One year earlier
At the sound of knocking on my bedroom door, I poked my head up over my quilt and forced my eyes open.
‘You can’t keep sleeping your days away like this, Mia. We’ve got an appointment—you need to get up,’ said Mum. She ripped the covers off me, wincing when she found me curled up in the foetal position.
‘No more doctors. Please, Mum.’
‘It’s not a doctor. Wear something comfortable.’ She turned around and went to leave the room.
‘Wait, where are we going?’
She turned back to face me with a serious look on her face. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet. She’s a friend of a friend. I think she can help.’
‘She can’t,’ I said, pulling the covers up to my chin.
‘God, Mia, you think this is easy for me? To see you like this? Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Just let me in, trust me … for once.’
I sighed deeply. ‘Who is she?’
‘Her name’s Sarah.’
‘Therapist?’
‘Meditation teacher.’
I rolled my eyes and flopped my head back onto the pillow. ‘Oh my God, Mum, are you kidding me?’
‘She’s a warrior, too. Complete remission. Twelve years.’
‘Good for her,’ I said, staring at the ceiling.
‘We need to stay positive, Mia.’
I sat up and looked her straight in the eyes. She swallowed hard, avoiding eye contact. I ran my fingers through my hair, effortlessly loosening strands from my head. I extended my arms out to Mum, the clump of hair hanging limply from my fingers. Mum simply stared, blinking at the orphaned strands.
‘Adam, can you please come in here?’ she called to my dad.
She stepped closer to me, and I noticed for the first time the way her clothes no longer fit her; they hung off her almost nonexistent curves. Her eyes had become scored with extra creases around their edges. She sat down beside me and tried to hold my hands, but I pulled them away and ran them over my hair again, latching onto more clumps. I shook my head and balled up my fists. Something in me tightened, and through tears I yelled, ‘How am I supposed to stay positive when this is happening to me?’
The colour disappeared from her face and her hands rose to her temples.
I continued. ‘This is what happens when you’re dying from—’
‘Stop! I don’t want to hear it, Mia!’ Tears pooled in her eyes.
I gasped, cupping my hands over my mouth. ‘Is this how you think it’s going to end? You don’t believe I’m going to make it, do you?’ When she didn’t answer, I raised myself up to her level. ‘Do you? When you sneak in here at night, looking at me while you think I’m asleep, you’re just watching me to ensure that each breath won’t be my last, that you can remember what this room looks like once the bed is empty. You don’t even believe I can beat—’
‘That’s enough, Mia,’ said my dad. He was standing in the doorway to my bedroom, toothbrush in his hand.
I averted my gaze and Mum straightened. She slid her hands across the sheets as she gathered the loose strands of hair between her fingers. Then she reached for my hands, pried my fingers open, and took away the clumps of hair that I was still holding onto. She got up and placed my hair in the wastebasket with such gentleness, you’d be fooled into thinking there was nothing destructive about the way they fell out in the first place. Then she left the room, avoiding my dad’s gaze on the way out.
‘Get dressed, pumpkin,’ he said. ‘I’m taking the day off work. We’ll do something nice after your appointment.’
I blew my nose and nodded, and he left the room, following Mum down the hallway. A moment later I heard her let out a deep moan. The bathroom door clicked shut behind them.
Without bothering to dress, I headed for the kitchen. I was about to flick the switch on the blender (pre-loaded with the ‘most amazing cancer-fighting’ fruits and vegetables my mum had ever read about and insisted I drink in a smoothie that looked like it had been dredged up from a swamp each morning), when I caught my dad’s raised voice carrying through the house.
I left the kitchen and stood on the other side of the bathroom door, frozen.
‘You need to get yourself together, Julie! You’re scaring her!’
‘You think I don’t know that? Do you think I’m not trying? Every time I look into those eyes and see sadness staring back at me knowing that I can’t do anything to make this better for her, I break. I break because all I want to do is hold her in my arms and kiss it better. That’s what mothers are supposed to do. And I hate that I can’t do that for her.’
‘You have to find a way to be strong for her. You have to show her there’s still hope.’
‘How much hope can I have when my one and only daughter is wilting away? The withdrawal from it all, everything and everyone—the painting, her friends, you, me. It’s killing …’
There was a long pause.
‘You have to keep believing, Julie. If you don’t, how will Mia? The stats are on our side. She’s going to get through this.’
‘How am I going to get through this if she doesn’t?’
The house grew quiet. I wanted to walk away because I didn’t want to hear his answer; I didn’t want to think about what it might be like for them if I died, but I couldn’t seem to move. It was like I’d been pierced with the numbing reality of what was actually happening to me, to them, to us.
‘I don’t know,’ said Dad. This is what hurt the most—that he didn’t know. He was supposed to know; he was the one who always had the answers.
Then the words became muffled, and I couldn’t understand anything else until my mum opened the door to find me standing there. I looked past her tear-stained face to my dad, who stood there in his pyjama bottoms, electric razor buzzing in his hand.
An uncomfortable silence weaved its way between us until he held my eyes with his. He smiled. It was the kind of smile that was steeped in the deepest kind of love a parent has for their child. He switched off the razor, walked towards me, and taking one of my hands in his, he gazed at me with an unbearable look of desperation and said, ‘We need you to fight, Mia.’ He pulled me close and held me so tightly I could hardly breathe. When his hand touched the patch of bald skin on the back of my head, he buried his face in my neck. ‘Just a few more rounds, pumpkin, and this will all be over.’
That morning, I agreed to attend my first meditation class with Sarah. The centre, located in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges surrounded by mountain ash trees stretching up towards the sky, smelled of incense and was quiet except for the chanting that was coming from a nearby room. I looked at my dad as he raised his eyebrows, and I couldn’t help flashing him an amused smile. Sarah appeared and clapped her hands together.
‘Ready to turn your eye inward?’
I shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
‘Come, I want to show you something.’
She led me to a garden fringed with sprawling tree ferns, and motioned for me to sit on a wooden bench. I waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. I pulled my beanie over my ears and waited, my frustration escalating with each minute that passed. My thoughts twined themselves into a rope that knotted itself in my stomach, and when I could no longer feel my fingers and toes, I went to speak, except Sarah raised a finger to her mouth and the silence continued. I shifted my weight on the bench and sat on my hands in an effort to keep them still.
Eventually, Sarah stood up. ‘You can go home now, kiddo.’
I felt my face twisting into a frown. ‘But I thought …’
‘That’s the point.’ She flashed me a hint of a smile. ‘See you next week?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
Three months later, I looked forward to my sessions with Sarah.
‘I need you to trust me, but more importantly, I need you to trust what you feel and what you see,’ said Sarah one afternoon in the meditation centre. She lit a stick of incense and tucked it in the wooden burner.
I sat on my zafu cushion and moved my body into the lotus position, resting my knees on the floor, straightening my back and inhaling deeply the way she’d taught me.
‘Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth … Feel your body relaxing with every inhale. On the exhale, imagine your breath is releasing any worries or tension you might be feeling—let it all go with the breath.’
I let all the thoughts—large and small—of life and death and everything in between, drift by with the smallest flicker of attention. I liked how the whole meditation thing helped with that.
‘Now that you’re completely relaxed, I’d like you to imagine yourself sitting on a lush green carpet of grass. It’s a bright and sunny day and you can feel the warmth of the sun’s rays on your skin. When you’re ready, I want you to feel into your life as it is now. Take note of any words that come to you.’
Empty.
‘And any emotions that you’re feeling.’
Sad. Scared. Lost.
‘And any images that you might be seeing. Remember to allow yourself to see and feel without judgement. There is no right, and there is no wrong. There just is.’
Slowly, the image of two male hands appeared; their fingers pointing towards each other, not quite touching. I knew I’d seen this image somewhere before and that it was part of something bigger, but this perplexing thought drifted away when one of the hands reached out for mine. A feeling of complete safety and peace washed over me before the hand dissipated into nothing and then I was overcome with a strong desire to move towards it, long after it had gone.
‘Now I want you to look for a door. I want you to imagine that behind the door is the answer to your prayers or a solution to your problem or some guidance on what steps you need to take in your life in order to heal or find peace. Know that when you step through the door, you’re completely safe and protected.’
I stepped through the door and found myself in an airport. I looked down at my hands to find a boarding card with my name on it without a destination. When I looked up I suddenly found myself outside again, where I was now surrounded by hills dotted with olive trees and farmhouses that backed onto rows of vineyards. I turned around, trying to find some other clue as to where I was and then I saw it: a panoramic view of Florence, Italy.
‘When you’re ready, I’d like you to turn back and lock the door behind you,’ instructed Sarah.
I turned around for one last glimpse of something that felt so distant yet so real and so comforting.
‘So, how was it, Mia? What guidance did you receive?’
‘It was … amazing,’ I said, stretching my legs. ‘This might sound crazy, but I think I want to go to Italy.’
‘Italy?’ She smiled in surprise.
‘Well, Florence, to be exact. After they give me the all clear. If they give me the all clear.’
I’d never wanted the all clear as much as I wanted it right then. By the time I’d battled it out for round four, I had tried to paint again. But no matter how hard I’d tried to dip into the right colours, my brush wanted to do other things. The only images that reflected back at me were formless dark shapes and shadows that were painted by a completely different version of myself—one I was scared could no longer recognise the pre-cancer version of Mia. One day after painting a completely horrifying swath of greys, I slammed my brushes down and pushed my easel over with such force that I stumbled and tripped and couldn’t find the energy to get up again. As I lay there with my cheek to the floorboards, I remember thinking that this was it; there was nothing left of me if I couldn’t paint again.
My mum rushed in and dropped to her knees beside me. ‘Did you fall? Tell me where it hurts.’
‘Nowhere,’ I said. The truth was that it hurt everywhere. She helped me sit up. My hands slid through the mess of wet paint as I scrambled for my brushes and held them tightly to my chest as though I was trying to channel one small glimpse of what life used to feel like.
My mum looked at me with scared, sad eyes and told me that she’d take care of the mess.
I brought my knees up to my chest, buried my head in my hands and yelled, ‘I don’t want you to take care of it, Mum! I don’t want you to have to fix this! I have to fix this.’ I just didn’t know how to fix any of it. My mum winced at my words. ‘Mum … I’m sorry.’
‘Here,’ she said, handing me a brush.
She took a cloth and started wiping the paint from my forearm before moving to each finger. I watched her wipe away every trace of paint, giving this task the kind of attention she might have given a younger version of myself when I came to her with a grazed knee or a superficial burn. I wasn’t a mother, but in that moment she showed me what it meant to be a mother, and I became aware of how brilliantly she succeeded at being the best kind. When her fingers wrapped themselves around my wrist and put cloth to skin, I felt better, if only for a fleeting second. Here was my mum, conscripted to a life full of uncertainty, where she had no choice except to play the alternating roles of mother, wife, therapist, nurse, chauffeur and constant punching bag, all the while trying to maintain some shred of hope that I’d live to see my next birthday.
‘You do make it better,’ I whispered.
She folded the cloth and started hiccupping in silence, her chest rising and falling in an attempt to fight back the tears. She looked up at the ceiling as if she was drawing strength from above and then she brought her fingers to her lips, as if she was thinking about what to say to me.
‘You don’t need to say anything. I just wanted you to know,’ I said.
Two days later, Doctor Henderson called. A week after that, I booked my plane ticket. Nine months after that, I arrived in Florence.