Going home to the place where I belong

Recently my sister Doreen in the USA posted this old photo taken (I think) early in 1974 of some members of our family. She sent it round to her three daughters, two of whom (twins) were in utero at the time!

Brother Paul with Fritz, brother-in-law John holding his daughter
Raina and my daughter Zoe, sister Doreen, and Mum and Dad.

In fact I can clearly remember taking this photo of some of the family I was about to leave forever - or so it seemed 49 years ago. Another sister, Nancy, was no longer living near enough to join us on this day. And my then-husband was on one of his final workdays, prior to our scheduled emigration to Australia. I had little expectation then that family would ever visit me on the other side of the world, as both of my parents and then Doreen later did several times. Or that my mother would spend one of her final years with me not long before she died. I certainly didn't expect I would end up working in jobs that would allow me regular visits 'back home' over many years. Or that Nancy would one day join me in Australia, along with her family. So the day that this photo was taken was a sad one for me, even if I was also looking forward to a new life in Australia.

My brother had driven my daughter and me down to Doreen's little farmhouse in Preston, Connecticut - which she and her husband had bought not long before. One reason I probably remember the day so well is because this was the winter of the great Oil Crisis in the States. Some State Governments had decided to lower the speed limit on freeways and highways to 50mph (80.5km) because that was deemed to be more fuel-efficient than the usual 60mph. I don't think my brother was very happy about that temporary regulation - even though we weren't then travelling in one of the sportscars that he would later keep tucked away in his garage throughout the winters (and I think still does!) 

Zoe at Cheney's Apple Farm1973

I suppose it was a drive of just over an hour from where my parents and brother lived in Massachusetts. By then, I think I would have been staying with my parents as my husband and I were getting ready to leave the country for good. We had spent almost a year living nearby after returning from our first three-year stint in Australia. We'd come 'home' from those firsts few years in Oz with a child and no intention of going back. Fate decided otherwise. And glad am I for that. But that's a story for a different post.

After seeing that family photo this week, one of Doreen's daughters (my niece) sent me this message: "Wow, can't believe you have been in Australia for so long. Crazy." Personally, I can't believe there was ever a time when I wasn't in Australia. That's how strange it seems to me that I ever identified as American. And when I became an Australian citizen at an Australia Day Ceremony, on 26 January 1976, dual USA/Australian citizenship was not allowed. So becoming Australian meant renouncing US citizenship.

Our first home as "new Australians": Glasslough, Epping Forest, Tas.

On 27 January 1976 - the day after the Mayor of Glenorchy, Tasmania, granted my Australian Citizenship Certificate at that ceremony - the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Department of Immigration sent a letter to the US Embassy in Canberra, informing them I was now an Australian citizen. But it wasn't until two years later that I received a registered letter from the US Consulate in Melbourne, informing me that Section 349(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that "a person who is a national of the United States whether by birth, or naturalization shall lose his nationality by (1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application..." The letter included forms which we were supposed to sign and return. And I'm pretty sure I did so...

...because in May 1978 I received a "Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the United States". Nowadays both the USA and Australia allow dual citizenship. So my daughter has retained both the US citizenship she inherited by birth, and the Australian citizenship she gained when we were naturalised. Did I care about losing US citizenship? Not in the least. Not then or ever since - though I admit it would have been easier to be a US citizen when I later travelled back and forth to spend time with my ageing parents. I very nearly overstayed the three-month visitor's visa on one occasion.

What surprises me most now is that I'm sometimes treated as if I'm still quasi-American. People who don't know me well - but have some knowledge about my background - will often apologise to me after saying something slightly critical about the United States. Yet I'm probably more critical than anyone about certain US policies and practices - about health care, for example. And don't even mention Trump! I can't help feeling very lucky to be Australian - though that doesn't mean I'm not also critical about some of my adopted country's policies and practices. Take the ongoing incarceration of refugees who arrive illegally by boat. Truth is: there is plenty that needs fixing in both countries. 

I just happen to think that ours is in so many ways a better environment in which to live and work. Maybe not for everyone - but for a larger percentage of the national population than is the case in the USA. I'm not sure I thought about that in 1976, when we left the States for good. Our reasons for leaving were entirely personal, not social or political. But we must have had some inkling that we could make a better life here. It's now 53 years since I first came to Australia - and 47 years since Zoe and I became citizens. That's what I celebrate on Australia Day! 

 

 

John Hazelwood (20/8/1945 - 7/12/2023)

Funerals and Christmastime don't make for a good mix. But I'm just back from Brisbane where I had the sad experience of helping to farewell John Hazelwood - my son-in-law Brandon's father, and part of my extended family for almost 20 years.

Hazelwood-Boulanger family (March 2020)

In a great speech at their wedding, John told the story of how he met Zoe:

It was at around 2am one morning and I had just reversed the car and boat into the driveway at home after a thirteen hour trip. I had just been up to North Qld. for a couple of weeks fishing. As I was heading inside to get the keys to open the side gate, the front door opened, “Hi John, I’m Zoe” There in the doorway was this angel. I thought, Oh no I’ve run off the road and killed myself and I am now in heaven. Just then a voice said “Hi Dad”. It was Brandon opening the side gates for me. I quickly came back to earth and thought, Heyyyy Boy you have certainly lifted your game.

John meets
Charlotte Maudie H.

A few years later, Brandon and Zoe gave us a grandchild: Charlotte Maudie Hazelwood, or Charlie. That middle name 'Maudie' was the name of Brandon's Mum, who had died not long before Brandon and Zoe met. John was deeply touched by their giving Charlie that name. 

From the time Zoe and Brandon met, John and I along with my late husband had become the official family elders at all our family gatherings: Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries etc. It took a while for us to feel comfortable with each other - we had very different backgrounds and life experiences and (I suspect) views about a lot of issues - though we always avoided straying into problem areas out of mutual respect. 

A Christmas gathering of the Harvey-Boulanger-Hazelwood clan.
My stepson Julian (standing next to his father) was celebrant at John's service.

John's and my friendship deepened when I became a carer - first for my mother, and then more intensively for my late husband. Caring for an ill spouse was something John was all too familiar with.

John was born in August 1945, so he was just six months younger than me - a sobering thought when you go to a funeral. 

Sniper Hazelwood

He was the eldest of four children. His sister Pam and brother Ken still live in New South Wales, where John grew up; another brother Neville died in infancy. John completed an apprenticeship in Sydney as a carpenter/joiner. and played rugby there too. 

John with brother Ken and sister Pam

His number turned up in the National Service lottery, but he narrowly avoided going to Vietnam as a sniper. Luckily for him, an eardrum was damaged during the medical so he was discharged.

He had two children - Shayne and Mark - with his first wife Helen, but when that marriage ended he went north and worked on a prawn trailer. Then, back in Sydney, he met Maudie and for a while lived the tough life of a professional fisherman. He was a one-man operation, towing his boat late at night through Sydney to Pittwater where he would either head up the Hawkesbury River or out to sea. On his return he would drop the fish off at the markets and head home for a well earned sleep.

John and Maudie

In 1977 the couple moved to Queensland, where Maudie had grown up. But even before Brandon was born two years later, she'd had one brain tumour removed. Another was detected while she was pregnant and the operation to remove it left her with cerebral palsy - not an easy diagnosis for a new mother. Maudie lived until 2002 - long enough to see her son into adulthood. But it had been a long, hard road for them all, given the sad effects of brain cancer.

With a barramundi at one of his Proserpine visits

Throughout his life, fishing was John's anchor point. As Brandon said in John's eulogy, "What he didn't know about fishing wasn't worth knowing." Brandon continued:

Once he moved up to Queensland and I was born things were a bit more difficult and his boat didn’t leave the driveway again for many years. When I got older his passion for fishing came back and we spent a lot of time fishing together. He joined a group of Barra fisherman up Proserpine way and drove his boat up the highway every year for a number of years to fish their invite-only Barra competition. While he never won, he caught a LOT of large barramundi and was well liked by everyone. His local passion was to chase large Snapper off Redcliffe. He always wanted to crack a metre long; he got close with a cracker at 92cm a few years ago. He had also done a lot of work with Lowrance fishing sounders after retirement and really enjoyed traveling around to the local tackle shops updating their sounders and talking about them on club nights. 

Dendrobium Pearl Vera

John's other passion was native orchids. He built himself a greenhouse larger than his house, where he spent hours repotting and breeding them. He was an Australian Native Orchid judge for many years. And he'd kicked off Queensland's first native orchid society more than 30 years ago. I saw for myself how highly he was regarded in the orchid growing community when I accompanied him to the 30th anniversary celebration of that group last year. He was delighted when the Dendrobium I won in a raffle at that event flowered for me earlier this year.

Without a doubt, though, what brought the most joy into John's life in his last 10 or so years was the time he spent with our grandchild Charlie. He enjoyed regular weekly visits, but he was also happy to babysit anytime - even on short notice. He hadn't lived near enough to his daughter's girls to play the same role in their early lives, so he took full advantage of this late chance to be a hands-on Grandad. 

When John was admitted to hospital two years ago with an aortic dissection, given his many other health problems he wasn't expected to survive more than a few days. An operation was his only chance, but even in an otherwise healthy person, the average mortality, or risk of death, from repair of an aortic dissection is about 15%. Amazingly, John survived the operation - but he did have several small strokes in the process. And the after-effects of these seriously compromised the quality of his last two years of life. 

John could no longer drive, take his boat out or spend much time in the greenhouse. Perhaps worst of all, his communication skills - both speaking, writing and, to some extent, understanding - were seriously impaired. He found it difficult to accept these limitations but declined the outside help he was entitled to. So for these last two years Brandon became his lifeline. Then on 6 December John went to hospital again where scans showed another dissection - this one inoperable. He died early the next morning, with Brandon and Zoe by his side. 

John with daughter Shayne and son Mark

John's three children - Mark (from Tasmania), Shayne and her family (from Sydney) and Brandon with Zoe and our family - gave him a warm send-off on 15 December. Also present were some of John's cousins and their families, friends and neighbours, and a number of old fellows representing the fishing and orchid-growing groups he'd been part of. 

Some of the Hazelwood clan after the service

Christmas will be a bit subdued for the Brisbane Hazelwoods this year. And I'll miss the phone calls John and I often had after these gatherings, where we old codgers would help each other to process those aspects of our kids' lives that sometimes baffled us. 

Even though we'd lived very different lives, John and I were united in our devotion to the little family our kids had forged. What we had in common far outweighed the differences. It will be lonely being the only representative left of that generation. I will miss him, and the raised eyebrows we shared across the room at times. 

So many of the comments posted on Brandon's Facebook page about his Dad echoed how I too would summarise his character: John Hazelwood was a real gentleman. And the other memory I will hold on to is what a great Grandad he was to our Charlie.

Pre-posthumous note to my kids

Dear Zoe, Julian and Chris:

I guess the 10th anniversary of Dad’s death got me thinking about finality. Then this morning on page 32 of the Sydney Morning Herald I read a frightening article about the spiralling cost of funerals and the whole death business (and it is very big business!). So just for the hell of it, I checked online and was pleased to see that perfectly adequate cardboard coffins are now available at very reasonable prices. 

Zoe and Julian, you may remember we asked about that option at the Tewantin funeral home we chose to organise Dad's cremation. The woman who dealt with us there (Remember how she strove to be friendly but elegant at the same time? And how surprised she seemed that we kept sharing little laughs at bits of the interview that we found amusing - or figured Dad would find funny?) - she told us that a cardboard casket would be hideously more expensive than the options she had available! Good to know that things have improved since then. 

Zoe, then I thought about all the wonderful ways you could decorate either of the above using your expertise on the Cricut printer: flowers, native plants, messages from everyone etc. etc. (I can see a real market there for you in the future, dear, if you decide to ditch the AsPro job*.) Not to mention Brandon's skill in 3D printing. Endless possibilities there for enhancements. And I’m sure Nancy would contribute a garland of her fabulous paper beads to jazz things up (assuming she lasts longer than me and hasn’t gone la-la by then!) 

I can't imagine a more appropriate image to grace the cover of my box than the drawing Charlie made of me 4 or 5 years ago.

Just keep all of this in mind because I’d be extremely disappointed if you guys went out and spent thousands of your inheritance on my funeral. (That's assuming there is anything left by the time I shuffle off!) I would much prefer you spent it on a big party to get together all who wanted to help decorate my box – while I waited in the fridge somewhere to be laid inside for the fireworks (maybe wrapped up in the patchwork quilt of my mother’s, which I now use as a bedspread! Just a suggestion!)  

That SMH article says you mightn’t even have to use a funeral parlor! Some states allow you to keep the body at home for up to 5 days! I don’t suppose I’d fit into your downstairs fridge, but if I did the smell couldn’t be much worse than the fishing bait Brandon keeps in there. 

Oh, and you’re also allowed to transport a body around yourself if you so desire – though maybe you'll have a new car by then and that wouldn’t appeal. I could suggest the Cruiser has carried worse loads. But OK. I'll agree you should fork out for commercial refrigeration and a hearse. 

Your loving Mama,
Chartreuse

PS:  Just don’t think I won’t be watching. If you waste my money on funeral frills, be prepared for payback!

* Just to explain: My super-achieving daughter was made Associate Professor recently - I guess they figured what little free time she had available in her hectic life really ought not to go unused!

Granma, Charlie and Sam at Dad's
'funeral' breakfast on the Noosa River.

Requiem

Roland Allen Harvey

1929 - 2013
"Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will."
(from 'Requiem' by R.L.Stevenson)

On a Monday morning 10 years ago today, in a quiet light-filled room in Noosa Hospital my dear husband took his last breath. It was just a gentle inhaling, nothing dramatic, made easier, I suppose, by the morphine meant (officially) to minimise his pain. He simply inhaled. And then he didn't exhale. That was all.

I looked up through the window to see, beyond a covered walkway, a pretty little grove of young ti-trees in an internal garden of the hospital. I'd sat there many times on previous hospitalisations that had ended less sadly. Just at that moment, two of our children came down that walkway. They'd driven up from the city as soon as I'd rung, coming to say their goodbyes. I like to think he waited as long as he could, and let go only once the kids were near enough to give me some comfort. 

We all sat with him for quite a while. Some Mozart played softly - his favourite composer. I don't remember any of us crying too much. By then it was as much relief as loss. It had been a long, slow road - but an inevitable outcome with dementia. And really, we'd been luckier than many. He always knew us, lived at home till his last few days and could call on plenty of memories even as it became more and more difficult to express them.

Allen had squeezed into his 83 years several lives - including three families he'd created with three different women, all of us eventually becoming and remaining friends. In fact, I don't know anyone who had an unkind word to say about him. And no one whom he disliked enough to do more than make the subject of an amusing story. He had three young adult sons when I met him. But less than a year later, one of them died in a tragic accident. On the day of that funeral, we made a commitment to live the rest of our lives together. Life's too short to hold back, we decided. 

By the time I met him, Allen had made a living for more than 30 years as a stage manager and then theatre director, working and touring Australia and New Zealand at a time when a life in theatre was an even more precarious profession than it is now. But he redefined himself to follow me around wherever I might work - first becoming an ABC scriptwriter and all-round theatre jobber (actor, director, playwright, theatre manager) in Tasmania, then moving into arts management with the Australian National Choral Association and other groups in Queensland. Coming with me to London on a Fellowship year in the 1990s was an easier assignment - even if the Welsh Choir he accompanied on a European tour (a group destined to travel to Australia the following year) caused a bit of a stir and no end of paperwork when one of the elderly choristers expired while crossing the Channel. 

When I started doing overseas consultancy work on development projects, Allen confidently ran our various households, not only in Queensland but also in the Philippines and Laos for several years each and sometimes from hotel rooms for months at a time. His letters to friends and the stories he wrote about some of his own experiences in these places never failed to amuse - for example, one about a colonoscopy he had in a Manila hospital while lying on a guerney whose wheels kept failing to lock in place. He also had two hospitalisations in Thailand while we lived in Laos, quite enjoying being fussed over by caring nurses and always coming away with great stories. 

He would accompany me on visits to remote areas in these countries - saying he felt like Prince Philip walking behind the Queen (and sometimes making the kind of indelicate observations that Philip was known for). He once agreed somewhat reluctantly to go along to a cock fight in one place we were visiting because he didn't like to upset my driver who felt that that Allen deserved a break from following me around to meetings. He sometimes took on voluntary work while overseas - helping students at an international school to make a film, or visiting potential suppliers of learning materials to help me evaluate their products and manufacturing processes. All that practical stage management experience came in handy when assessing the quality of different plywoods, for example, to make 2000 boxes that could safely take classroom materials out to remote school sites! 

On our return to Australia after one of my assignments, we visited a specialist, thinking Allen may have had a small stroke. But brain scans resulted in a different diagnosis: Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a relatively rare form of dementia. One of Allen's first reactions after some of PPA's early effects were explained to us was to turn to me with a mischievous look I knew too well. "See, it wasn't my fault that I stuffed up the chequebook account, forgot to pay the electricity bill and can't tell left from right!" Our peripatetic lifestyle was now over. We would have to learn to live with dementia. 

And I think we did it very well in the years we had left. How we dealt with it, how it dealt with us and what I learned through it all - that's what I set out to share when I began this blog in August 2009. In 2010, Allen was even a guest presenter at the National Conference of the Australian Aphasia Association in Sydney. His progressive form of this brain disorder was not well known even to most of the speech and occupational therapists who made up most of the audience. By then he could barely string words together coherently in casual speech, but he could still write himself a script and read from it almost perfectly - due in part to different areas of his brain being differently affected, but also to all those years of theatre experience! My only task as his assistant was to show the slides that he'd selected to accompany his story (My Life in the Theatre...and Afterwards).

Learning to live meaningfully without Allen has been much harder for me than being his caregiver was in his final years. But even though he's not here to share the rest of my life, I'll be better able to deal with whatever life throws at me because of what I learned from how he lived his. 

Red-rimmed trainers

I wrote this piece not long after my husband died.
Hard to believe, tomorrow it will be 10 years.

I walk in your shoes
The red-rimmed trainers we bought for rehab.
Your physio noticed and smiled.
Your doctor too.
Not the shoes you’d expect an 80-year-old to choose.
And maybe you didn’t.
But comfort comes before style
When a body’s been through hell.

Four years on they’re still like new
You were always easy on clothes, shoes
And people. You wore them all lightly,
Your presence never heavy.
I loved his feet, your ex once said,
The most beautiful feet of any man I knew.
The toes curled up in conversations
Of which there once were so many.

The children came and helped clean out
The cupboards just days afterwards.
Perhaps too soon, but later it would
Have been too hard to discard
All the folds of a long and lazy ending.
A grandson adopted your wardrobe
And when I hug his six-foot frame
I have your shirt in my arms again.

It takes my breath away to see you
Standing there in him
As if you don’t want to leave us
Any more than we wanted you to go.

But you did want to go.
Die, die, the only words
You could sometimes find
And then, soon after, sorry, sorry.
Still trying with what little you had left
Not to give pain, or make a fuss.
So we let you go and a whiff of smoke
Rose up into the blue Noosa sky

And now I wear your shoes
Our feet, like our minds, the same size.
A joke,when different coloured slip-ons
Were how we knew whose feet wore what.
Now only my feet are left
To slip on the red-rimmed trainers.
And I’m walking again with you
My body in step with yours forever.

The First 20 or so Things That I Love as They Occur to Me in the Moment

A blog-friend I recently rediscovered after my 10-year absence from posting gave me the idea for this post. I'd say he's about my age, and his occasional posts on this same theme always begin: "Peggy, my wife of 51-years" - or whatever the current tally of years might be.

 

I wish I could do likewise, and then my list would begin: "Allen, my partner-then-husband of 45 years". Alas, it will soon be 10 years since Allen died, so our partnership only made it to 35 years. Even so, he deserves a mention here, because no list of Things I Love is complete without at least a glance back at Things I Have Loved.

But as they occur to me in the moment, the First 20 Things That I Love (now):

1. Living in Australia, not the USA, and feeling in my bones that I'm more Australian than not.
2. Being free to live each day as I please and being able to do (or not do) whatever I feel like doing on most days.
3. Having my daughter and her family near enough to visit regularly and feeling I'm always welcome when I do visit.
4. Daily texts or phone calls with my sister who's on the same wavelength about so many things and knowing we can share our woes as well as joys without being judged.
5. 
   The blousy white hydrangea that's flowering right now in my garden, reminding me that Spring has arrived and there'll be weeks of blue hydrangeas to follow.
   
6. The little brown honeyeaters and double-barred finches I can see from my desk, as they take turns to bathe in the bird bath.
7. Rays of afternoon sunshine lighting up the top of the hedge along one side of my yard.
8. Being fit enough to maintain my house and garden to a satisfactory standard and, when necessary, being able to afford the services and products I need to keep things ticking over.
9. Cooking interesting food - and then eating it - sometimes with friends to share it with.
10. Reading good books - especially newly published ones - and sharing this pleasure with....
11. ...the lovely people in my book club - their kindness, generosity, intelligence and the fact that none of them are right-wingers or nutbags!
12. 
    A nicely cleaned house after I've finished a really good round of housework.
13. The wonderful opportunities I've had to do interesting development work in several countries.
14. Writing a few good sentences now and then - and sometimes sharing a piece of writing here or elsewhere.
15. Visits by family members and old friends - though I only wish more of them were closer and could visit more often.
16. 
    All my gardening activities - turning over the vegie patch, planting, composting, pruning, harvesting, repotting, pulling on my Redback boots and just getting dirty and sweaty.
    
17. Knowing I don't have to worry about possible future medical bills or access to medical care because I have access to government-subsidised medical and pharmaceutical services as well as affordable private insurance for extras.
18. Being cancer-free 23 years after breast cancer. 
19. Having nice neighbours who agree we will look out for each other but without being too nosy.
20. Having a green outlook over the back fence, with beautiful trees, bushes and an adjacent wetland that I don't have to maintain.

Postscript: I can't end this list without mentioning my dearest A.B-M. (You know who you are!)

Half a year without my sweetheart

Six months ago today, Allen died. Sometimes it's as fresh as if it were yesterday. At other times, I can't remember having him near. But I do often hear him reminding me of the power of music. And this morning the ABC played a wonderful version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. What better reminder that hope and beauty can transcend loss and sadness.

This was Allen's last book - that is, the last one he never stopped trying to read. It's a notebook he built up during his final 10 or so years, when music became his greatest consolation. In it, he had pasted translations of the lieder he listened to over and over again. Like this one (Maiden's song), from a Brahms song cycle:

On Judgment Day I will rise again,

and immediately look for my sweetheart

and if I cannot find him,

I will lie down again and sleep.

Heartache, you Eternity!

Only with another comes happiness!

And if my sweetheart comes not in,

then I don't wish to be in Paradise!

Moving on (and in)

This is the sort of day it has been.

My mood all day has been much the same, influenced no doubt by the tail end of a debilitating flu or cold. But I've been at my desk anyway, preparing for the final of ten tutorials I will have presented in as many weeks for two first-year groups of teacher-trainees at the local university. I was pleased to be offered this semester of part-time work. It was one of several new pastimes that I hoped would help me learn to live alone and begin to 'move on', whatever that means!

So ten weeks ago, I moved my office out of its former temporary location in the second bedroom, into the small galley room that had been Allen's office ever since we moved here in 1996. My own larger office used to be in a separate studio building, now a second guest bedroom. But I had to give up that larger space when it became impossible for me to be that far away from Allen for any length of time. I could have returned to the studio-office, now that my caregiving duties are no more. But several things dissuaded me from doing that.

First was the attraction of not having to vacate my office whenever I have visitors. The studio has the double bed for visiting couples; the second bedroom has a single bed (which is where my grand-daughter sleeps on her frequent visits). But Allen's little end-room office - once a verandah - is too small to accommodate a bed. So it is always free, no matter how many people are sleeping in the house for the weekend or longer.

Then, too, the distance from the house to the studio meant my laptop inevitably ended up in the house, perched on the dining-cum-sewing table. That's because going out to the studio to check emails and do my banking and other routine tasks is just too much of a nuisance late at night or when it's raining. Giving up the larger studio space seems a price worth paying for the convenience of having all my office things just a few steps away from my bedroom.

What really settled me in my decision to make Allen's office my own was just that: the fact that it had been his. Until I moved in here, this room off our bedroom was a furious empty space that screamed his absence every time I looked into it. I could hardly bear to enter it. So I moved in and made it mine, which meant going through all his shelves and papers first, of course. But that was relatively easy. Allen had been doing it himself for years before he lost the ability to read and write. He was always a well-organised man - socks rolled in his drawer, suitcase nicely packed, paperwork all in order. He had long ago sorted everything he wanted to keep or pass on, and discarded just about everything else.

I moved my things in and found, to my surprise, there is plenty of space. First I discarded several wheelie-bins of old paperwork - things from my university degrees and old freelance jobs going back decades. All the books and other curriculum materials we produced during my ten years as manager of the state's educational publishing facility have gone to our regional university's library. Dozens of other books are going here and there. It's a very liberating feeling, as I remember Allen assuring me when he did the same with his theatre library and paperwork a long time ago - a move which horrified me at the time. 

My new little office has been quite pleasant during the warmer weather - even though it's the only part of the house that doesn't have access to air conditioning. But we rarely used the aircons in the rest of the house anyway, thanks to good insulation throughout and a perfect aspect in all living areas. This office has both eastern and northern-facing windows, so the winter sun streams in but there's no exposure to the hot western summer sun. I've been amazed how cosy the room stays now that our cooler winter weather has arrived. Since it's small and has good windows, the tiniest bit of sun heats it up nicely. I can't help chuckling when I remember now that even after he could barely do anything constructive in the way or reading or writing, Allen still disappeared into this enclave after breakfast every day, sliding shut the glass door connecting it to our adjacent bedroom. In his last months, I would put an opera on his computer for him to watch. I now realise that because his tiny frame could no longer regulate his body temperature very well, he was probably mainly enjoying the room's warmth. - probably just one of hundreds of things Allen could no longer express.

Right outside one window here a beautiful golden penda is growing, a tree I planted in 2009 when I painted the room for Allen and had tiles laid down. As I was closing the blinds this afternoon, I looked out to see the first of the golden penda's new season's flowers had just opened. The light was fading, but I photographed it anyway. I need reminders that life goes on.

Even so...

I don't know when I will once again be able to start some regular posts here - or some writing elsewhere. My energy at the moment is totally occupied in creating some new kind of order - one that will get me through this interval of time between Allen's presence in my life and the acceptance of his absence. But I want to hold on to some of the thoughts I've had during this period. And as these are often framed in letters to friends and family, I will copy to my blog excerpts from some of these from time to time. I hope later on to be able to come back to these thoughts with less pain and more pleasure in remembering my late husband....

Dear Malcolm,

I was again in tears – reading your lovely words, which I will ask Julian to read at our lunch next Sunday. Thank you so much for taking the time. And thank you, too, for capturing so well the spirit of the man I fell in love with 35 years ago.

So much of Allen’s lively enthusiasm, wit and intelligence was severely taxed in recent years by the dreadful disease eating away at that beautiful brain. Even so, right up to his last days at the beginning of what was supposed to be a short few weeks of (my) respite, he could appreciate the humour in some of the antics of fellow residents in the dementia unit. Watching a guy do something silly at a nearby table while I helped Allen to get a slippery omelette into his mouth, he looked at the guy and then over at me and raised a quizzical eyebrow, as if to say: “Get a load of him!”

Except in short episodes of delusion, mainly in the evenings or during the night, Allen and I never lost the ability to connect – even as words and language lost almost all meaning for him. He was taken to hospital after just his third night in that respite facility, when he apparently ingested vomit while lying in his bed. In all our years together, I can’t remember Allen ever vomiting – even when in hospital. So it will always be a great mystery to me what actually happened. But I know when I arrived there in the morning, and sat with him while we awaited the ambulance, he was already on oxygen and struggling to draw breath. Less mysterious is the fact that he just could not rally during the next four days in hospital, but continued to deteriorate with a terrible pneumonia.

I knew only too well that Allen had been wanting for months to be finished with his struggle. He could no longer manage to read anything but the occasional word, couldn’t write words or even letters and could only barely understand the grammar of even the simplest of spoken utterances. He was so very isolated, and his physical mobility had been likewise impaired. He just couldn’t control the voluntary and involuntary actions of many of his muscles. Each morning while I shaved him, for example, his right hand would perform a kind of pretend-shaving, and I’m not sure he understood which of us was actually holding the razor. He could only shuffle along on his walker – but always insisted on accompanying me to the shopping centre, sometimes waiting on a couch near Woollies if he didn’t feel up to the whole supermarket slog. But when we got home, he never failed to help unpack the bags and put whatever things away he could manage. He just wasn’t one to sit idly doing nothing. And yet he was losing interest even in listening to or watching the many opera DVDs that Chris had sent him from China. He felt all his forces – both physical and mental – slowly evaporating. And he just hated it.

I don’t think he had the will to fight one more battle with pneumonia – and he’d had several. And four days of IV antibiotics had done nothing to reduce the infection. He had to be on IV hydration, too, as he could no longer swallow anything. So it was a relatively easy decision to accept the doctor’s offer to begin morphine – ostensibly to minimise the pain of his difficult breathing. But we all knew what it meant. I had no hesitation in telling the doctor: “Let him go”. Allen was to all intents and purposes unconscious in the last 24 hours or so before that, but I think even he knew this was his chance to slip away. And instead of the two or three days we’d been warned it might take, Allen was gone in just a couple of hours, peacefully drawing his last breath in a lovely corner room with tea-trees and a bright blue sky outside our window. I long ago had to come to terms with the Allen I knew and loved no longer being available to me. But I’m still coming to terms with Allen not being in the next room, dozing peacefully in his favourite armchair. It’s going to take a long time. I’m glad his battle is over. Even so.....

Roland Allen Harvey 1929-2013

 

On 18 November 2013 my beautiful husband, Roland Allen Harvey, passed away at Noosa Hospital after a brief battle with pneumonia. His physical and mental health had both deteriorated greatly in the past six months, and though we, his family, have very heavy hearts, we know his passing now, while he still knew and loved us all, was a blessing for him. It is less so for us. 

Allen's poor damaged brain has gone to the Queensland Brain Bank at the University of Queensland. We hope in some small way it will help researchers there to learn a bit more about Primary Progressive Aphasia, the debilitating brain deterioration that ultimately robbed him of his mental fluency and physical agility. 

Allen was cremated in Noosa at 8am on Friday, 22 November. At that exact time, his family gathered at The Spit, where the Noosa River flows into the sea, to remember him with a champagne breakfast.

 

On 15 December friends and family will gather at a lunch in Doonan to share reminiscences of my dear husband's long, productive and very happy life. 

A memory of friendship

This orchid opened this morning – a beacon of brightness on an otherwise bleak and wet winter day. The annual flowering of this plant always brings to mind John and Gillian Unicomb. They left the orchid behind as a thank-you gift more than ten years ago, after they'd had a holiday in our house during one of our absences overseas.

John and Allen were at high school together. Then both went on to a lifetime of work in the theatre – only working together once in their late 50s when John played an outstanding Willy Loman in a wonderful production of Death of a Salesman, directed by Allen. Gilly and I first met in Hobart in 1971. We were neighbours and had our babies together the next year.

Sadly, John died earlier this year. So the annual flowering of this orchid brings lovely memories of a very dear man – and of the power of friendships.

Testing from mobile

Maybe if I can master the technique of posting from my mobile phone I might be able to get back into blogging.

It's way too long since I was on this site. But things have progressed at home - no, progressed is not the right word....regressed maybe? Yes, A's condition is worsening quite quickly and so we both have to put a lot more effort and energy in to get through each day. What little I have left goes into the garden, when I can get out there.

Visits from our own little Baby Bear (BB as we call her) are a beacon in an otherwise dim world.

My Baby Bear

Later this week Allen and I will be going down to collect our little Baby Bear, and bringing her back to stay with us for the weekend. This will be only her third visit without her parents. And though she keeps us on our toes, there is nothing but fun and joy from her 6am wake-up until bedtime about 12 hours later. (And she has a good nap at least once a day, so we get to put our feet up then.)

Hooray indeed! BB is 19 months old and has a vocabulary that's expanding every day. I must try to video her giving us a rundown of all the words that she recognises the meaning of, and can say in some fashion (e.g. parts of the body, important people in her life, favourite foods, ABC characters – Angelina Ballerina being a particular favourite, but which as yet consists mainly of vowels ("aa--ii--aa). Ditto Bananas in Pyjamas! Studying her language development is even more interesting than the linguistic courses I loved all those years ago.

BB's facility to remember details is equally astounding. When she arrives here it may be more than a month since she and her parents last visited. Even so, she will go directly to the things she remembers from a previous visit – the drawer containing plastic containers she's allowed to play with, the glass-fronted bookcase whose door she's attracted to though she knows she isn't allowed to rattle (looking at me guiltily while patting it), a bunch of display baskets she's allowed to take off a shelf, a set of dominoes that she loves to move from one container to another, a collection of garden labels taken off plants I've planted in my garden. These she will load and unload into a basket, studying each label intently and 'reading' the text on the reverse of each picture. Exposed to books since birth, she clearly knows that print contains a message. And in a sing-song babble that only she understands, she will 'read' aloud from each label.

Perhaps because Allen's memory is slipping away, and it's so hard (almost imposible) for him to learn new tasks or remember instructions, I am fascinated and overjoyed to watch BB's young brain making (and retaining) dozens, maybe hundreds, of new 'connections' every day. Hers is a healthy brain displaying plasticity in all its wonders. What a welcome antidote to the experience of living under the cloud of Allen's deteriorating brain.

A marriage

Forty-seven years ago I married the father of my only child. He wasn't a father yet, of course. That didn't happen until seven years later.

I was 20 years old when we married and he, five years older (the same age as my parents when they married). I may have been smart – usually coming top of my class – but at the same time I was immature and horribly self-conscious. I was going to say 'selfish', too, but though I didn't know how to look at anything from anyone else's perspective, I don't think I was then, or am now, particularly selfish. I was very ignorant about life in general, and relationships in particular. And so from the beginning, I think, we had a lot working against us.

Charlotte reads aloud

During grand-daughter Charlotte's recent weekend with us, I observed her practising what we used to call 'pre-reading' activities. (God knows what this is called now, given the speed with which educational jargon comes and goes.)

Charlotte loves to put things into containers, then get them out again. And she will happily do this for long periods. On this visit I gave her a set of my discarded plant labels, and put them into a little straw handbag. At first she simply loaded and unloaded the labels from bag to table, doing this over and over. And she walked around with the handbag on her arm, in a distinctively queenly manner.

 

"Let us go then you and I..." *

Oh dear. No posts since the end of May. Well, yes, Allen's been sick with a nasty bronchial infection. And then we've had more than six weeks of twice-weekly visits to the doctor for dressings on Allen's foot, where the removal of a small skin cancer left a deep hole that a skin graft didn't succeed in closing. Both those issues seem now to be on the mend, though not finished. Then there've been several visitors, including grandson Sam during his school holidays, my daughter and grand-daughter for a weekend and a very dear old friend for our traditional winter get-together to share glasses of wine while watching stages of Le Tour de France. (She flew home this morning. But will Cadel win again this year? Fingers crossed please.) None of that really excuses what has really been (yet more) laziness on my part, but...... 

I have been busy in the garden – more than ably assisted by a trusty handyman who is the person responsible for recent massive weed eradication (which was underway when I last posted), then heavy mulching of many garden areas and various other useful tasks. For my part I've been repotting bromeliads to make a nice little 'brom walk' between house and studio. I'm very pleased with the results. These plants were all gifts from our children or from one of the couples in our aphasia group, who have a massive collection. They all did well last year and so I've separated pups and replanted in the recommended friable mixture, with lots of gravel at the bottom of each pot for good drainage. By next year I hope to again double the number of plants.


You might remember in my last post I mentioned that my neighbour had come round and cut back a dozen or so lilly pillies growing on a hillside above our house. These small native evergreens had grown into tall little trees whose foliage was overhanging the carport and making a mess in the rainwater gutters.

Well all that area has now been well mulched, and the beautiful new growth on the lilly pilly trunks is coming in, the glossy little leaves all red or red-tinged – this new growth being one of the most pleasing features of these plants. Soon there'll again be enough cover to attract the whip birds that often patrol this patch of garden.


On the western side of the house the frangipani (or plumeria) that shade us from the heat of the summer's setting sun have just about finished dropping their leaves for the wintertime. But as beautiful as these trees are when clothed in their big summertime leaves and fragrant flowers, there's something just as lovely about the naked winter boughs, especially when seen on a cold and misty afternoon such as this one.

And speaking of mist, what magic it works on the various greens and blue-greens that seem to dominate at this time of year. Here on my front terraces, everything (rosemary, gardenias, lime tree, palms down near the pool and even the old washing copper that Walle drinks from) has taken on a different hue in the light of an unusually foggy late afternoon. I'm reminded of scenes from deserted temple gardens in northern Vietnam where we once spent a holiday during a cold, wet month much like this one.

None of this worries Walle, of course, who happily goes about his doggy business in any weather whatsoever. ("Now where did I bury that bone?") I got tired of having to wipe down his soggy legs and comb the grass seeds out of his shaggy coat, and so at his recent haircut I had him trimmed right back, much to the horror of the lovely and patient lady groomer who no doubt thinks labradoodles deserve more appreciative and long-suffering owners!

Walle himself doesn't mind, however. He's happily practising his sphinx pose, hoping for a slot on the next Christmas card. But I think I'll have to let him grow back a more shapely mane before then, as befits the breed.

Well this has been a grab-bag of goodies. But if it helps me get back the habit of reflecting on and sharing some of what makes life worth living up here in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, then I hope my friends will indulge me a little.

(* "Let us go then you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table..." No particular relevance to this post, but I found the opening lines of this poem well evoke the misty late afternoon light and mood that was around when I took most of these garden photos. Go here to read all of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.)