INHALE

Day #1 Breathe in, and now hold for six days…

I am told it is a rare kind of cancer I shouldn’t Google until we know for sure. My doctor speaks slowly and kindly. He is succinct and maintains eye contact with me. He gestures with his left hand pointing out one possibility and with his right the other, adding that unfortunately there is not a lot of grey area in between. He tells me to try to live my normal life until Wednesday, when we will meet again and we will know. “Have a gin and tonic.” I don’t really know how but I am moving through space. The lift takes forever but then before I know it I am at the main door stepping out onto the pavement of the Elizabeth St bus mall. The lights on my right just turn green and I make an effort to run across, but my body tells me that due to my recent surgery I am not ready for this heightened activity just yet. I manage a quick shuffle -as there is no turning back now- and I am the last one to make it to the safety of the footpath. I walk. I get into my car and realise I can’t drive. But I also can’t call Bill because I can’t tell him all this over the phone. Shit, I wish I brought him with me. I am holding onto the wheel and I just keep holding it.

Day #2 Empty.

I am driving through a curtain of tears. I shouldn’t be driving but we already had our entire house boxed up when I had my meeting with my doctor, so we just have to follow through with moving house. While I wait for the removalists to come back for their second load I decide to buy a fishtank for my son. It’s a big deal for a three year old to move from the only house he’s ever lived in so it’s a good idea to take his mind off things with something new and exciting. We have been talking about these fish for a while but in the shop I learn that you have to wait three weeks before you can actually put any plants or fish in the aquarium water. I resort to gifting him an empty fishtank for the time being filled with gravel and a carved out rock the fish will eventually be able to swim through. Appear and disappear.

Just before my exit on the Brooker I notice a wallaby by the side of the road. There is no-one behind me so I can slow down. It looks “fresh”. I decide to make my way back to check the pouch. This is the first time I do this even though the amount of times I thought about it is many. I never perceived to have the time. I make three right turns, find a park and clamber up the hillside. As I stand at the edge of the road it feels like an adult and calm self of mine steps in telling my distraught self to look out for traffic very carefully because standing here where no-one ever stands is not normal, and I am also going through something that is nowhere near normal either, so better be very careful. Once it’s safe I step across the white line onto the highway. It is almost noon and I can feel the heat of the sun reflected back via the cracked rough surface of the asphalt. I take a hold of it’s tail with my bare hand and pull it into the bone-dry weedy grass. I try not to look at anything but the pouch. It is empty.

Day#3 A-okay

I have decided that I will write a letter for every year of my son’s birthday until he turns forty, the age I am now. Heavy thoughts fill my many moments of stillness that I find myself in today. We are at Kingston beach and it is a glorious warm summer day. We look for crabs under the rocks and chase a floating flower in and out of the waves. Its calendula-yellow petals are lurid and un-belonging on the surface of the cool water. I have never been so sad on a beach. There is no point calculating odds, Google seconds the doctor, as there seems to be no clinging onto false hope in my situation. It is an all-clear or its very bad. The very bad reminds me of ‘The room next door’ where Almodovar’s wise Tilda Swinton shows us how to stay true to oneself and die gracefully wrapped up in and surrounded by expensive and beautiful objects. I think of the scene where Agent Cooper is lying down on his hotel room floor and bleeding to death in full composure and zero fear.

Bill meets me every day exactly where I am. I don’t know how he does this but it’s been this way since we met. I catch him walking into our bedroom to get dressed after a shower with the towel on his shoulder. I kiss him and we kiss for a long time in the dim hallway, me fully dressed.

Day#4 The prophesy

We are cosy and I am about to read tonight’s line of books to Lori. He is very chatty and is telling me all about how big and strong he will be if he eats lots of vegetables and kangaroo meat. We compare our biceps and he points out how hard and strong my elbow is. He had an ear infection recently and I noticed that instead of talking to him loudly its better to lean in closer and almost whisper into his ears. We have this beautiful musical book, but the story is not so great and he just keeps chatting away until I get Stickman out which finally lulls him into calm listening. Suddenly he says to me “mum I want to whisper in your ear” and turns my head on the pillow. It am taken aback by the sound of his voice, he never whispered into my ear before. He sounds like someone else with the childlike pitch of his voice gone. He sounds ageless as he says: “You are my size”. It takes me a few moments to realise what he means. His little head is still thinking about growing big and strong and being the same height as me. I hope nothing more than that I get to hold my palm up above his head one day with our eyes level seeing whether he has passed me by. I replay his ageless voice in my head a few times and decide to hope that it is a message from the future.

Day#5
You are just never alone with anything

It turns out one of my very dear friends is having a doctors appointment too…with my doctor nonetheless, also tomorrow, literally just after me, and yes it is for the very same reason. I go around to her place and she jumps into the passenger seat. We hold hands and shake our heads with our jaws dropped: what are the chances? What the actual fuck? And how wonderful it is to see each other anyway…it’s been a long time. She has to be back soon but we drive down to the beach because I want to take a photo of a calendula flower, like the one we floated on the water over the weekend. We find a park on the same side street and retrace my family’s steps to the bright flowers abundantly growing out of a crack on the footpath. It feels right to illustrate this story with this flower being tossed about by the waves - helplessly floating, detached and exposed in a foreign environment...still beautiful, still bright and full of hope. It is the perfect image, except now I realise we should have picked two; one for her and one for me.

Day#6
Exhale

Lori sat up in bed this morning and told me he will have a torch under his pillow from now on. In case I need help. Help with what? “I will shine the light into the eye of the monster and it will go away.” Thank you darling. 

It turns out the monster is gone for good. Exhale, and allow the body to sink into sweet relief deeper and deeper with each breath.