Too many tents, too much heartache
The paddocks call us back every year but some years are harder than the last. Images of tents, hard dirt and camping flood my mind as I try to sort out the jumble in my mind; living on hills and paddocks surrounded by family and cousins. Playing cricket and Lynnie being knocked out by the cricket ball and being rushed to the hospital. The sound of a baby girl crying, taking its last breath as we all sit inside our own tents knowing that the baby was going to heaven. The doctor had sent her back to us to be with her family when her time comes. Morning comes and sadness grips us all; my Uncle and Aunty prepare to take her back into town. Standing at the tent flap, I raise my eyes, looking for the sun, but no sunshine shows through on this day: it’s cold and overcast. We don’t go to work. We must be respectful to the dead.
One time, we’re all camped out in tents again picking oranges; Uncle Paddy and Aunty Carol are here with us. Mummy’s sick, real sick but I don’t know exactly what it is. She has to have a big operation, I know that much. Uncle and Aunty are looking after us kids till she comes home and they’re worried. One night, we’re all out at the fire when Uncle Paddy tells us, ‘Joyce’s real sick in hospital; it don’t look good. She might not come home.’
Paddy, Lynnie, Kevin and me are walking away from the fire broken-hearted. We crawl into our beds in our tent, praying that God will let her get better, that she comes home. We cry and whisper to each other, making sure nobody can hear us: ‘What would we do without her? Who would take care of us?’ We know already in our hearts that we’d be split up—we wouldn’t be brothers and sisters anymore. And the fear of the Welfare grows deeper inside me every time I hear him mentioned.
Our greatest fear is not being brothers and sisters. Years later, I find out that, when our mother died, Aunty June wanted to take me and Uncle Raymond wanted to take Kevin but Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t let them and so they took both of us themselves. And when Uncle Athol was alive, he begged Mummy that, if anything happened to him, she was to get his kids and take them. Mummy and Aunty Doris went and got Lynnie and Paddy from their mum and she didn’t mind.
I say my prayers for Mummy to get better again, harder this time, praying that God in heaven makes her all right so she comes home to us. After a while in the hospital, she comes home and I say a thank you to God. I think maybe he might be all right after all.