SOLITARY DAZE


I spent a lot of my time looking at blue,
The colour of my room and my mood:
Blue on the walls, blue out of my mouth;
The sort of blue between clouds, when the sun comes out,
The sort of blue in those eyes you get hung up about.

Actually I spent a lot of my time looking at orange...the colour of my lounge room.  It was school holidays and I had 5 weeks to fill in and try and come to terms with my loss.

Matty died on Sunday 17th of December.  On Monday morning Christine rang me from the hospital saying that I could come over and view his body.  I couldn't do it.  I wanted to remember him as he used to be.  Strong, vibrant and confident.  Seeing him layed out on the morgue table was the last thing I needed.

I got through the day, stoned as usual, re-assuring the dozens of people who called that I was okay.  My parents were frantic and ready to drive the 100km from their new house to stay with me.  It was easier to be by myself and come to terms with my loss in my own way.  I do remember that I finally pushed myself out of my misery to walk my dog sometime in the late afternoon.

Peace Park is a beautiful and large park that was about 15 minutes walk from my house.  It is situated on the crest of a hill and overlooks the Cook's River and a vast area of southern and south-western Sydney.  I used to go there all the time with Toby (my dog) as it was a place where he could run freely.  The park was enormous.  The top half was landscaped with walkways and family picnic areas, leading onto a small bushland area (the last remnants of the original environment) and in front of this falling away down the steep hill was a grass meadow.  Just on the crest of the hill was an old water tower which had been turned into a lookout.

It was here I sat for nearly two hours, watching my dog run freely, and the sun setting on the western horizon of the Blue Mts.  Alone and with the world stretching out before me I cried and cried until my tears ran dry.  This would become my special place over the next few years.  It was the place where I said my final goodbyes to Matty as the sun set brilliantly over 'my city of Sydney'.

Matty's funeral was on the 22 December.  In less than two weeks I had attended two funerals.  My mother came, even though she had never approved of Matty.  His father and new wife came from New Zealand and just about everyone who could from Taxi's Combined attended.  It was all a sobbing blur to me.  Christine was calm and composed throughout the ceremony (later I would find out that she had been given sedatives).  If only I had thought to do the same.

For the first time in forever I had arrived without getting stoned beforehand.  Perhaps I should have.  I sobbed my way throughout the eulogies and when his casket was sent through the curtains for cremation I lost it completely.  I was in such a state that my mother and one of the bosses from Taxis had to escort me outside.

I didn't attend the wake as I was in no fit state.  My mother came home with me in a taxi where we ended up having an argument as she was embarrassed by my emotional and very public display of grief.  It would be months before I could speak to her again.  I felt that nobody truly understood the depths of my love for Matty.  It wasn't surprising as he had always played both hands during our 10 years together.  Everyone knew that we were close, everyone knew that I loved him, but they also knew that he had always had girlfriends and had never publicly stated that we were 'together'.

I spent the holidays in a stoned daze.  Either at home, locked in my own world of memories or working every shift I could at the taxi company.  That wasn't easy.  Besides having to face everyone who had known us for 6 years, I also had to sit and watch every place he had been.  Every desk, every room, every corner of the building was a reminder of him.  To make it harder, catching the train to work meant I had to go past our old houses at Stanmore and relive the memories.  I tried as much as possible to get night shifts to avoid this.

I worked on Christmas Day - the first time in over 14 years that I had not spent with my family.  Both my sisters had re-married and between them had 5 young children all under 8 years old.  It was a time of celebration and the last thing they needed was my misery to spoil their day. I also worked on New Year's Eve, the busiest night of the year at taxi's.  Again I didn't want to celebrate, I felt like I had nothing positive to look forward too and work was a way to take my mind of both my depression and sense of isolation.

My only connection with the outside world was John and Trudi.  Living not far away from me John would often pop in to have a smoke with me and bring me something home-baked by Trudi.  At other times I would catch the bus over to theirs and spend 2 or 3 hours with them.  Getting stoned and always eating dinner with them at Trudi's insistence.  Without them I don't know how I would have managed.  It took the edge off going back home to an empty house and an empty heart.

As I mentioned before, Trudi's sister and her boyfriend had both been executed in Thailand some years earlier for drug smuggling.  She left behind two young boys who eventually ended up being returned to their father (a 'recovered' heroin addict) and were living in a house that was half way between my place and John and Trudi's.  The boys spent more time with John and Trudi than with their father and over the first few weeks after Matty's death I got to know and love them very much.

John organized a 3 day camping trip on the south coast at a beautiful beach in the middle of January.  I was invited but at first refused.  I just wanted to be left alone to wallow in my own misery.  It was the boys who convinced me to go with them.  While John and Trudi played the parental figures they never had, I think I represented the nurturing and loving figure that they also lacked in their lives.  They were just like my pupils at school and I treated them both as equals and with tenderness, always putting them first and letting them experience the fun and adventure that children that age should all have.

We had a wonderful time.  While the boys played havoc with all the other campers, who constantly complained to us about their unruly behaviour, Trudi and I managed to win the 'middle class nuclear' families over by explaining to them about the boys horrific background.  Our campsite (because we were constantly smoking dope) looked like 'a Bosnian refugee camp'.  We had it cordoned off with sheets of black plastic and a driftwood fence that Trudi and I made.  It was just what I needed.  Three days of fun and love and watching two boys who had been through hell and back finally being able to run free and have the time of their lives.

Seeing them revel in the simple joys of a seaside holiday was a tonic for me.  Two boys who had spent most of their lives in foster care.  Two boys whose only memory of their mother was from news headlines of her in the Bangkok Hilton and whose father cared less for them than for where he was getting his next dose of methadone made me realise that I had a lot to be grateful for and that my loss was really very minor compared to theirs.  It wasn't an overnight transformation but it did help me to start pulling myself together and begin to think about my future in a positive light.

Sadly both boys would end up living very short and tragic lives.  With their father a hopeless case, and DOCS (the Department of Community Services) failing to intervene the older boy would overdose on heroin at the age of 17.  The younger at the age of 22.

I worked, I went home, I got stoned, I walked my dog and I cried.  I did manage to spend some time outside working furiously to make a lovely garden around my house.  I didn't have much to work with.  A half metre wide strip between my neighbours house which I weeded and planted with Nicosia and Canna Lillies where the sun shone.  At the end of the strip opposite my front door was an existing overgrown Rufus shrub with lovely dark red leaves which I trimmed and under-planted with Hydrangeas.

I had a small front lawn which I kept mowed with one of the few remaining items that Matty and I had brought together - an electric lawnmower.  But I dug out a metre wide garden bed along the front fence and the fence I shared with my other neighbour.  Again using the same plants to give a cottagy feel.  In front of my sun-room window was a large rubber tree which had gone berserk. This I trimmed down to a neat hedge sitting just above the bottom of my front window.

Around this I dug a curved garden bed and continued my planting theme.  The back garden consisted mainly of a concrete slab (covered with a carport) and a washing line.  Along the side their was a metre wide strip of garden.  The shaded part which ran alongside the house I planted with Angel Begonias and the larger section which was in the sun I turned into a vegetable garden with Tomatoes and Capsicum plants.  A 10 minute bus ride from my door was a large nursery where I could get everything I needed to make it into a prospering garden.  It wasn't long before the neighbours were making comments about how lovely I had made the place look.

Through this I started getting friendly with one of my neighbours.  A young couple with a small baby who was only 3 or 4 months old.  After exchanging introductions and them saying how nice my garden looked we found we had a common interest - smoking dope!  They could look straight from their back garden into my lounge room and I'm sure had seen me sit there night after night with a bong at hand watching TV.

 The other friend I made during these holiday weeks would turn out to be one of my best friends to this day - even though we are separated by a few thousand kilometres.  Bronwyn worked a few minutes walk up the street from me at the local Laundromat.  Being on my own it was easy for me to take my washing up once a week for a bag wash.  I was always stoned when I went there so I had no intention of sitting there for an hour or so off my face watching the machine spin.

It was a few months before we started talking on a regular basis and a few months more (just before Matty's death) that she broached the subject of marijuana.  That was enough introduction for me and I immediately asked her if she would like to visit after she finished work for a cup of tea and some home baking (with special accompaniments of course).  We clicked immediately and became firm friends.

Other than my colleagues at the taxi company and family she was the only person who knew about Matty.  I was able to share all my dark secrets with her without shame or fear of rejection.  She, an older, straight woman, seemed to be the one person who truly understood the agony I had been, and still was going through.  She was both supportive and confidential - to a point.  It would be a few months before my neighbours/friends let on that they knew about Matty and why I had been living virtually as a recluse for nearly 3 months. This would open a whole new chapter in my life......

FINAL DAZE ......(part 3).

When will I see you again
When will we share precious moments
Will I have to wait forever
Will I have to suffer
And cry the whole night trough?
When will I see you again
When will our hearts beat together?
Are we in love or just friends?
Is this my beginning
Or is this the end?

 

The final school term of 1995 was one of the hardest times of my life.  In early September Matty was admitted into hospital and placed into a private room in the palliative care unit.  This was the ward for the dying.  I could never work out how he managed to swing a private room, while others with the same condition, were bunked up 10 to a room just a few metres down the hallway.....but this was all part of Matty's magnetic charm, even in death.

 

For the next three and a half months he rapidly deteriorated.  There was never anything that the doctors could diagnose.  One day his lymph nodes would be swollen out of proportion making it hard for him to breathe and he would be placed on oxygen.  At other times he would be breaking out in burning rashes or be unable to control his bodily functions.  The worst day was when his heart rate suddenly hit 384 beats per minute and he was rushed to intensive care with Christine and me spending a harrowing 4 hours waiting to find out that the doctors had managed to normalise his heart rate and he was returned to his room.

Christine and I became allies during this time.  She was now spending the whole day and night with Matty.  I would finish school at 3 and walk the 10 minutes to the hospital to spend the next 3 or 4 hours with him so she could get some rest.  Both of us were emotionally and physically drained.  Both of us were angry with the doctors who kept giving Matty 'experimental' drugs.  Some of which seemed to work but others which resulted in him going into rapid decline for days on end.  At this point we both confided in each other that it would be better if he simply passed away rather than continue suffering.

One afternoon I arrived and Matty seemed quite lucid (despite the drip delivering copious amounts of morphine)  so Christine took the opportunity of going for a rest in the 'relatives room' while I stayed and chatted with Matty.  Suddenly he gave a cry and started urinating uncontrollably.  There was no bed pan handy and I could only put my hand over him to stop him pissing all over the bed.  After he had finished I managed to remove and change the sheets with him still in the bed.  When I went to wash my hands I realised that I had paper cuts (from school) all over my hands and they were stinging.  Amazingly I never contracted anything, a point which would be almost ironic a few years later.

 

 

When I returned Matty was understandably embarrassed and humiliated.  For the first time in almost 10 years he finally held his arms out to me and told me how much he loved me and how sorry he felt for the way he had treated me.  He knew that I had nothing but total love for him and always had.  He tried to explain that he had always known this but even though he felt the same there was something inside him which prevented him from admitting it and something which made him lash out at me instead of returning my love.

I didn't need any apologies.  I just wanted my beautiful blonde boy to be better again.  I wanted to see him shine and dazzle like he did the first day I met him in his bright blue jumper which matched his beautiful blue eyes.  I wanted him to live.

 

A few days later Matty and Christine married.  In the hospital ward, with two nurses acting as witnesses and without me knowing.

 

 

Back at school I was, thankfully, run off my feet.  Our numbers had more than doubled and the elderly Kindergarten teacher, whose name totally escapes my retired.  She was replaced by a wonderful young girl on her first teaching post.  With the Principal and Carol both in their 60's more and more responsibility was falling on my shoulders.

 

I had a Year 2/3/4/5 class and most of the children were extreme behavioural and social cases.  The new teacher was great but taking time to learn the ropes.  Carol had years of experience but her age was a handicap.  She had the Year 5/6 class and they were more than a handful.  The Principal was totally useless.  She was supposed to be a teaching principal, standing in to give us our allotted 2 hours a week free from teaching time but she always had an excuse as to why she couldn't cover for us.  We had to share our 'relief' time between us, mostly running videos in the school hall or taking the children out to the park while each of us had a break to catch up on marking and programming.

 

The second last Friday of the school term and I was up early getting ready with the TV on in the background.  There was the morning news running and a report came on which said 'a mother and 2 young children had burned to death in a house fire in Glebe' the previous night.  I knew instinctively that it was one of our families.  I rushed straight out the door and was at school at 7.30am.

 

 

Greeted by Carol and the DOCS teacher my worst fears were not only realised but added to.  The 'sexually abused girl from Glebe's' mother, younger brother, who was in my class, and sister who was only 5 years had been trapped in their house when it caught fire and all had been burned to death.

To make matters worse two other families living either side of them, and both with children in my class had had their houses severely damaged.  Even more dreadful was that during the course of the day we found out the incidents behind the horror.

It turned out that Wayne's mother and her current boyfriend had accused the other mother of stealing their mobile phone (this was when mobile phones were still 'bricks' and very expensive'.  They had gone around to confront her numerous times during the day but she refused to open the door.  Later in the evening she had hit up with heroin but not before locking the children in their bedroom.  Wayne's mother and boyfriend returned in the early hours of the morning and threw a petrol bomb through the front window.

 

 

With the mother nodding off from her heroin hit, neither she or the children stood a chance.  The fire gutted the house in no time and all that remained were three charred bodies.  We later found out that Joey (the boy in my class) had put himself in front of his sister in the cupboard to try and protect her as the flames licked at their bedroom door.

 

There are no words to describe the horror of that day or that week.  We all had to continue teaching, try and comfort the victims, and worse for me was that I had to handle a class where two of the boys were the children of the perpetrator of this shocking, senseless crime.  Wayne's mother dobbed her boyfriend in and was released on bail, while her boyfriend was charged and locked up.  This meant that Wayne and his brother were still at school.  The atmosphere in the classroom was bitter and tragic.  I don't remember it clearly but I think we spent most of the week either watching videos, playing sport or trying to cheer the children up by making Christmas decorations.

The following Friday, and the last day of the school year, was the funeral.  Before leaving the hospital rang me to say that Matty was in rapid decline and could pass away at any moment.  

The funeral was dreadful.  A split family all in mourning and all accusing each other of neglect.  Verbal fights erupting during the sermon.  Other families all affected and crying.  Matty dying.  It was all too much for me and I had to leave the church in tears.  One of the 'normal mothers' followed me outside.  I was in hysterics and in front of her boys (both in my class) I finally told her about Matty.  It had been forever since I had let go.  It had been over 10 years before I finally had a mother who just held me and let me cry everything out.  Eventually I pulled myself together and returned to finish the last school day of the year.

 

By the time I reached the hospital I was a wreck.  So much so that the nurses took one look at me and took me aside to ask me what was wrong.  When I explained to them the events of the day (the story had been playing on the national news for the past week) they immediately gave me a bottle full of pills and insisted I take two before going in to see Matty.

Matty was by now slipping in out of consciousness. When he was awake he was totally unaware of his surroundings and becoming delusional.  For everything that Christine did to me in the past few years, taking Matty from me, causing so many rifts between us and marrying him behind my back, nothing made me hate her more than her response to his last few tragic days.

She couldn't cope whatsoever.  She had no idea how to handle his babbling or his delusional episodes.  When he woke up and started asking why Toby was here (Toby was my dog) and was actually looking at Christine's sister she just broke down and admitted that she didn't know what to do and asked me how I could handle it so calmly.

I was angry, but used to dealing with children, I explained to her that it was just the same.  It was easy for me to go along with Matty's rambling and pretend it was another infant child playing make-believe.  I would engage him in conversation which was totally inane but gave him the comfort of knowing that someone was there to listen to him.

He lasted through Friday night, all day Saturday and most of Sunday.  Christine had by this time given total responsibility of sitting with him to me.  She just couldn't cope or deal with him.  I understand now that it was a very emotional and stressful time for her, but at the time, I couldn't believe that she didn't have the guts to 'just pretend' and help me humour him in his dying moments.

 

Late Sunday afternoon and Matty woke up.  We spent a few hours watching TV and chatting.  Whatever subject he brought up I just went along with it.  He fell asleep again and around 7pm he woke up again.  The television show 'Keeping Up Appearances' was playing.  For years we had joked how the main character was so similar to my mother.  Matty looked at the TV and said 'what's your mother doing on TV?'  We laughed together, our final recognition of each other before he slipped back into a coma.

I knew that was the end.  I lay with him on the bed for an hour or so.  Holding him, talking to him, forgiving him.  I couldn't forgive Christine.  When I left the hospital she was fast asleep.  I didn't even try to wake her.

At home I smoked myself into a stupor and eventually fell asleep around 11pm.  As god is my witness I woke up to find (or dreamt) that Matty was standing at my bedroom door (the image is still as vivid now as it was then)  calling my name over and over again.....the phone rang, and rang and rang......when I stood up Matty smiled at me and faded away.  I didn't need to pick up the phone to know that it was the hospital.  Matty had passed away a few minutes before - but not without coming to me for a final goodbye.