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......