The Sparrow Garden

by Peter Skrzynecki

  Drive carefully. Please forgive what I said before. I’m just a silly old woman.

  No, you’re not. There’s nothing to forgive. You said what you needed to say, whatever the reason. That’s all it was. You’re my mother and I love you. No, don’t come outside. It’s cold. Again, I put my arms around her and hugged her, gave her a kiss. She seemed so small, with such tiny shoulders. She was like a child.

  I turned around and walked away. At the front gate I stopped and waved back. She did likewise.

  I got into my car and saw that she was still there, at the front door, silhouetted in the doorway, waiting for me to drive off.

  I started the car, turned it around and looked back over my shoulder. She was gone.

  When I arrived home I discovered she’d already telephoned to tell my family that I wasn’t staying the night, that I’d left and was on my way home. She spoke to Anna. According to her, Mum sounded happy. Did I have to call back? No. Everything’s fine. No need to call back. I heard a clock ticking, even though there was no clock in the room where I was standing. Then I noticed it was my wristwatch, the one she gave me in 1968, amplified in my head, sounding like a time bomb.

  Next Stop for Me, Doctor …

  Thursday, 23 June 1994

  After speaking at Auburn Girls’ High School on Immigrant Chronicle, I drove over to visit Mum and Dad; it was just after twelve o’clock and I thought I might be able to have lunch with them. They weren’t expecting me so it would be a surprise. The surprise, however, turned out to be mine — and in the most dramatic way.

  He’s been like this since Tuesday, my mother said. He’s not well. Won’t eat. Won’t let me call the doctor. Keeps to his room. Won’t talk much. He’s in pain. You can tell. Look at the colour of his face.

  Dad was in his room, lying on the bed, face to the wall, dressed in trousers and a singlet. I managed to get him to sit up and slowly coaxed him into talking. There was two or three days’ stubble-growth on his face. His hands were cold. His skin was more blue than grey.

  He described a pain that he’d felt in his right shoulder, a pain that travelled across his chest and into his left side. Everything hurts, he kept repeating. His voice sounded tired, ancient, older than his eighty-nine years. There was a remoteness in it, as if he were speaking from somewhere other than the room we were in.

  We made our way into the lounge room and I insisted we call the doctor. No, no, my father said. I don’t want the doctor. He started to wave his arms about, and at the same time began what I could only describe as “ramblings” — sentences that were unrelated, that seemed to just come into his mind. He seemed confused. One sentence wasn’t finished before he began another, as if his memory were failing … His life in Poland, being in forced labour for five years on a farm in Germany during the Second World War, his house, his garden, Mum, myself, his grandchildren. Family names from Poland. Some I recognised; others meant nothing to me. All this “hard work” in Australia, the Water Board, “everything was coming down to this …” Coming down to what? Before he could protest further I rang for the doctor, who arrived within the hour. In the meantime, my father still refused to eat, partly withdrew into that cave of silence in which I’d found him, and sat down on the lounge opposite the front door. He insisted it be left open so he could look out on to the garden.

  Dr John Hehir, an Irishman, examined my father and took me aside. Peter, this is serious. Feliks has had a coronary. He must go to hospital.

  Why?

  There’s not much I can do here, he said.

  Why, what did you hear? As he spoke, I watched the silver stethoscope reflected in the circular mirror opposite us. What can the hospital do?

  The hospital can make him comfortable. He might pick up for a few days. Peter, it’s called “the heart’s death-rattle”.

  So that was it. We were talking indirectly about my father’s death, right there, in his presence. It never occurred to me to object to the suggestion that he should go to hospital. I turned around, explaining to my father what the doctor thought was best to do. My mother, who would usually involve herself in something like this, remained in the background, listening. My father shook his head and stood up, catching me by surprise with the lucidity of his reply: Next stop for me, Doctor, is Rookwood. He spoke shyly, almost apologetically, as if it were wrong to question a medical man’s opinion. He was pointing to the doctor, and it appeared that he was reprimanding him, but he was simply stressing the point he was making. Suddenly, the old man who had been speaking as if he couldn’t string two sentences together — as if he’d become unintelligible in his thoughts — brought the whole conversation to an end in the most crystal-clear statement. All this time he’d been listening, knowing what the doctor was referring to. My mother joined in at that point and agreed it was best for him to stay at home, for the doctor and us to make him as comfortable as possible and we, the family, would look after him, see him through whatever the next couple of days brought.

  Sure, the doctor agreed. He told me to stay in touch. He was going to a conference in Canberra on the weekend but would stop in on Saturday morning. He left some morphine tablets and told my mother to give him one tomorrow if the pain was still there, if ordinary painkillers were of no help.

  After Dr Hehir left I reassured my mother that Dad would be alright for the next few hours and that I’d return that night to check on him. He became silent, as if he’d accepted his fate, and remained his stoic self. Maybe the doctor was wrong; maybe it wasn’t what he’d diagnosed. Dad had had several turns similar to this in recent times and always managed to get through them. His resilience was of the Old Warrior kind, strong, silent, ingrained with a determination that had helped him survive those five years of forced labour in Germany; but even as we were putting him to bed he was complaining of that pain again — a pain that we thought would be helped by painkillers. His hands were cold, and, as I put him to bed and tucked his feet under the blankets, I felt the cold in them as well.

  Judy accompanied me to 10 Mary Street that night. There’d been little change in Dad’s condition since the afternoon. He’d eaten a little soup and bread at Mum’s insistence but, once more, said he had no real appetite. The painkillers had helped somewhat, but the pain had returned and spread over his body. He was adamant about getting fully dressed because he wanted to go to the toilet. When we suggested a dressing gown and slippers to go to the bathroom, he became distressed because we wouldn’t allow him to use the outside toilet.

  With the back door open, the light from the corridor and kitchen window partly illuminated the backyard as he shuffled outside, into the garden. Turn it off, he said. I know my way around without a light.

  Inside the house, the three of us drank tea and talked about the day’s events. What were they leading towards? Did we really suspect he was dying? I promised that I would call the doctor in the morning and report on his progress. Somewhere, out in the darkness, under clouds and starlight, my father was supposedly going to the toilet. There was no light in the outside toilet. Was he coping? Had he fallen in?

  I went outside and called him, asked if he needed assistance. Go inside, he replied, I’m alright. Go inside. I’ll be in soon … Please.

  His request sounded urgent, profound, yet simple. He sounded like a child who had wandered away on purpose and didn’t want to be found — not an old man who had stepped out into the darkness on the night of the day his heart had had a “death-rattle”.

  I could make out only the outlines of fruit trees, the back fence and outside buildings. It felt spooky being out in the garden with him and not being able to see him. Cricket and frog calls floated from Duck Creek over the back fence, filling the air with the sounds of my childhood. Where exactly was he? His voice sounded like it was coming from the far end of the garden, in the left-hand corner, in what had become the last remaining vegetable patch, which he’d closed off with a fence whose stakes he’d sawed and trimmed by hand. The rest of the backyard had been turned
into lawn. This had always been his sanctuary, his place of escape when he’d wanted to be alone, usually in the nearest corner, between the garage and the next-door fence. It was the garden’s “blind spot”, the place that couldn’t be seen from the house.

  By this stage it was getting late, so I returned inside. Judy said she had to go home but would return tomorrow. As she was leaving, Dad came indoors and said he was ready to go to bed. Surprised as we were, we made no remonstrative show of emotion that might make him feel as if he were being treated like an errant child. We gave him some painkillers and dressed him in his pyjamas, tucked him into bed. I told him I’d be back tomorrow. We kissed him goodnight. His body felt cold, especially the feet and hands.

  Between Friday morning and Saturday night, the visits to 10 Mary Street were interrupted by other things that had to be done. Or, conversely, the routines of daily life were broken by the visits that the whole family made to 10 Mary Street.

  On Friday morning Mum rang and told me she’d given him a morphine tablet. His pain was getting worse and ordinary painkillers were not helping. She had also telephoned for one of the Polish priests from Bankstown who said he would come immediately. By the time I arrived in the afternoon with Andrew and Anna, the priest had already been and gone. Mum said that Dad made his Confession and received Holy Communion. She explained that he was conscious while Father Józef Kołodziej ministered to him and he was aware of what was happening. As both parents grew older and were unable to travel to attend Mass, it was Father Józef who came weekly to 10 Mary Street and brought Holy Communion to them. We found Dad much the same as yesterday, however, although his face didn’t seem to be as blue. He would start up, become agitated and then calm down. We all cried and I told both children they should think about saying their goodbyes to him. He began speaking in Polish and, again, much of what he said didn’t make sense. Snippets of sentences, disjointed words; he made an effort to speak coherently, but the ability wasn’t there. Or his mouth moved as if he thought he was talking but no sounds came from his throat. He requested that Andrew clip his toenails because he wanted to look good for the doctor, who, he remembered, was stopping in tomorrow. He also wanted a bath and clean pyjamas. We said we’d return and bathe him later. During the trimming of his toenails, he called Andrew “Little Peter’s little boy”. He began talking about his boyhood in Raciborow, Poland, and said he was running through fields of rye behind his farm. There, in those fields, he had been captured by the Nazis and marched off to forced labour in Germany. Mum, who was watching and listening, said he’d been repeating that since the morning. She told us that last night, after Judy and I left, Dad got out of bed and, in his pyjamas, returned to the garden. She gave up pleading with him to come to bed. What time he returned, she didn’t know, but she thought it was around one o’clock. In the morning he was back in his bed. That struck me as being significant. Last night he didn’t want to be forced to return, but wanted to be in the kitchen to say goodnight to Judy. At the same time he wanted to spend more time in his garden. Perhaps he thought he would die there? Or perhaps he came inside when he realised it was time to let go of the garden? In doing so, I later wondered, was it his way of saying goodbye to the rural life he had in Poland as well? We made our farewells, each in turn, and promised to return.

  The next several hours were spent much in silence, whether we completed tasks or sat around and thought about the last twenty-four hours. Whatever the obvious was, nobody was articulating it. There was an inertia in the air, in whatever task had to be performed, that weighed down into the seconds ticking through us. You could almost hear the moments passing, feel each person’s burden of thoughts. Andrew and I returned that night and bathed Dad, powdered him like a baby and put him to bed.

  Mum put a woollen beanie that she’d knitted on his head and he really did look like a baby, snug in his own bed. He said, It’s warm in my bed, and smiled. He refused food. His feet and hands were still cold. Before we left I said my goodbyes to him. I held him in my arms and thanked him for looking after me, apologised for anything I might have done to cause him pain and told him I loved him. He nodded and we held hands. His eyes were closed. I left and Andrew said his own goodbyes.

  Commitments in the city took me away until Saturday afternoon. When I returned, my wife and I visited Dad, and we were joined by Judy. We learnt that Dr Hehir had called in and given him another morphine tablet. Dad was sleeping when we all arrived but he woke up, startled. He still wore his beanie. I don’t think he recognised me. Or any of us. Mum tried to give him some food but he brushed away her hand. She even tried to force a jelly bean into his mouth, telling him how much he liked jelly beans. He seemed to respond, to accept it, and moved his lips around as if he were sucking on it. While we sat there and talked, the jelly bean came sliding from his lips, its pink sugar-coating gone, just a little lump of gelatine remaining. I said goodbye, much the same as the day before. This time, as I held him, he didn’t respond by holding my hands. His eyes were closed. There was a heaviness in his body, as if sleep had entered his body permanently.

  Dad died the next morning, just before noon. I’d returned from Mass and Mum rang to say he’d stopped breathing a few minutes ago. She was by his side. I’d just got out of my car when I took the telephone call. Although it was June, it was a bright morning. The sun was on my face, birdsongs filled the garden, everything shone green with vegetation — trees, flowers, leaves. Jija was with me. The surroundings were similar to those Dad had chosen to be among all his life. Later, on reflection, it seemed appropriate that he’d died at the outset of a new week, on a Sunday, the day that had been his traditional day of worship.

  We spent most of Sunday at 10 Mary Street, saying our goodbyes to an old man who lay in his bed, small as a child, hands joined, a knitted beanie on his head, his pyjamas buttoned up under his chin, under a portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and opposite a mounted poster of Pope John Paul II, the Polish Pope, a man who had been his “hero” for reasons that he never fully explained to me. Sometimes I think he admired him not because he was Christ’s representative on earth, but because, through his election to the papacy, the world was shown that the Poles were not a defeated nation.

  The next couple of days were spent arranging the funeral, the Requiem Mass, the grave in the family plot in the Polish section, Lawn A, in Rookwood Cemetery, that my parents had bought sixteen years earlier. Everything had been finalised except for the final inscription, the date of Dad’s death — and Mum insisted that be done before the funeral. We visited a firm of stonemasons in Lidcombe to make those arrangements. Labor Funerals in Bankstown took charge of most other matters. Father Kołodziej would officiate at the Mass, to be held in the Church of St Felix de Valois, on Chapel Road in Bankstown, on Thursday, 30 June.

  There was only one other formality to attend to before the funeral, and that was the private, family “viewing of the deceased” at Labor Funerals. My father would have wanted that, as he would have wished for photographs of his funeral service to be sent later to his relatives in Poland.

  He lay with his hands folded, left over right, as if in prayer or contemplation, with rosary beads wound around his fingers. The liver spots on his left hand were very pronounced. I couldn’t remember seeing them so dark before. Later I was to learn that this happened because the blood stops flowing in the body and rigor mortis sets in. There was a small dark spot, like a bruise, in the centre of his top lip. The crucifix of the rosary beads had been placed between his forefinger and middle finger, the way a cigarette would be held, but the placement must have looked incorrect to my mother because she adjusted it so that it lay on the top of my father’s right forefinger and beneath the left. In that position, I guessed, it wouldn’t fall out.

  A rosewood coffin had been chosen. He lay in it dressed in his brown suit, cream-coloured shirt and brown paisley tie. The coffin’s white silk lining, small pillow and lace edges somehow reminded me of christenings I’d attended, with shawls and b
unny rugs in similar designs. Maybe there was a subconscious connection between the two ceremonies, one at the beginning of life, the other at the end.

  The coffin lay beneath a portrait of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the Black Madonna, the Patroness of Poland. A silver crucifix stood below the portrait. Two lit candles in tall silver holders had been placed on either side of the coffin.

  His hair was combed neatly, without a strand out of place. He look very rested, just like he might have been asleep, except I could only remember seeing him asleep on his side. His face was redder than his hands because of the rouge used to give his skin a more life-like complexion. When I bent down to kiss him there was a waxiness on his skin. I felt the coldness. I also noticed tiny beads of moisture, smaller than pinheads, that’d formed beneath the make-up.

  We sat, we knelt, we walked around. We prayed, said the rosary, said our goodbyes over and over, talked among ourselves as if we were in our home and not that small room on South Terrace, Bankstown. Yet it was neither a room in a house nor a formal chapel. Despite its religious trappings, it was nothing more than a viewing room, but its brown decor matched the brown colours of my father’s suit and that one small detail seemed to give the occasion something else, perhaps a touch of welcome, familiarity, of appropriateness.

  There was no time limit to how long we could stay, but when the time came, we knew it was time to leave. I’d taken the photographs early in the visit and bade goodbye to the earthly remains of the man who had been my adopting father, my guardian, my caretaker. For some unknown reason my mind kept returning to those early years in Germany when we lived in Lebenstedt, and what I could remember of them. I wished I’d been older at the time and could have remembered more — especially the day he met my mother. Would either of them have had the slightest inkling, as they walked back in the snow after the Christmas party, that their lives would lead them to this scene opposite Bankstown railway station tonight?