Writing and Bridges

Last year I took part in a small symposium in Wollongong, south of Sydney. The title of the gathering was In All Languages: Translingual Cultural Production. I had been invited by Michael J., an academic who has a strong interest in transnational writings, and who was the first person to show an academic interest in my book, Lalomanu. I still remember the moment his email appeared out of nowhere (as only certain emails do and actually change your life, don’t they?) inquiring about how he could purchase a copy of this very intimate book of poetry I wrote and published myself. Lalomanu was not for sale, I explained in my reply. I sent Michael a copy, naturally.

Michael presented his paper a couple of years ago; it has recently been submitted to a journal and might see the light of day soon. Michael has also very gently and convincingly suggested that I write a paper about my own writing, particularly on the topic of translingual literary production. Michael is of course aware of the emotional toll it does involve for me, yet on the other hand his appreciation is that I have a lot to say. And I obviously thank him for that.

Talking of writing: a couple of weeks ago I found a totally unexpected comment in my literary blog. It was left anonymously, but the person who wrote it has obviously known me for many decades (at least since high school, which he mentioned in the message) and more than likely used to be a friend of mine. He is not any more. Contact was interrupted for good (pun intended) more than a decade ago. It was not my decision. Anyway, the comment addressed me personally and pointed out how I had changed my mind with respect to tobacco being a drug since the days of high school, in the late 70s and early 80s.

It was a mildly abusive comment, one whose tone was mean and embittered. I deleted it, of course. What I find the most puzzling about this is the fact that whoever this person is (of course I do have a very good idea of who he is), he was incapable of acknowledging my daughter’s death by means of a message of condolence or some sort of attempt to get in touch. The question is: what is the point of re-barging into someone’s life (albeit in cyberspace) after almost twenty years, if all you’re going to do is taking such a bitter pot-shot? How low can people get? And why do they? There may be no answer.

A friend of ours recently remarked that we (my wife and I) had stopped writing in our blogs. She wondered whether we felt we have nothing left to say. That’s certainly not the case. I feel I still have lots to share, to write both about Clea and about myself. A small yet significant aspect in the rationale for having a blog is to receive responses to what you write (especially if you allow responses – not everybody does). I guess one of the reasons I write less frequently here is because I do not get as much of a response as I might have expected.

“Giving shape to a painful experience is powerful because it helps us to see first, how we got through it; second, how we can share it. The experience doesn’t stay trapped within us, unspoken, curdling — instead, the art of arranging and transforming it reduces the burden. It no longer belongs to only you. […] Each sentence contains the chaos — our experience becomes what we perceive. And the honesty in these perceptions, whether true or invented, creates a bridge to another person.” Karen E Bender, ‘The accidental writer’, The NY Times, 25 January 2013.

He, the embittered one, has certainly burnt that bridge. But I think I will write something for Michael, though.

Thoughts and Feelings

The following headline, preceding the interview Eleanor Catton gave The Guardian caught my eye: ‘male writers get asked what they think and women what they feel’. It’s symptomatic, isn’t it?

To be accurate, Catton’s actual words were ‘I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel’. It certainly is an interesting and fairly sharp observation, but perhaps it may be worthwhile to go beyond the realm of literature.

I may of course be wrong, but according to my experience, males in general hardly ever get asked what they feel, let alone how they feel, particularly when the one asking is another male.

This might be a fundamentally Australian way of going about things, that is to say, a cultural trait. After all, Australia is such a weird place, where the question, ‘How are you?’, does not really mean ‘How are you?’ It is merely a greeting, not a question. Perhaps I’m clutching at straws there, but anyway, I’ve said it.

A few months ago, a TV campaign was launched by Beyond Blue to raise awareness about anxiety and depression among male Australians, particularly among the younger section of the population. It is of course an extremely laudable effort at making the community at large understand the issues of depression and anxiety, in an attempt to empower them to seek help when they feel or think (playing it safe here, I know) they need it.

What I found surprising (though nothing should surprise me anymore, really) about the campaign was the tongue-in-cheek approach adopted. The public face of the campaign is a doctor (an actor in real life, of course) who says rather funny things while encouraging viewers to go to the Man therapy website.

I found it rather sad that the (apparently) only way they could think of, in order to reach out to them, that is, so as to get males to take some interest in their own feelings, had to be through making fun of them.

I think it says a lot about the Australian male psyche. About how vulnerable it is, really; it also says a lot (and not too good) about the sadly frail façade many males hide behind in order to feign, to show themselves as joking, light-hearted blokes rather than genuinely disclose their own feelings to others.

But then again, authenticity is hardly something that defines our times. Or is it?

Nothing to say

About four or five months after Clea died (sometime in early 2010, it was probably mid-February) I got home one afternoon and found a message on the answering machine. It was partly an offer of employment, partly a request for assistance. The message had been left by someone who I used to work with. Someone who had known Clea, had held Clea as a baby in his arms, had talked to her and praised her. This same person had not been brave enough to call or write to offer his condolences, yet barely five months later he was choosing to call at times when he knew I would not be home.

I did not return the call. The caller insisted a couple more times, leaving messages about this stupid job but not once saying anything about our loss, our trauma, our grief. I never returned the call.

On the one hand, I was not interested in the job I was being offered: I had a permanent full-time position in those days, so there was no way I would have quit in order to take a few hours of tuition as a casual. On the other hand, it felt absurd to return a call from someone who seemed incapable of acknowledging my daughter's death. I know for certain this person knew what had happened to us in Lalomanu on 29 September 2009.

Fast forward three years. Yesterday I saw this person again. He was at the school Clea used to go to, the school where her brothers are receiving an education. This person must have walked past the little plaque by the bottlebrush bush that the school planted in memory of Clea.

One of the things I have learned from having had a very close brush with death is this: I do not need to pretend I like people. I do not need to feign interest in persons I have no interest in. I can speak my mind: I can voice my feelings and can express what I think. I have nothing to lose.

I did not speak to this person. I did not want to. I don't have anything to say to him anymore.

“I no longer know you that well”

I received an email from someone I have known for many years. The message was very brief:  apart from some supposedly funny jokes, this former friend seemed to imply I no longer cared about our friendship.

I decided I would reply.  “Nothing further from the truth”, I said. “It seems a difficult task for lots of people to accept that the Jorge they once knew died on Lalomanu Beach on 29 September 2009. He’s not coming back. […] The dead never come back to give us peace, to reassure us that everything is alright  Because in fact, it is not.” I attached a copy of a sonnet I recently wrote, one that has not been published yet. It’s not every day that you send poetry to people you know, is it? It might be seen as something special...

A longer reply came back a few days later, the first truly meaningful message in three and a half years. Well-meaning, of course. It reminded me (as if I did not have all of this before losing my daughter) that I “still have a wonderful wife and two sons”, that I am “in good health” (how do they know? Have they spoken to my GP?) “a job” (Wrong! Not true! I quit my job more than a year ago, and I work from home now…) “a healthy household economy” (again, how have people gained access to my finances? I must speak to the bank manager about this soon…) and also that I have “intelligence”. The icing on the cake is that “that is a lot in a world where, you know only too well, there are plenty of people who lose their loved ones, and on top of that, they have nothing at all”.

Perhaps the person they once knew they no longer know. Or perhaps, they can't be bothered to make the effort (yes, I acknowledge it takes some effort) to reconnect with the new me I am. Perhaps this me I am in 2013 is altogether too painful, too raw. It takes guts to reach out. It takes guts to pick up the phone and hear my voice, the voice of a broken father, the voice of a sad man nearing his 50^th birthday and who still cries every morning because his only daughter was killed by a tsunami during a family holiday, and although he saved one of his sons, he was unable to save her and could not find her body despite searching for her for hours.

I guess I should seek forgiveness from them. For my shortcomings, for my inadequacies, for being unable to realise “how lucky” I should feel. Perhaps I should seek forgiveness for having bared my soul to them by means of a book, a book that I wrote, published and mailed to so many at my own expense.

I mean, how or why did I dare reveal my trauma and my grief? Stepping across the comfort zone? Heavens forbid! Surely I should have kept all of that to myself, so as not to disturb sensitivities…

“People think they know you. They think they know how you're handling a situation. But the truth is no one knows. No one knows what happens after you leave them, when you're lying in bed or sitting over your breakfast alone and all you want to do is cry or scream. They don't know what's going on inside your head – the mind-numbing cocktail of anger and sadness and guilt. This isn't their fault. They just don't know. And so they pretend and they say you're doing great when you're really not. And this makes everyone feel better. Everybody but you.” 
― William H. Woodwell Jr.

The No-Go Area

You meet lots of people while travelling, and that’s a good thing, no doubt about that. You get to exchange views, anecdotes about places, little bits of important information about your next destination or places you have already been to, etc. It’s all very civil; some people are very chatty; some will ask you lots of questions; some will tell you lots about themselves, while others seem to prefer not to say much at all.

Travelling with two young boys always attracts the attention of other travellers. People like to comment on how well behaved they are, or they will ask whether they are twins (“they look so much like each other are they twins?”), or they will make a comment on their (obvious) Australian accent.

A fairly usual (and really, harmless) comment we get is the one about how lucky we are to have twins. I remember a waiter two years ago, while we were visiting Burgos (Spain), who made the comment to me while serving lunch. I replied that everything was relative, and that I did not (could not) consider myself lucky. He looked puzzled, and asked me what I meant. So I told him: “These two boys had an older sister. She died a year ago in a tsunami, in Samoa, in the Pacific. We were all caught by the tsunami. Clea was the only one who drowned. Do you really think I am lucky?”

His expression changed on the spot, of course. He apologised profusely. I did not understand why he needed to apologise. I still don’t. He did nothing wrong.

The no-go area is what I call that moment when someone I have just met finds out that my daughter died three years ago in the Samoan tsunami. It does not seem to matter much that a library was built and named after her in the Samoan village where she drowned. Anything related to Clea becomes a no-go area. Most people do not want to know anything else.

All of which I perfectly understand. Why would anyone wish to know more about parental grief, or about the circumstances of anyone’s death, or about what it is like to go through a tsunami? Why would anyone who is in fact on a holiday wish to step into this uncomfortable territory of terror and horror, of loss and grief, this disconsolate terrain of what it is like to live life without your child?

It is perfectly understandable. I am a stranger who they happen to meet on a bus, in a hotel or at a restaurant in a country thousands of miles away from home. I am not part of their world, their reality. Just like my reality is, quite logically, not the sort of story you want to hear while on holidays.

We, the grieving, are strangers to them, and I think it is fair enough that we will remain strangers, and we will never hear from each other again.

But why have we become strangers to others who were so close and used to know us so well? Why have our new, not-chosen-by-ourselves lives become a no-go area?

Unfinished Business

The screen grab I have reproduced above shows Clea’s scoresheet for game tasks completed on her Lunnis CD-ROM. The disk was a present she was given by her tía Mayca, and from the very beginning she found it very enjoyable and wanted to play over and over again. The games on the disk have been designed to teach the player all sorts of skills in Spanish, and are divided into three stages, for different ages: under 4, over 4 and over 6 years of age. Clea had completed almost all the tasks; only a few remained as never attempted or successfully completed. Clea was not given the time to complete the scoresheet.

Grief feels like unfinished business, too. Just like the tasks Clea was not given time to complete, the loss of your child is like a wound that will never heal completely. When someone does have the guts to ask, I always tell them that the blow has softened after two and half years, but the pain the blow caused remains exactly the same as on 29 September 2009. It is unfinished business. On the one hand, you are painfully aware that you cannot turn back the clock. On the other, as much as you would want to turn forward the clock, it will never be the same. Some sort of limbo, a timeless swoon. Trapped forever in a time and state you do not wish to be in, unable to get out of the dark, exit-less tunnel your life has become: you cannot go back, you cannot go forward.

I guess this is a very widespread misconception amongst people who have not experienced the loss of a child, a traumatic, irreparable loss, that the bereft parent eventually will get over it, or even ‘has to get over it’.

I recall a telephone conversation around Christmas 2010, a little over a year after Clea’s death in the Samoan tsunami. In this particular, very brief conversation, the person who then wished to talk to me (it escapes my comprehension that some people decided it was OK to call me while I was visiting Spain but would not do so before: it’s not like telephone calls across the world are that prohibitive, are they?) asked me how I was. I hardly replied, I think I said "How do you think I am?", and this person (a relative) said to me: “You have to get over this”.

I think my silence was the most eloquent response I’ll ever make. You just do not get over the loss of your child. Ever.

On later reflection, however, what I find most revealing (or is it disturbing?) is the way the caller resorted to a rather vague word such as “this”. It is such an unclear, equivocal term! What exactly is (or was) “this”? It brings to my mind the title of Francisco Goldman’s book about his deceased wife Aura, Say Her Name. That’s what I feel like yelling to people who tiptoe about the subject. SAY HER NAME! HER NAME WAS CLEA! CLEA DIED IN THE TSUNAMI!

For someone who has lost a child, “this” is deeply offensive, because it aims to create a distance between the person speaking and the deceased. Our child had a name; our child had a life; mentioning our child’s name does not hurt us: it is our child’s death that has hurt us beyond repair. Underhanded approaches conceal cowardice; there is no respect in deliberately avoiding saying the deceased’s name.

She was my first child. Her name was Clea Soledad Salavert Wykes. She was six years and almost nine months of age when a tsunami struck the beach of Lalomanu and drowned her. Her family were all very close to perishing. She could not complete all the tasks on her Lunnis CD; she was unable to obtain the antidote to save the inhabitants of Luna Lunera.

Writing grief: one disappointing experience

In early 2011 I enrolled in a Postgraduate Certificate in Writing via distance education. In theory, I should have completed it by now: they were only four units and, frankly, its contents did not appear to be either too time-consuming or highly intellectually-challenging.

The first unit I attempted was called ‘Critical Friends: The Real and Virtual Support of Writers’. It was described as an exploration of “how 'critical friends' can enrich others' writing skills and their own insights into the processes of writing”. On paper, the description was quite appealing, and I was looking forward to engaging in some robust reflection on writing and critical thinking.

In any case, I was working fulltime and had as well numerous translations to do throughout the term. Needless to say, I was unable to put in the necessary effort to achieve something. It was never my intention to seek a High Distinction grade, yet I did manage to read most of the lectures and tutorial materials thoroughly, and I even found other writings, which I found to be actually more engaging that those suggested by the course convenors.

We were asked to write something short and submit it to a ‘critical friend’ for feedback, and then write a reflection on what ways this feedback had led us to rethink and/or rewrite the piece. I wrote a short story called ‘By the sea’, which you can read in Hypallage, the magazine of the MWAA. In turn, we would also provide feedback for our critical friend’s writing. It should have been quite straightforward, really. But nothing is these days. [Note: Perhaps it might be a good idea to read the story before you keep reading below, but I leave that to you.]

Then I received my assessment report. Rather than focusing on my writing, the assessor chose to provide some free, unrequested psychological advice: “Your critical reflection is a thorough consideration of [Name suppressed]’s report, good work. You re-think your text with reference to the critical friendship experience. [New paragraph] I am very sorry to hear about the tragic loss of your young daughter, Jorge, and that this story is about those circumstances. It is extremely difficult to write about such a traumatic and recent event, Jorge, and I want you to bear this in mind. You may need to let a lot more time pass. The loss of your daughter will always suffuse your writing because she will always be a part of you and perhaps these events need less direct attention and a more indirect approach”.

I was puzzled, I felt perplexed. “Extremely difficult?” What would they know? They may think, “wow, it must be extremely difficult to write about this subject”. But it never occurred to them that the fact is, it is also very necessary. Actually, it is essential for anyone traumatised by loss and a catastrophe to be given the chance to tell their story.

I was of course baffled that someone who did not know me at all seemed to be advising me not to write my story. I did lodge a complaint. It was dealt with as best as could be in the circumstances. End of the story.

In the last eighteen months I have developed an interest in the interactions of grief and writing. I have done very little research as yet, but I can assure you that there is a lot of interest out there. The works by Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates and Maggie MacKellar, for example, have raised a great deal of attention among scholars in general.

I have now and then thought about my ‘extremely’ disappointing experience. I have come to realise that what truly hurt was that the assessor resorted to clichés and hackneyed phrases: I have underlined the sentence where the real problem was. I now believe that was what led me to take the immediate decision to discontinue my studies. 

Last Words

‘Run!!!! Everybody run!!!!!!’

Those were the last words my daughter Clea heard in her far too short a lifetime. A few seconds before them she heard me say very much the same in Spanish: ‘¡Corred! ¡Corred!’

I have often wondered if Clea was able to detect the absolute panic in my voice. It all happened so quickly that we did not have a chance to do anything other than run. I have never asked her twin brothers if they remember the sheer panic in their father’s voice, the urgency, the fear of the monster I saw coming towards us.

In fact, I don’t really want them to remember. Whereas I cannot forget. One day, probably in quite a few years’ time, they may want to know more. As a matter of fact, the story has already been written for them, and I don’t mean Lalomanu. They’ll be able to read it and find out about things they will have forgotten or we have kept away from their innocent childhoods. I wrote it in Spanish.

Every night, they both come into the study to say good night. They always find me writing something on the PC: it might be my own things, or a review, or for the blogs I keep. Stuff, as someone would say. They often stare at the screen and read little bits of what I’ve written. Their curiosity has been increasing lately. They know I have written poetry and have (awkwardly at times, of course) listened to me reading out to them. They seem a little uncomfortable, though not embarrassed.

I also wonder how they will react to my words in maybe ten, fifteen years, whether I am alive to discuss it with them or not. At the time I wrote it, I felt it was necessary to record it, just as I felt it was necessary for me to write the book of poetry.

Yet I confess I made a mistake. I shared the recount of that morning with people who probably did not want to read it. Perhaps they did not deserve to read it. My bad judgment? Possibly. There was too much to confront? Too much horror to witness through my words?

Who knows, it may have been too human… And that, it seems, is the scary bit.

Communicating

This happened quite a few years ago, maybe six or seven years; it was after we moved out of Sydney. I was engaged in a conversation with a friend, discussing the issue of keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances as months and years go by. Suddenly this friend of mine said to me something like, “You know, the problem is that you don’t communicate”.

At the time I found the charge quite bizarre, let alone absolutely untrue and inaccurate, since my whole professional life of over twenty-five years has been based around communicating. I have been a teacher of languages for nearly thirty tears; I have translated between languages and interpreted for people who did not share a language, both in professional and familial settings. Words have always been part of my daily work; the act of communication – either my own thoughts and ideas, or those of others across languages – was, is, and will continue to be bread-and-butter for me - presumably for a long time.

Following my daughter’s death in the 29 September 2009 tsunami in Samoa, not to mention the extremely traumatic experience of surviving such a catastrophic event, I wrote Lalomanu. The book – at least that’s the way I see it now – was my initial form of grieving. Lalomanu was also a very painful effort to convey things impossible to express, that is to say, it was a sorrowful attempt to communicate the experience I (or rather, my whole family) had gone through.

The book was written mostly in the very early mornings of January, February and March 2010. Some mornings I would write of the recurring nightmare of the water swallowing my son J. and me, our seemingly endless spinning and my struggles to ensure we could come up for air. I wrote about the unspeakable terror; about the aftermath, the horror; I wrote about coming back home without our daughter and sister. I also wrote about what Clea’s short life means to me, about all the things she deserved to have lived but was deprived of enjoying.

Someone said to me the book is ‘beautiful and terrible’.

It was the book I needed to write. They were the feelings and thoughts I needed to communicate. The book’s design and layout was very kindly made by a friend, María, for free. She sent the Indesign files to the Canberra printers, and 300 copies were made. With my poems, I was trying to tell the reader what happened on 29 September 2009, what happened afterwards. I did communicate SO VERY MUCH.

I personally mailed numerous copies. Many were posted overseas; I even spent a whole autumnal day driving around Canberra and leaving a copy in my students’ mailboxes. It can hardly be said that I did not make a huge effort to communicate.

Some people did respond, in one way or another; others never did. Some never bothered to acknowledge the book, ie, to acknowledge the unbearable pain of a human being they knew. Highly educated people on the other side of the world kept silent or chose not to search for words, as I explained here.

Whatever communicating means, I think it is not about forwarding a PowerPoint presentation or the link to a video or an article. Never before has ICT (Information and Communications Technology) used so often to actually avoid communication. Instead, it seems to be (ab)used to pass on trivial stuff, or to appear to be “staying in touch”. So powerfully useless.

But then again, I might be wrong. And does it really matter?