8th May 23 | Vol 2 Issue 16
The column is late this week. The late column. Somewhat appropriate for this weeks theme.
Death and taxes. I am tempted to go for a terrible updating to modern times pun: death and taxis. But considering I sat on aeroplanes for two stretches of thirty hours last month, I'm going to go with death and taxiing.
I haven't quite yet come back down to earth yet. There is nothing quite like death to make you think about living. So excuse the somewhat mosaic nature of this week's post. Death as a subject may not allow me to reach a conclusion as succinct as itself, but it does seem apt to tie together recent observations and reflections.
In the last three weeks I saw my mother for the first time in three years, the corpse of my stepmother, and the afterlife of my father.
If you walk around Adelaide's Chinatown you will find reviews from my dad pinned in restaurant windows. The premises have long changed hands, and should you ask the new owners about the journalist who wrote the glowing piece recommending their dishes, they will shrug. It was simply already there when they took over.
I saw my father die. Given my unconscious stepmother's erratic and somewhat terrifying breathing, I was convinced she was about to perish in front of me at any moment too. But she held on for days after my visit. A total of nine whole days, in fact — without food or water. This, the hospice told me, is not usual. Almost unheard of. Even for those in good health.
Something you may be unaware of is the procedure hospices use to check you're still alive. I was expecting some wires, a drip, the constant beep of monitoring. What they do is pop in every now and then and check you're still breathing. Which may be a long wait. Followed by the gasp of a swimmer coming up for air. That's it. Incredibly low-tech, and actually, rather dignified. To be left in peace, to choose when you want to exit, quietly, no alarms, no expectations.
When my grandmother was dying, my mother and I held vigil. The nursing home staff informed us people can be divided into those who wait for their loved ones to be there, and those that wait to be alone. After a day by her side, we nipped back to my mother's apartment, we had not gone two blocks before the home rang to say Gran had died.
My father on the other hand was a gregarious man — actually this isn't strictly true, but could hold the floor and a glass or two — he waited until all his family were there.
Back when I first wanted to be a writer. Rephrase, wanted to be a writer and actually tried writing something — flash fiction — my burning desire was to be published in 3AM Magazine, home to every contemporary British writer I admired. My father's death inspired the story they accepted. A beautiful inheritance, the handing of words from father to son.
www.3ammagazine.com/3am/frames
I hate the ending I wrote to the story. One day I will try and give it the finish it needs. A sentiment in keeping with this week's topic. It did not, however, contain the real story. Unlike my stepmother, my father died with tubes. Morphine on tap in fact. When I arrived, straight off the twenty four hour flight, my stepmother, Lili, took the opportunity to return home to wash and change clothes. Leaving me alone with him. I heard his dying words. For another post perhaps. He slipped into a final unconsciousness while I waited for Lili to return. Then my sister arrived, and a day later our brother.
I am an interloper. I am the first born. A brother from another mother. A foreign seed. With his family around him, talking, I decided I would go get everyone coffees. I went to kiss my father. The dead do not look like the living. They have gone. It is only a shell. Nothing is there. I saw this again accompanying my sister to view Lili's body, the same explicable transformation my Gran took from someone to nothing.
My father must have died at most mere minutes beforehand. As I kissed him I realised something was off. That he was dead, exiting quietly once the people he loved surrounded him. Feeling it was not my place, the non nuclear spawn to point out he had died unnoticed by everyone, I ventured forth to seek vended coffee from a machine, leaving his family to discover his passing. Years later my sister asked "You knew, didn't you, and didn't say anything".
Two deaths. I can not say whether Lili was waiting for solitude or for company. Though my sister camped by her bedside for days, it was hours being alone before she died. I'm going for sheer tenacity. She was not one for giving up, as my sister will testify. Sheer force of will kept her alive. And walking everyday.
Which brings me to my mother. I have in my notebook an anecdote she passed on to me, talking to a friend whose own mother had lived to over a hundred, who attributed her longevity to this maxim "Only do one thing a day, the rest is maintenance". At first it looks like this advice is about not doing too much, but the weight of the idea lies beneath the surface, in the second part. Make sure your day allows for full maintenance.
While at the hospice a doctor casually informed my sister that twenty percent of people who break a hip die. It's an incredibly vague fact. But there's some truth to it I feel. My stepmother's decline in health began with breaking her hip. And once again my own mother chatting away last week imparted perhaps the best advice I've ever heard.
"Can you stand on one foot with your eyes shut for a minute?" mother asked. Amidst her laughter it turns out I can not. Not even for three seconds.
Standing on one foot with your eyes closed is hard. Apparently far harder for men. Listen to my mother. This is important. As you age, falling and breaking a bone, a hip, becomes ever more dangerous. Becomes deadly. Practice now standing on one leg. "The rest is maintenance". Practice everyday. Be the person who dies peaceably in their sleep, no morphine, no tubes.
And the best way to start? Simpler than yoga, quicker than ten thousand steps, as my mother advises, brush your teeth standing on one leg.
on death and taxes
Very sad Julio. But well written as always. As was Frames. Nice also to see one of Tony's reviews. We've had a rough couple of years seeing off first dad and then mum. They were both in Aged Care and I really admire the workers there. They do all they can to ease the passage but it isn't pleasant. Kxx