About books and memory and sadness
Sadness shouldn’t be hidden as though it were something to be ashamed of, but shared, someone recently told me.
It helped me get over my confusion about this post. Simultaneously a need to put into words, and share, something so personal, yet a cringe. I normally feel weird about the way sharing grief has become commonplace on social media. And yet I want to share this.
Maybe it has something to do with how cut off from the world I have felt lately due to three solid months of sickness (COVID, pneumonia, injury, now on top of that a new virus I can’t seem to shake) putting Stu and I in perpetual survival mode where we no longer seem to enjoy life, but tell each other regularly, sometimes nightly, that we must simply “hang on”. Maybe I just want to feel connected to people again.
Into this came my Mum's announcement that she has sold and is moving out of the house she and Dad moved into 11 years ago. It was to be their empty-nest downsize, their forever home. They bought it off the plan and attended every detail of the building and fitting out with huge excitement.
They moved in and almost immediately Dad was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died a year later with his final three months of home care in this living room thanks to a dedicated roster of friends and family, many in the medical profession, which is really the only way it was able to work.
It was traumatic, confronting, exhausting and yet a rare gift to take part in helping someone die at home. I said goodbye to him downstairs that night, then Stu and I went upstairs to bed. My sister woke me a couple of hours later to tell me Dad was gone. Even now, every time I stay the night in that bed, as I did last weekend, I remember that waking. No matter how you have tried to be ready, nothing can prepare you.
It took a long time for the dents from the hospital bed to fade from this living-room carpet. It is very hard now 10 years after his death to say goodbye to this light-filled place he loved, 100 paces from the foreshore where his ashes are scattered and where I got married. But it is time for Mum to live her own life and downsize again. And this bookshelf – built and painted with love by my dear and irreplaceable friend Lencie, who also died of cancer this year – can't come. Most of the books can't come either.
They feel like another not insignificant loss, these titles in my parents' bookshelf that I have browsed and learnt from and dipped into and absorbed culture from since I was a child. Books that every single family member read. Books we gave Mum and Dad as presents. Books Mum brought from Africa and Dad from Victoria. But they are going to a good home: Stoker Books, the very cool online bookshop based in Maylands. And I have rescued some that I just can't say goodbye to, for my own home. To new people maybe they will be new treasures.
And in the sorting they are giving new gifts: we have looked at them afresh and found recipes and letters Dad has tucked into them. Things to cherish.
I am still a minimalist! I still believe memories are in people, not things! It is fine for the books to go. A new space, with no ghosts, is itself a lovely thing to be excited about.
I guess am just processing. I just want to acknowledge some of the beauty and meaning of these books and this space. I want people to know that this was important.
And if there is to be a public service message to this, a point to something otherwise maybe self-indulgent and over-sharing, it’s maybe to urge you to appreciate the people you love while you still have them. Be patient with them when they are sick. Ask them questions about their lives and their thoughts. Don’t waste your time together. Everything can change in an instant.