for a short time...

Anyone who has seen Weddings, Parties, Anything live has probably seen them end their show with their song ‘For a short time’. If you know the song and the band, you know its an elegy for lives cut short and the moments we let slip through our fingers. As the gig draws to an end, drunken fans will clasp each other tightly, thinking wistfully of people who have disappeared from our lives, before the lights come up and they weave their way back into the night air. 

And so  on Friday the grandfinal eve show from WPA beckoned and we headed to the Palace in Bourke Street to relive all of our favourite songs until we reached this point – the end of the line for tonight and Mick began to introduce the song. Tonight though, things seemed different. The mood grew sombre and it seemed as if everyone was thinking of the same person, of a woman we hadn’t even met, but whose face had been on our newspaper covers and our online news feeds all week. At the front of the stage I was mesmerised by a couple, all vacant eyes, adrift in a sea of people, clinging to each other in order to stay afloat. As the song commenced, he grasped a white handkerchief and began to sob uncontrollably, his body shaking and twisting. 

On stage the band stepped back, silent figures in the light while the crowd kept singing. Was it just me or were we all singing about the same person as we began with “Faces come and faces go”? Did we choke slightly on our words when we got to, “But when a face just disappears, You record it as a crime”? The air was heavy, thick with melancholy and for one moment our disparate lives all joined together, threads of loss, confusion and pain binding us as one. People sang as a collective caught in a moment of remembrance – perhaps for a stranger called Jill or perhaps for their own pain bundled up tightly in the corners of their hearts.

Tomorrow, people will forget this moment. We will push to the back of our minds the pain that comes when the candle of a life is snuffed out. We will look away from two people crying and clinging together in a moment of uncontrollable grief. We will use the term heartbreaking loss to describe a football match, and we will watch the news tonight to see people crying over not winning a silver cup. Life will continue on as it has. We will go out for coffee, we will laugh with our friends, we will let the light shine in. In these moments I will hope that we might bind ourselves together over more than a collective grief, that we might be able to join as a community for longer than the span of a song, and instead walk together through both the good times, and the bad. 

a beginning

It was raining when I woke and I knew that this was not a good sign. I remembered a meeting I’d had with a university lecturer years before. He had an easy, creeping smile and shiny, sweaty skin that sticks in my memory.  During our meeting we’d crossed the campus to get coffee, only to find ourselves having to run back to his office in the unseasonal rain which had started to fall from the heavens. “The rain is an auspicious sign”, he said smiling at me as he twisted and flicked the black leather band he wore around his wrist. I’d turned and left his office never to return. I felt it then and I felt it now. Something was very wrong.

They say stories start at the beginning, but looking back I can’t quite pinpoint when that moment was.

I padded out into the house and everything looked so normal, papers on the bench where I had left them, a solitary cup still draining on the sink. Pulling back the curtains the sun was streaming through the window and my feeling of dread grew stronger. Despite all evidence to the contrary, something had changed.

Gravitational Force

The Saturday paper lies
before me,
one line flashing
'It would be like knocking on the door of a house in which you used to live'.
Madness.
Stupidity.

The idea blooms.

I slow the car,
pause,
hesitate,
then,
keep driving.

Like the cycle of the moon,
I return.
Pulled by gravitational force
Madness.

The house sits.
Still.
Dark.
Yet,
so alive with memory
It's almost breathing.

I slow,
pause,
for a moment
the world stops turning.
I fail
and drive on.

Jasmine curls over the verandah
Roof paint peels
The number on the door is fading,
But the stained glass panel
Vibrates with light.

At the gate
I am frozen
disconnected
Someone's hand outstretched
Lifting up the latch
My feet and hands move without my knowing.

A stranger opens my door
Confusion
I'm rambling
incoherent
and yet,
she opens the door wider
and I walk in.
I step over the threshold

Snapshots filter
float
and disappear.

Laughter
Love
A bride
This threshold

A kitchen bench
Christmas
A new baby
This threshold

Tears
Anger
Accusations
This threshold.

Still here
My windows
My glass
Greens, reds, gold
Love in each panel
My hand traces them and lingers
And the house almost sighs with my touch.

She stands
awkwardly
she is the stranger here.

Within these walls
my memories
my love
my sadness
my regret
While the house eases with my presence
I begin to fracture
Cracking under the weight of it

I thank her
wish her well
I step over the threshold

unfolding

Déjà vu overwhelms me,

the force of it so strong I feel as if I have been punched in the stomach.

Air rushes out of my lungs,

leaving me gasping  

I have been here and seen this before.

Looking around the walls,

posters I’ve never laid eyes on

suddenly seem familiar.

people before me

an assortment of poses and conversations,

all this too I have seen  

What is it?

What happens next? 

I rack my brain trying to remember the dream I’ve had in which I’d seen all this transpire.

Memory is failing me as the power of the realisation I’ve been here before takes over.  

Think, what happens now? 

I cannot recall it,

and press my forehead to the cool of the glass window,

while I wait,

a helpless bystander

waiting for the present to unfold.

Geography 101

small hands splay
over the muted pinks, browns, blues and greens
the atlas lays open
far off lands
and lives
await

older hands grasp a guide book
pins on a map
the globe spins
haphazard slips of paper lie stuck on objects
foreign labels
her tongue rolls
working words
and language
she is yet to use

down a corridor
my foot snags on faded carpet
the postcards slide between the glass and wood of the cabinet
images of distant places
and always
her loopy writing
a kiss at the end

the borders of your country are shrinking
the back fence
the front yard
the corner of the street
and yet
within
an entire world

the waiting

when i think of you, dad
i think of emily dickinson,
'because i would not stop for death'
and then i think of the waiting

i try not to think of the waiting
its bad luck i tell myself
you'll make it happen
thinking of it makes it grow, 
it blooms
spreading out
and filling up all the spaces
like melancholia
and heartache
the waiting can take over happiness
and life
it can consume me

but the waiting cannot stop it
life bursts
expands
like a ripe fruit
whose skin is ready to split
bruised
but whole

i think of you both
and the cliches roll in
like waves
the two of you in a sunlit photo
your faces flash white
smiles broad
sheltered in each others' arms
the waiting has not stopped you

i'm almost the age
when death first tried to take you from us
in a hospital bed tied up with tubes
you whispered to my mother that you wanted to see  me grow
and here i am

grown

i remember the door
with the special buzzer you must press to gain entrance
when little i could not see up to it
now i've pressed it many times
been ushered through
sat beside you
your skin ashen
your breathing laboured
and then suddenly
a change
and
laughter

a hospital corridor
a window that leads to the sea
'its not a bad view' you say
you walk down the corridor
your gown tied around your back
your legs white encased in stockings
they lead you away from me
and then later you say
'every day you wake up is a good day'
the waiting has not taken us yet

we sit on a train and wind our way to the city
the specialist shakes his head and says its too risky
better to take our chances with life
and keep on living
outrun the waiting

i watch my friends
the waiting has stopped for them
their parents
gone
sometimes too quickly
i stand behind them in churches
they are hollowed out with grief
with loss

instead i have you both
and the waiting lurks in the background

i ring you each day
same time
same place
same words
i love you

if you don't answer
i panic
i know what this means
i get in my car
i drive home
i brace myself for the body blow
it does not come
the waiting still lurks
silent
and brooding

you fooled us once,
twice,
three times,
more
they called me
'i've got your mum on the phone'
is this it?
her voice
small
and tight
spinning down the line
you were still there

hearts pump, then cease
arteries flow, then clog
lungs bloom, then fade
cancer invades, then breeds
you outwait them all

her breath catches 
she holds your hand
racking sobs that no-one else sees
she counts off days, years, memories
for my mother there are three
you, her and the waiting

i am greedy
i want you both
for myself
and so
in the night i think of the waiting

in the day though
there's nothing but sunshine
ripe fruit
with small bruises

breathe. just breathe.

grief.
it can overwhelm, drowning you like a wave and you feel like you might never break through the surface to gulp down air.
breathe.
just breathe.

my father's hand starts to shake first.
the shake grows up his arm
i turn my head slightly
his lip quivers
tears roll down his cheeks
where is he lost?
in memories of a sister when she was younger?
in memories of all that has transpired since?
loss
3 left
a family begins with 10
3 left

i take his hand in mine
when did this change?
when did the daughter take the hand in strength rather than the other way round?
i tell myself
breathe
just breathe
 

yesterday i went to my aunt's funeral and i stood like an observer watching people and watching their manifestations of grief. i saw family members i had not seen for a long time -people who looked as familiar as me and yet who grow unknown as we all get older. another aunt kisses me and tells me i haven't changed a bit. it must be at least 10 years since i've seen her - surely i've changed in that time, but we were not here for a family catch up but rather to say goodbye to one of us.

time and distance had meant I hadn't seen my aunt for a while and the hours we'd spent around that part of the family as small children had been eked out into longer and longer distances of time between visits. the last time i'd seen her was 2 years ago when i'd taken my parents to visit while i was working in her town for the day.

i was uncomfortable then.
we stopped at her house and everything was smaller, older, and grubbier. 
the room was too hot, too dirty, too decaying and she was slumped in a chair and couldn't remember me as the little girl she'd seen years and years before. there was no where to sit as every surface was covered in the detritus of a life long lived. flies crawled on discarded food and i couldn't breathe. i couldn't invest in it emotionally - i had nothing to give her - my time wasn't available to her and so i walked out the door and back into my own life. yesterday i looked at a photo of her from years before and wondered when it was that she ceased to be that person- perhaps sometime long before, like katrina in bruce dawe's poem she had been 'suspended between earth and sky'. the priest said something that made me think of that and a glimmer of light moved between the stained glass windows.

i watched her children. separated from each other they couldn't bear to be in the same space in the church. one slumped over a seat, grief had knocked the air from her lungs. the other chain smoked outside, a lost, listless look in his eyes. he couldn't wait for the day to be over and for the rest of his life as an orphan to begin. cast adrift in your 60s with no parent to hold your hand. there are stories for each of them. they are not my stories to tell. only they know the secrets in their souls and what led them to this point. they grieve for different things and for different reasons.

the cemetery is perched on a windy hill and overlooks the sea. the sky turned black and the wind was howling when we arrived. people sheltered under umbrellas that flipped inside out and the rain pelted against us. suits became darker with rain and shirts transparent. I stood beside the son under an umbrella. his arm shook and he struggled to keep it upright. he turned away from the grave, a vacant look in his eyes. he turned to me and spoke,  'let's get this over with'. with nothing to keep him anchored to the earth the wind could have picked him up and carried him away.

my father faltered. he moved towards the grave. he stepped back. my mother took his arm and he said 'i'll say goodbye from here'. he could move no closer. we almost ran back to the car, to the warmth, the dry and to the rest of our lives.i hugged them both tighter when i left to come home. i squeezed tightly to keep the memory of that hug in a corner of my brain.

today i feel like a bit of dried up chip.
i grieve for all that has gone before me-  the childhood memories i let slip out of my mind, pushed out by mindless trivia and the moments we don't realise are precious until they are gone.
breathe
just breathe