The Last Year

I haven't written here since my father-in-law passed away almost a year ago. I know he used to read it whenever I posted something new. He used to say he thought I wrote well, which was always very encouraging. I feel sad that he won't be reading it anymore. Actually his death was the first of three that occurred close to me in the space of six months, so it's been an intense time for me this last 12 months.

We travelled to the U.S. for a month in December, where we spent time with Brian's mum and family,including his great aunt Jean in Sacramento. We caught up with people from Videosift for New Year and spent a couple of days in our favourite town in Arizona, Bisbee, where I got to hang out with Maria for a few hours.

It was a very sad visit on the one hand, being the first Christmas/New Year that Brian's family spent without his dad. We scattered Roy's ashes in the garden beds at their home, where he had spent hours and hours each day, tending to his precious vegetables. The scattering was without ceremony, except for some pouring of beer on the ashes. It's hard to accept that all the fun, vitality and personality, not to mention achievement and creativity of a person just disappears into a pile of ash. The remains of achiechievement and creativity may live on for a while, in the form of tangible things the person has made, like his jewellery, but even these disappear given enough time and when all of us who remember him are gone, even the memories will disappear.

On the other hand, the trip was very exciting, because it was our first Christmas in America since we left in 1999, so we were looking forward to having a traditional winter Christmas. It was also a great opportunity to meet Aunt Jean and talk about family history, as well as for me, a chance to catch up with my wonderful friend, Kimara, in San Francisco. She's such a generous soul, she picked me up from Sacramento and drove me home with her, put me up in her beautiful loft room for a few days, took me out to eat, took me shopping for shoes, bought me a great backpack and shoes from REI and drove me to the airport at the end. I can't thank her enough.

I was a little preoccupied with the approaching death of my mum's dad, my Grandfather, while were in the U.S. and a few times I wished I had not left Australia. He managed to hang on until after we returned in the New Year, passing away on February 11. He'd been diagnosed in November with lung cancer and secondary cancers in his spine and given a short prognosis of two to six months to live. I was not however, worried about my dad's mum, my Grandmother, who'd also had surgery for breat cancer in August and given another six months to live, because the last time I had seen her she was recovering well. My Aunt who was caring for her called me in November to say she was doing very well and had even scheduled a trip to Vanuatu to see her other daughter, in December.

I was not to realise that they would both pass away not long after we returned to Australia, within two days of each other, Grandma going first on February 9. I should have realised that we were heading into dark times upon our return, because I had such an overwhelming feeling of not wanting to come back, while we were still there. All of us did, in fact. We all wanted to just stay put and settle somewhere in Arizona.

The day we flew home, the roads from the airport were almost flooded, we were lucky to make it back as easily as we did. Brian went shopping for food that night and went to work the next day. I went shopping for food again, the next day and that day, Brian called to say the inner city was evacuating and he was catching the last bus home. I picked him up from the bus stop at Indooroopilly and on the way we needed to get petrol, but the lines of cars snaking out into the street made us keep going. The next day Brisbane experienced its worst flood since 1974.
We were without electricity for three days and petrol for six, so we had a very basic existence for that week, walking everywhere and eating basic meals cooked on the little camp stove. The food lasted in the fridge for the three days, so we didn't waste anything. Dinner was by candle-light and we went to bed early each night. It was stressful because we didn't know if the flooded creek at the bottome of our street was going to flood further up, in behind the houses opposite us. We also worried because we knew the food in the fridge wouldn't last another three days and we didn't know when the power would be restored.

We were told to keep off the roads for the next week, so I didn't get to visit my grandparents until after January 20th. I was so shocked to see how much they had both detiorated while I was away. It was very hard to witness.

Apparently my grandmother had suddenly gone down-hill at the time of the flood, but had been well until then. My grandfather had been steadily worsening since November. They both ended up in St Vincent's palliative care hospital, on the same ward of the same floor. We would visit both at the same time and meet relatives from both sides of the family, every time we went. Relatives of my dad's who were there to see my grandmother, also popped in to see my grandfather, because even though he was my mother's dad and my mum's and dad's family never mixed, they knew what a wonderful man my grandfather was and wanted to pay their respects.

I wasn't there for my grandmother's death, although I had seen her a few days before and was very distressed to see her struggling with the end. She even asked my dad and his brother to leave her alone, so she could die. I don't think she was in pain, just tired of it all.

I was there for my grandfather's death two days later, however. I had seen him the day before as well and spoke to him quietly about regretting not knowing him better and hoping that he was not disappointed in me for not continuing my highschool teaching. I told him that I really didn't enjoy big classrooms of teenagers. I much preferred teaching adults or small classes and that I had never really stopped teaching all these years. He had his eyes closed, but he was still conscious and I could tell he was listening. He didn't say anything, except to ask me not to touch him, because he was in so much pain, he couldn't even bear my hand to be on him.

Watching him die was actually an amazing experience. If I had been with him on my own, it would have been a very peaceful event, I think. With the room filled with crying relatives and my hysterical grandmother, however, it was quite traumatic. My mum's mum was like a small child, grabbing onto his body, pulling at him, wailing 'please don't leave me', holding her hand over his mouth, to keep his jaw from dropping open. She was terrified of being alone in the world without him, but equally concerned it seemed, that he wuld die with his mouth open. My mum was also hysterical, grabbing onto me like a lost child. I didn't actually feel sad at that moment. Just overwhelmed by the grief around me.

I read a eulogy at each of their funerals. I still didn't feel sad. The sadness took a while to seep in. I didn't have time to feel sad, because in the meantime, Sophia had started highschool and was bringing home shocking stories of the behaviour of the students at the school. The stories were bad enough to make me talk to the school counsellor and deputy principal and after another couple weeks of concerning events, I enrolled her in my old Catholic girls school and pulled her out of the state school altogether.

The Catholic school is on the other side of town, near my childhhod home, near my dad's mum's home. Our lease at Kenmore was up for renewal, the owner was demanding that we resign another long-term lease. I asked my dad if we could stay at Grandma's until we found somewhere to live near the Catholic school. We packed up our house and had it moved into a container on mum and dad's property. We moved into Grandma's house with our basic posessions.

We are still here in her house, five months later.

On March 13, Japan experienced the worst earthquake and tsunami in living memory.

It's been an amazing year.