Sweet Surrender (19 page)

It took me three days to restore order. The bookshelves, groaning with volumes of art history, were dusted. I found a copy of her PhD thesis and examples of various educational programs she designed while working at the university. It was like looking down a long corridor into her past life; that huge part of her life when I didn't know her and she had no knowledge of me. There were pieces of art I loved so much I just wanted to frame them and take them home, and Ken kept suggesting I should take whatever I liked. But I couldn't bring myself to take a single thing. I felt uncomfortable with the thought of removing anything from her studio while she was still here, wandering in and out from time to time. To me, it was still very much her special place, as though she might one day walk in again, sit down and pick up a paintbrush.

On the weekend we were visited by Margaret's old friend, who greeted her tenderly; she smiled broadly in return, and for a moment there was a flicker of recognition. I showed him the works I had sorted in the studio and also the ones I had carefully wrapped in the basement. He was most impressed by her body of work – I suspected her fellow academics didn't realise she had such an active life as an artist outside her day job as an assistant professor.

Her friend suggested that a selection of Margaret's works should be included in a large exhibition at the university gallery the following year. He believed it would be appropriate to make a special feature of Margaret, as the exhibition was to celebrate the anniversary of the art education department where she worked for so long. There would be a catalogue and a tribute in it to her, which I could help to write. I was thrilled. Ken was thrilled. In such a short time our problem about
caring for her works had been solved and the bonus was that Margaret would be recognised for the talented and dedicated woman that she had always been.

It had been nearly three months since I was at home and David and I had an urgent need to spend some time together after what had been a hectic and, at times, harrowing year. In among our heartfelt exchanges about Margaret's condition, more personal and loving emails were flying back and forth, a reflection of the strength of our new relationship. David even started doing something I would never have thought imaginable for him – sending me sexy emails about his plans for my return. He'd stocked the pantry and cellar with good food and wine and he was proposing we lock ourselves up at the farm for a few days and just have fun. This was so unlike the old David; the work-driven, self-absorbed David. He'd become so much more communicative and romantic that I almost wondered if he was drawing on some film script for inspiration. But I wasn't about to quibble. I was thrilled by his enticing words and it made me hunger to jump on the plane and head home to be with him.

This desire was counterbalanced by the knowledge that in leaving I also had to say goodbye again to Margaret and Ken. I wasn't worried about them in any immediate sense as I knew they were now very well cared for and that their physical health was not fragile as such. It was
just that I had an appreciation of how much moral support I was able to offer them during what was easily the most difficult time of their lives. I knew how Ken's spirits lifted when I was there to spend time talking to him and listening to his poignant reminiscences of his life with Margaret. I also knew that Margaret became more animated and lively when I was around. Just having one extra pair of hands to help made a tremendous difference.

We had a lovely last evening meal together and then for the first time Margaret didn't come to say goodbye at the airport because it was a night flight and she was already tucked into bed. I said goodnight, and gave her my usual gentle face massage as she drifted off, and I reminded her that I was leaving and wouldn't see her again for some time. She didn't seem to register this information at all.

I hugged Ken and promised to return as soon as I could, and dashed for the little plane to Vancouver city. The long, tedious flight home allowed me plenty of time for reflection and I thought constantly about Margaret and the quality of her life as it was at that moment, and then into the future.

I am aware that a decade ago I would have been a keen advocate for euthanasia for anyone in Margaret's situation. When you view people's circumstances from a distance, using intellect rather than heart and emotion to make judgements, then mercy killing of people with advanced dementia may seem an acceptable, even desirable, option. But from where I now stand, up close and totally involved, the thought of ‘putting her out of her misery' is abhorrent to me.

There are many levels to this argument. I feel strongly that if Margaret were in any position to make the decision for herself then she would undoubtedly opt not to continue with her life. Margaret has always been an intensely private, self-sufficient and independent woman. She has carried with her the scars of her sad childhood and teenage years and risen above all these obstacles to create a happy and fulfilling life for herself. She has enjoyed a successful career and marriage and she
lives in a beautiful home environment that is very much of her own making. She has a wide circle of good friends and a small circle of very dear friends; she has always fostered warm relationships with Ken's family and she has enjoyed travelling and music and art and literature. She can't participate in any of these things any more. She has been reduced to a shell of her former self. A frail and addled person who can only muddle through each day with a great deal of physical assistance and support and love from those around her.

That's the crux of it: love. Margaret is still very much a loved and valued member of her family, and I am quite certain she still feels emotions such as love as well. It's obvious to me that she feels frustration and confusion and even anger at times because she has enough awareness to know that something completely out of her control has taken over her body and her life. Yet when she smiles, or reaches out a hand, or puts her head on a shoulder, or gives a spontaneous hug, there's no doubt that the loving Margaret still exists inside that shell.

There are all the legal and ethical questions, of course. Who makes that decision about ‘if and when' another person should die? Margaret is certainly in no state of mind to make any decisions at all, let alone life-and-death decisions. Do the husband or wife or children decide? Do the doctors decide? Does a panel that includes family and members of the medical profession decide? I would have to say no to all of these options. It's just not a decision anyone can make for anyone else, regardless of the situation.

I'm not anti-euthanasia per se, but many aspects of its implementation disturb me deeply, and I think we are a long way from working through all the legal and ethical arguments to create a model that works perfectly in our society. Certainly I oppose it in situations such as Margaret's, where she has lost cognitive function to the point where she's incapable of deciding the time is right to die. Certainly I'm against it in situations such as my grand-daughter Isabella's, where she has mental and physical disabilities that have made her childhood such a
difficult and at times painful journey. She's a child, and cannot make such a decision for herself, therefore nobody has a right to make that decision on her behalf.

There's another feeling that never leaves me. In these sad situations, the people around the sufferer – the family and the friends and the close carers – have an opportunity to express their love and devotion in many wonderful ways. Looking after Margaret can be soul-destroying and exhausting and frustrating and heartbreaking. Yet, equally, it is often uplifting and heart-warming and tender and satisfying. When I sit on the edge of her bath massaging her arms and legs with soothing oils, I know I am giving of myself to her and making the quality of her life as good as it possibly can be under these distressing circumstances. I have learned a lot about myself through this experience. I have learned that I can be patient and slow-moving, which are not my usual qualities. I've always charged at life like a bull at a gate. My children were all out of bed, bathed, dressed and breakfasted before they had time to think about it. I'm a speedy person: David calls me hyperactive. Caring for Margaret has taught me to slow down – I simply can't hurry her and so, willingly, I surrender to the beauty of being her carer. Of slowly walking at her side, supporting her all the way, no matter how long the journey or how difficult.

I'm very scared at the prospect of Margaret dying. I'm scared that it will be drawn out and painful and, quite possibly, humiliating and frightening for her. But I don't know what else to do but remain at her side as much as I can right through this whole awful business. I know Ken feels exactly the same way.

I've always believed that birth is a natural process and that we should resist medical intervention as much as humanly possible. The pain and difficulty of birth somehow prepares the parents for the pain and difficulty that must sometimes accompany caring for that child. Death is a bit the same way. It's part of our life journey but, sadly, there is a lot of medical intervention that prolongs life and therefore makes
that pain last longer than it should otherwise. We are trapped in this cycle. Without her medication I feel certain Margaret and others in her situation would be ‘demented' in the true sense of the word. But perhaps they wouldn't live as long – they would explode in a frenzy of anxiety and confusion and their descent into a coma would be much more rapid.

A coma. That's what we have been told to expect. A point at which Margaret can no longer get out of bed and walk. She will curl up and entirely shut out the rest of the world.

I don't know how I will feel when that day comes.

When Margaret and I were reunited in 2002, our most intense conversations revolved around our relationships with our late father, Theo. From my sister's perspective, her problems with him were the motivating force that drove her from our family home and kept her from making contact with us for nearly fifty years. My anger with him was not as intense, but I also disdained his lifestyle and behaviour.

These days, however, I sometimes feel I have judged my father harshly. On the surface it may not appear so. He was indeed a hard-drinking, self-absorbed man who was unfaithful to his wife and had an explosive temper that led to domestic violence. He smoked and gambled and frittered away ever pound he ever earned, leaving his family financially insecure and emotionally drained.

However, as I approach sixty, there are aspects of my father's character that I can finally appreciate. The fact that he killed himself at the age of sixty-two is a telling key to his personality, and one that I think I at last understand.

Dad simply did not want to grow old. He had abused his body with alcohol and tobacco and he looked ravaged. Indeed, looking back at the
few family photographs we have of him – like me, he took all the photos and was therefore seldom in them – I can see that from the age of forty he looked much, much older than his years. I have one photo of him in his late fifties, and in it he looks considerably older and more weather-beaten than David does now, even though he is about to turn seventy.

At the first sign of disruptive physical illness – he had a hiatus hernia, not so easy to repair surgically in those days as it is now – my father made the decision that he did not wish to continue living. As I've also described, I believe he suffered from undiagnosed manic depression or bipolar disorder. Combined with the fact that he and my mother were in the midst of a messy and dramatic marriage break-up, these were no doubt the major factors that led to his death. He used alcohol and sleeping pills and didn't leave a note.

Although he grew up in the slums of Melbourne, his mother recognised that her third son was bright and talented, and managed to get him into Melbourne High School, where he attained sufficiently good marks to land a job as a copy boy and then later a cadet journalist on the Melbourne
Herald
. Not bad for a boy from Fitzroy.

Like many outstanding journalists of the era he was proudly ‘self-educated', in the sense that he was a voracious reader and acquired a broad general knowledge and a love of literature by burying himself in books. In his early twenties he met and fell in love with the beautiful Veronica, who came from a much more comfortably-off family. Theo wanted to travel and managed to get a job as a steward on an ocean liner bound for London. He no doubt had his eyes on Fleet Street. Veronica joined him after a few months and they hastily married. My half-brother, Jon, was born four months later, so it would seem that Veronica only discovered her pregnancy after Theo had left Australia, and fled the family home to be with him overseas. Needless to say, her parents did not approve of the union.

My father was politicised by the Great Depression, and joined the Communist Party, as many creative and intellectual people did at the
time. Unlike most of them, however, he remained a member until the day he died. I have a photograph of him taking part in the massive hunger marches that took place in London in the late twenties and early thirties as unemployed workers from all over Britain converged on the capital to draw attention to their plight. Sometimes, when I was a kid, he used to let me feel the bump on his skull where he'd been bashed by a bobby's truncheon during one of these demonstrations.

He never made it to Fleet Street. After a year in London, the young couple returned to Melbourne where Dad got a job on the
Sun News-Pictorial
. My sister, Margaret, was born during this period. Theo was earning four pounds a week when he was poached by Sir Frank Packer to work as a reporter on the
Daily Telegraph
in Sydney. His new wage was seven pounds, which was quite a princely sum in those days.

It was 1940 when the family moved to Sydney and Sir Frank organised an apartment for them in Double Bay. Life looked rosy but there were problems in the marriage. Later that same year Veronica committed suicide. This devastated our father, and my mother maintained that he never fully recovered from the shock of his young first wife's death. Nobody will ever know the exact circumstances leading up to her tragic decision, but my mother suggested in conversations with me during the years she lived with us at Leura that Theo had been womanising, and carried a huge burden of guilt.

My father was a driven man, but not particularly ambitious. His work promotions came as a result of his natural talent for journalism and his strong work ethic. In spite of his alcoholism, which became chronic during the period when they lived in America, he never missed work or failed to meet a deadline. His articles and columns were spare and beautifully written and he was a stickler for correct grammar and fact checking. I grew up in a house where the news was the most important focus of every day. Every newspaper was read and dissected from the front page to the sports section, and heaven help anybody who spoke
or made a noise at seven o'clock when the evening news was broadcast on ABC radio. That half-hour was sacred.

Politics was a constant topic of discussion in our home, and our father inculcated us with his left-wing views and his philosophy of life. He was passionately anti-religion and I was banned from Sunday school, which worried me for many years. I remember begging to be allowed to join a Christian girls' fellowship (the Girls' Friendly Society) and he told me they were a bunch of lesbians. I went to school and said I was not allowed to be a member of the group because they were lesbians, and I couldn't fathom why I was ordered outside to stand in the corridor. A note was sent home and I remember Dad laughing with delight at my naïvety.

He was not an affectionate or demonstrative man but we respected him and, I believe, tried to please him. He wasn't easily able to offer praise, but he was considerate in funny ways. Some of the attitudes he adhered to rigidly have stayed with me all my life. Never be late (I'm always early). Never keep anyone waiting. Always have the correct change. Always offer your seat to others on public transport. Always allow others to go ahead of you in lines or queues. Always wear well-polished shoes (he cleaned our school shoes with spit and polish every Sunday night). Always meet your deadline!

My father could be utterly charming when he wanted to, especially around women. He was greatly admired by many of the men and women he worked with over the years, who had never witnessed his dark side, such as his temper and the violence he directed towards our mother. He never once raised a hand to me, but he did have a couple of wild fistfights with Dan when my brother reached his teens and became disobedient. I suspect it was Dan who threw the first punch.

My father never read to me or held me on his lap, but I loved the way he smelled (aftershave, I guess) and I looked forward to him coming home every night even though I knew it might be another evening of arguments and hostility. I used to hang out of my bedroom window
and watch for him walking up from the tram stop at the bottom of the road. He always had a loaf of fresh bread under his arm and a flagon of claret. Dad had a great sense of humour and was very witty and interesting to talk to. He didn't talk to me all that often (his head was always in a book and his hand was always around a glass of red) but when he did I found our conversations thrilling. He made me laugh, he teased me and taught me not to take myself too seriously. He also loved to introduce us to us risqué poems and songs, which used to drive our mother crazy. In the conservative 1950s, Dad was singing us ditties about priests with huge testicles and about Oscar Wilde's sexual proclivities.

He didn't play with us but he took us fishing at Balmoral Beach wharf if we were prepared to get up before dawn to join him. I loved it. We caught leatherjacket and tailor and took them home where Mum would fry them up for breakfast. When I was a teenager he inherited some money after the death of his remarkable mother and he bought a yacht, which he moored in Mosman Bay. We went sailing together – Jon, Dan, Dad and me – and this was the closest I ever felt to him.

Dad was highly respected as a journalist. After the war he rose through the ranks to become the editor of the
Sunday Telegraph
. He wrote book reviews every week, and got the paper out on time in spite of meddling from Sir Frank, who often arrived at the
Telegraph
offices late on Saturday night, drunk and cranky if he had lost money at the races, to try to get our father to change the front-page story. Dad would stand up to him and Sir Frank obviously thought very highly of him, although he had no idea that his editor was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party (Mosman Branch!).

When I joined Australian Consolidated Press as a copy girl in 1968 I was stampeded by people who just wanted to tell me how much they loved and respected my father. From the editor of the
Women's Weekly
, Esme Fenston, down, they considered him to have been the brightest, best and kindest journalist ever to have worked for that organisation (no
wonder I had little difficulty getting a job). Even to this day, in the course of my own work, I meet veteran women journalists who remember my dad and have nothing but good things to say about him.

He left the Packer organisation in the 1960s to work as the editor of the Waterside Workers' newspaper for two years while the regular editor was on sabbatical in Moscow (where else?). He took a massive drop in salary to do this job, and no doubt alienated himself permanently from his former employers. For him it was a strong political statement: he was frustrated with the double life he had led for so many years, a dedicated closet leftie who was editor of an ostensibly conservative tabloid newspaper. After this job ended he was editor of the
Mosman Daily
, again on a much lower salary than he had earned in his prime; this was the beginning of his physical and mental decline.

Although I felt a sense of relief when he died because of the terrible pain he was causing our mother, I now admit I loved him dearly despite his selfish and at times irrational ways. That's pretty normal, I guess. I know that Margaret expressed no such tenderness for him at all. Yet Ken has told me that after she heard of Theo's death through a handful of friends in Australia with whom she was still in touch, he found her lying on her bed and crying. It's so very sad.

I look like my dad. I have his wiry red hair, square jaw and pale, freckled skin. I have his smile, his eyes and also his wicked sense of humour. I'm driven to achieve, just as he was, and have also inherited his strong work ethic. I have many of his failings, including being an addictive personality with a penchant for wine and a wild streak sexually that has caused problems in my marriage. I don't have his quick temper and I'm not prone to violence, although I did once punch David very hard during the period when our relationship was floundering. I don't know who was more shocked and horrified – David or me.

I suspect I have inherited some of my father's charm and his ability
to work well with others. His talent for writing? It's hard to know because I was brought up with a pen in my hand and writing is as natural to me as walking. We were all big readers, and this inevitably hones writing skills, and Dad was particular about correcting us if we made a mistake – as was our mother – so we certainly had training from a very early age. I'm a stickler for putting commas in the right places, and using the correct form of the superlative.

I see some of my father's strengths and weaknesses in my own children, and I'm aware that it's impossible to avoid his genes, both good and bad. I have reached an age and a stage in my life where I am prepared to admit to myself that I am indeed very much like the man of whom I have been so critical and judgemental in the past. I don't necessarily like this fact, but it's impossible to resile from it.