I’m not sure how to write this particular chapter. I know that I want the words to be the most lovely, poignant and meaningful I’ve ever conjured up. I want them to sit heavily on the page so that you understand how important they are to me. I’m already sobbing onto my keyboard, as I know what is to come. The events that you’re going to read about took me to the very outer limits of the human experience. I was tearing along the edge of emotional oblivion like a wrung-out desperado while they were unfolding. They were also the catalyst for a great shift in me: from enormous grief I found a strength and purpose I didn’t know I possessed.
These events made me brave, they enabled me to let go of all the insignificant crap I was carrying around and, afterwards, I was able to get on with the business of living. I will do my best to recount them in an honest and respectful way.
So here goes.
On Sunday 12 October 2014, I got one of those phone calls where time speeds up and stands still all at once. One of those phone calls that focuses the world around you down to a tiny pinpoint. One of those phone calls that started with ‘Em, I’ve got some bad news.’
If you’ve ever received this type of phone call, and I am sure that many of you have, then you know everything that happens after that becomes a bit of a blur. Your coping mechanisms take over as you attempt to continue functioning and remembering how to breathe.
My mother’s youngest sister Rachael explained to me that my Uncle Haydn, her brother, had been involved in a horrific car accident driving back from his son’s, my cousin Brendan’s, wedding. Through a fog I heard her explain that he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, that he was still alive but that there had been some spinal damage. His wife, my Aunty Alva, had seen the whole thing. She was driving behind him, as they’d taken separate cars the day before due to differing work schedules. Alva had looked on in horror as she saw Haydn’s car veer off the road and flip over. Alva was able to flag down a passing car and call an ambulance. Uncle Haydn was airlifted to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, and as most of the family were up in Albury where the wedding had been, there were only a few of us in Melbourne to meet the chopper so my mother and I went to the hospital to wait for him. My Uncle Russ (Mum’s other brother) drove Alva down to Melbourne with his wife Irene. I can’t even begin to fathom what Alva went through in the three excruciating hours it took her to get to her husband.
As I sat in the ICU waiting room I wondered about all the other people there and what had happened to their person. We all had the same worried expressions on our faces. The ICU waiting room seldom brings good news – it’s a solemn, heavy place. Finally Uncle Russ, Aunty Irene and Aunty Alva arrived and she was able to go in and see Uncle Haydn. He was still unconscious and there really had been no developments with his condition since he’d arrived. Hours passed and I began to obsessively study the faces of the nurses going in and out of his room, looking for some clue as to what his prognosis was.
After a seemingly endless amount of time, his doctor came out and gestured for all of us to gather in a nearby conference room. I studied his face and instantly knew the news wasn’t good. My mother, Uncle Russ and Aunty Irene, Aunty Alva and I sat down around a table in a sparsely decorated room. I noticed a single box of tissues sitting in the middle of the table, a presumptuous decorating choice, yet a necessary one, I was sure. The space felt heavy, and I could feel the sadness of countless families in it; this was the bad news place. Somewhere people could go to quietly lose their shit while maintaining a shred of dignity. I’ve never wanted to leave a room more in my life. It was suffocating. I wanted to kick down the door the instant my mother shut it behind her.
Haydn’s doctor looked around the table for the leader, someone to deliver the information to, someone to ask questions of him, someone to take control of the situation of behalf of Haydn’s family. I looked around the table too and saw that everyone had their heads bowed, they were all at their absolute threshold of emotion. No one wanted to ask him, because asking him set the truth into motion and deep down we all knew that truth was not going to be pleasant.
So I started asking questions. I shut down every feeling I had and I went to a place that may have seemed cold and callous at the time, but it was the only way I could get through the conversation.
‘How is he?’
‘He is still unconscious, we are starting to bring him around now.’
‘How is his spine?’
‘Not good, it has extensive damage.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘At this stage, it is very unlikely that Haydn will have any feeling from the neck down.’
‘Ever?’
‘No.’
‘At this stage we are still assessing his injuries and will have more information as the night progresses. He requires a ventilator to breathe – we do not expect that situation to change either.’
‘Ever?’
‘No.’
‘So you are sure about the quadriplegia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he know?’
‘No.’
Those words were truly unreal. You hear about this kind of thing, see it on TV, but you never think you’ll be on the end of one of those phone calls and then sitting in intensive care at 3am being told by an exhausted, impossibly young doctor that someone you love is in such a bad state.
My immediate concern was for my aunty, his wife. Up until this point she had been a tower of strength – powerfully stoic, for lack of a better term. As the news began to sink in, I watched as finally she crumbled, huge, heaving sobs wracking her body. She kept saying that Haydn wouldn’t want to live, that he has always said that if this type of thing were to happen to him he wouldn’t want to be trapped in his body. He was a farmer, a bus driver, a motorbike enthusiast, a fisherman, a hunter, a fireman, a footballer; he used every inch of his body every day. He’d also had a very close mate injured in a motorbike accident who had become paralysed and so he’d thought long and hard about that particular set of circumstances should it ever happen to him.
My Uncle Russ was in shock, so was his wife, and my mum sat quietly not saying a word. All the while, Alva raged, ‘Why is this happening?’
I excused myself from the room and walked the empty corridors of the hospital. Counting my steps and breaths, noticing the scuffs on the linoleum, listening to the beeping of the machines, I tried to stay present so as not to be too overwhelmed with the situation. I wanted to stay calm for my Aunty Alva. I wanted to be alert and steady for when my cousins Brendan and Evan (Haydn’s sons) arrived. I also wanted to be able to ask the right questions of the doctors when and if I was needed to do so again.
The next day (Monday) Haydn’s boys arrived and so did the rest of my family. All of Denise and Ted Spence’s five kids were in the same place at the same time, which was an extremely rare occurrence. Like any family, they had their issues, some long standing and some fresh, but one of their own was in need and so they put their feelings aside and sat in solidarity in the ICU waiting room.
As the week went on it became obvious to all that my uncle was not going to make it, and his condition was fast deteriorating, his body unable to cope with the extent of his injuries. I was finally able to talk to him on the Friday, five days after the accident. He’d been moved to palliative care at the Austin Hospital. I walked into the ward a little bit frightened, not knowing what to expect. I knew that he was completely aware of his situation, what I didn’t know was what I should say to him. I decided to honour our relationship and just be honest, blunt and real as that was the way he and I had always communicated.
I pushed the blue curtain out of the way and walked into his cubicle. They had his bed raised up so he was in a seated position and he had tubes coming out of everywhere. He had pressure bandages around his limbs and his skin had a yellowish tinge to it. Then I noticed his face was bloated and I started to panic. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him now, but then he looked at me with his unbelievably blue eyes and nothing else mattered. There he was, the man who had given me my first ever beer. The man who had let me swear in front of him as a kid and who’d taught me how to shoot a gun and ride a motorbike. He stared at me and our eyes locked onto each other. I wanted to look away as it was utterly overwhelming but I didn’t, I held his gaze. After a time he almost seemed to be looking through me, he looked at me in such a way that it seemed like he’d discovered new things while he’d been unconscious. That in those far-off places he had found the wisdom that comes with knowing your time is extremely limited.
‘Hello, girl, how are ya?’
‘Better than you,’ I replied.
‘Yep, I’d reckon so.’ He laughed.
‘Bloody hell, Uncle Hayd, what have you done?’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘I’d love another Coke Zero.’
‘Yep, can do. Don’t go anywhere while I’m gone, okay?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he replied with a smile.
I’ve never taken a request so seriously in my life – it became my mission. My sole purpose for existing in that moment was to find my uncle a Coke Zero. A simple task one would think, no?
No.
Do you think I could? Pepsi Max as far as the eye could see, but no Coke Zero.
As you can imagine, I became hysterical in the hospital cafeteria. I couldn’t believe I was going to fail in his one request. I went over and asked the ladies at the information desk if there were any vending machines that sold Coke in the hospital. They must have thought me a mad woman – I was panting and sobbing all at once. They pointed me in the right direction and I set off once again, steadfast in my determination to locate the fucking Coke Zero. I found the machine . . . COKE ZERO! Praise be! I got my crisp $50 note out, the one I had just withdrawn from the ATM – it was Haydn’s special last request, and I wanted brand new money for some reason, only the best would do. Wait? What is this? The machine doesn’t take notes? Of course it fucking doesn’t.
I’m not ashamed to say I kicked the shit out of that machine. I refused to be defeated. I looked around for someone to swap money with, but there was not a soul to be seen.
In desperation I checked the change slot, and guess what I found?
Four bucks.
A Coke Zero was $3.70.
If I was a religious person, I’d say that was a sign.
I raced back up to my uncle and presented him with the Coke Zero, I put a straw in it, held it to his mouth and he drank the whole thing down in one go. I sat with him a bit longer and we chatted as we always did. I only saw him a few times a year but he and my aunty had always been great supporters of mine when most of the family had decided I was a pain in the arse.
I told him I loved him.
I thanked him for always having my back.
He looked at me and said something that broke and healed me all at once.
‘You’re a good girl, Em, always have been.’
I’ve always felt like the family screw-up, the joke, the black sheep, that I was never quite good enough for anyone. I was for him though and for me, finally, that was enough.
Then my Uncle Russ called me out of the cubicle and quietly told me that someone needed to go and tell my Nana Denise (the writer of the wedding synopsis and my favourite member of the family) that her beloved son was not going to make it.
That the news should not be delivered on the phone, and that she shouldn’t be alone when she got it. Nana couldn’t be there as she herself was in hospital, two hours away in Shepparton, unwell and unable to be moved. I volunteered for the job as I could tell everyone else was reluctant to leave Haydn’s side. I also wanted to be the one to do it as my Nana and I were really tight, and I knew she’d prefer to hear it from me if she couldn’t hear it from Uncle Russ.
As I was driving up the Hume Highway to be with my grandmother, I just couldn’t believe what was happening. You see, my uncle had always seemed bulletproof to me, and the person I was going to see was his number one fan. My Nana had five kids and all of them would attest to the fact that Uncle Hayd was her favourite. He had stayed in the small country town they’d all been raised in when the others had made lives elsewhere. He looked after her, and was always just a phone call away should Nana need anything.
I arrived at the hospital, walked through her ward and, as I came around the corner, I saw her sitting in a wheelchair looking frail and worried. I stood still and watched her, knowing I was about to obliterate her life, and I wanted her to have a few more moments of a world where there was still a chance Haydn would make it.
She sensed my presence and called out to me, and as soon as she saw my face, she broke down.
I’d spent weeks driving back and forth to visit her in Shepparton, and we’d grown even closer over that time. I’d been taking her spare nighties and underwear, and making sure she had fresh flowers and magazines. My Aunty Rachael had been doing the same, making the five-hour road trip from her place in Tumbarumba each week to take care of Nana. At this point I wish to acknowledge Rachael and the unbelievable selflessness she showed towards her mother.
When Haydn first had the accident I went to be with Nana on the Tuesday. She spoke non-stop about his strength and how she hoped it would all be okay. She also made me go over the accident time and time again – she wanted to be shown a map of where it had happened exactly. She asked several times who the person who stopped to help Alva had been. Did she know them? She craved details as the elderly so often do, and I did my best to fill in the gaps for her.
It was Friday now and I was there to tell her that it wasn’t going to be okay.
I went to her and said how sorry I was. I desperately tried to hold back the tears as I held her. I wanted to be a source of strength for her – she was so fragile – I wanted her to feel as though she could lean into me. I remembered at that moment that she was a mother, a mother being told that her son was going to die. It didn’t matter that she was eighty-one, you never stop being a mother and mothers aren’t built to cope with the death of their children. That’s not how nature intends it to be: we go first, not them.
There were other people in the room and above all things my Nana was a proud woman; I knew she would be mortified at crying in front of other people, so I busted her out of the ward. I put a blanket on her and wheeled her straight out the emergency exit and into a small garden area so that she could grieve in private. She asked me to call my Uncle Russ and ask if Haydn could speak on the phone so she could say goodbye to him.
Haydn was not strong enough to speak on the phone by that stage. Passing that information on to my grandmother, that she would not be able to speak with her child one last time, was one of the single hardest moments of my life. After a short while, Nana asked to go back inside so she could sleep. Life had just become too much for her. Nana had chronic arthritis and fragile bones, so much so that moving her in and out of bed had fractured one of her arms. She could not be transported to see Haydn in Melbourne and he couldn’t be moved either, and the phone call was her last hope.
On Saturday 18 October 2014, exactly a week after celebrating his youngest son’s marriage, Uncle Haydn passed away. With my Aunty Alva and Uncle Russ by his side.
He donated all his organs, except his eyes. Those impressive blue eyes. I’d want to take them with me too.
After Haydn’s funeral my Nana started going downhill fast, her heart was broken and her will to live gone. Again I found myself in a hospital, watching the light leave someone very close to me. On New Year’s Eve I was called away to work in Sydney, to host a broadcast covering the fireworks and festivities. We desperately needed the money and so after much thought I decided to do it; I’d be in and out in 24 hours. I didn’t want to leave Nana, but I thought I had time. I now look back and wish I could take that decision back. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for leaving her. I kept close checks on her throughout the night and was told she didn’t have long. I went to bed making so many deals with God, I bargained and pleaded. My phone rang at 6.32am and it was Aunty Rachael. I knew what it meant, but I didn’t want to answer because then it would be real.
Denise Spence passed away on New Year’s Day 2015, nine weeks after her son Haydn. With my Aunty Rachael and Uncle Russ by her side.
Again my family had one of its most beloved members ripped from it.
Just know Nana was a force of nature, a damn fine cook and hands down the funniest person I have ever known. I spent most summers with her as a kid, and besides my own mother, she was the single most important female influence in my life. She was my number one fan and I was hers.
To be perfectly frank, she wouldn’t want you to know too much about her last few days, when she stopped putting on her lippy and worrying about her hair. That’s when we knew things were really bad. My grandmother, no matter what, always ‘put on her face’.
The eulogy I gave at her funeral probably best sums up my relationship with her. On the day I wore white and one of her brooches and painted my lips red in her honour. I now always wear red lips in her honour.
For Nana.
As far back as I can remember, Nana and I were great mates. Having both been blessed with the ability to talk underwater with paper bags on our heads and a matching set of harsh tongues, we would sit and chat for hours about, well, most of you, actually.
Our friendship was really only tested once when I was twelve years old. She had come down for the school holidays as she so often did, to look after my sister and I. On this one day we were about to start a marathon cooking session and needed to fire up our dodgy oven. It refused to spring to life, so Nana stuck her head in to investigate further and just at that moment I flicked a mystery switch and the oven roared to life, taking with it Nana’s eyebrows and eyelashes – every last one. We subsequently spent the rest of the school holidays searching for a waterproof eyebrow pencil in the right shade of grey. She never really mastered drawing them on properly, in the end she had to grow the front of her silver perm slightly longer to cover the bald spots.
I know that I inherited Nana’s resilience, independence and sense of humour. Nana made me laugh more than anyone else I know. Her sense of humour was about as dry as they come and her wit, razor sharp. No-one was safe from her assessment and judgement. I loved hearing about the weekly Scrabble sessions she had with her pals and the comings and goings at the church plant shop. I loved how harsh and cutting she could be. I always knew where things stood between us.
I’ll miss her disapproving ‘lips of string’ and the waft of Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door perfume from the bedroom before we’d go out to the big store. I’ll miss her pinching my ear when I said something she didn’t like and the way she would hold my hand and pick at my nails absentmindedly. It used to drive me crazy but now I’d give anything to have those weathered, arthritic fingers digging at mine.
She loved Downton Abbey and had a delightful yet slightly disturbing love of Eddie McGuire.
She was the queen of putting on a brave and glamorous face, no matter how bad things got, she always managed impeccable hair, red lipstick and a pair of kickarse shoes.
Sorry for saying ‘arse’ at your funeral, Nana.
Nana, who will iron my underwear and aggressively steam the crotch? She would do that, she would slam the iron down on top of them, never breaking eye contact with me, and say, ‘You never know what’s lurking here, Emelia.’
Who will call me Emelia?
Who will pray for me now and save me from eternal damnation?
She was my friend, my role model and my hero.
My world is a lesser place without her. I’ll miss her, I miss her.
Go well, Nana. Go well.
She would have been so excited for you all to read about her, and to be in my book would be considered the highest of honours by her. She would have also wanted me to mention that she was a multiple blue-ribbon winner at the Country Women’s Association bake-offs and royal shows, regularly attended the Anglican Church and that she once went to visit the Queen of England with my mother. I have popped a photo in the picture section, please note red beret, red jacket, red lipstick: the woman was a colour coordinating ANIMAL.
Bloody hell, I miss her.
So there you have it, the grief Olympics, starring my family.
I’m a bit broken and numb now, since I have written this all in one go. I knew that if I took a break it wouldn’t get finished and now I’m not sure what to do with myself. I’m trying not to think about the things I have just written and have been completely consumed by it all the same.
The day of Nana’s funeral I made a choice to go out and make that woman so fucking proud of me she’d have no choice but to come back and tell me so. Something snapped in me when I was standing at her grave (which was next to my uncle’s) and I decided not to let their deaths define me. Not to let the sadness destroy me because I was close, I was dangerously on the edge that day. I really could have gone either way; the grief was warm and inviting, it was begging me to give into it. These events truly have a way of slamming things into perspective, don’t they? Those ridiculous inspiration quotes and photos about not taking anything for granted and living in the present start making sense. Telling those you care about that you in fact do care about them.
I have lost all my grandparents now; I was lucky enough to have them all for a long time.
Violanté (Nonna).
Edward (Grandfather Ted).
Luigi (Grandpa).
Denise (Nana).
I am a product of all of you, carrying many of your good and bad traits. I hope I’m making you all proud.
To my Uncle Haydn, the red-headed 6 foot 4 hole you left is still being felt, we all miss you.
Love,