood boobs and said, Even with these?

  B reflected for a minute then said, It’s different, I focus elsewhere now.

  Okay. This was fine with me. Are you worried that we might become a no-sex couple? We won’t always be one. It’s just that I’m not feeling like a sexy lady, I babbled on.

  Sure. B gave a Don’t be silly look and added, All couples go through highs and troughs in their lives together. I know we’ll get sexy again. I don’t feel that interested at the moment either.

  Right. He was so logical and so assured. I wondered if B’s sense of stability in relationships was because his parents had stayed together and worked side by side as creators of substantial gardens most of their adult lives. When it came to relationships my emotional ground was much rockier. I knew that relationships failed and marriages ended, and that sometimes passion turned violent. I once witnessed my mother thrown against a flimsy wooden cupboard. It had creaked like it was cracking. I was nine, and raced up the stairs to my private attic bedroom that I loved so much. Mum had raced up the stairs too and found me cowering under the duvet.

  Look what you’ve done! she screamed down to her circus ringmaster.

  She had thrown the first punch.

  Now I was a eunuch woman, and focussed on other things to do in bed, like reading as much as possible. Flippancy aside, the relief of the situation reminded me of what it had been like to find a life partner. The energy involved in trying to meet the right one or partner up once you did went into other life pursuits, like focussing on study, career decisions or home building. The same with diminishing sexual desire.

  At the time I was resigned – this was how it was going to be. And later, when my desire for B returned, it stemmed from a different place. Just like the brain attempts
to create different neural networks after cerebral damage, my desire for my partner was top-down, head first instead of lust first. The arousal came from my love for him and the way he smelt. As the comedian Robin Williams joked, you want someone who gives good mind. The rest follows.

  But my vagina itself? It was not dried-grape size, but it wasn’t yoga queen either. For several years the elasticity of my vaginal tissue was reduced because of low oestrogen, and this made full sexual intercourse almost impossible, and extremely painful without synthetic lubrication. I’d spoken with quite a few women about this side effect of their treatment and one woman in particular introduced me to plastic vaginal expanders provided by her radiation nurses. I called the hospital straight away, leaving a message with a male oncologist standing in for mine. The message read:

  Want to get my portacath out so I can return to New Zealand and trek with my family without worrying about getting it flushed or having my pack’s straps irritate it. I also want some vaginal expanders as I’m shrinking.

  As getting an appointment and seeing my oncologist or any medical specialist took a while, I’d taken matters into my own hands. I decided that as my body was fit from the gym post-chemo I should similarly get my vagina in shape post-chemo too. I went online and found a women-focussed sex aid site and bought a toy. It resembled a large, somewhat dented U with one side smallish and the other side bigger. And it was purple. I was going to practise until perfect like all good devotees. Smirks aside, I needed to get her adequately stretched again if I wanted a full sexual life. At the time there was no motivation, as it basically hurt like I was being injured. Eventually, though, it worked pretty well, so I upgraded to a waterproof vibrator.

  Another trick I’d heard about was to pop a Vitamin E capsule inside you daily to lubricate the walls of your vagina. I didn’t need to try this at that point. Sex had re-entered my life, but all the surgery and particularly drugs had aged me in ways I never could have foretold.