The old house

This old building used to be my paternal grandmother’s house. Number 8, Calle Enrique Olmos, Valencia. Possibly nearing 80 years since the time it was built, it is a puzzle to me why it remains standing.

My recollections of the place are now remarkably indistinct: several flights of gloomy, stuffy stairs, an old wooden door and a small hall. Other than at Christmastime, I would rarely go there. One clear memory I do have, however, is to be standing on that balcony, calling out to my brother, or perhaps my cousins too, to come upstairs because the big Christmas lunch was going to get started.

I can hardly remember my paternal grandfather, my Iaio – he died when I was very young. But I do remember, and very well, my paternal grandmother. As a teenager I would see her often at the grocery shop she owned, the place where she worked very long hours. As she grew older and wearier, she would frequently choose to stay in the shop overnight instead of walking back to her Enrique Olmos house.

I actually think I held my first proper ‘job’ at her shop, helping restocking shelves and fridges, particularly on summer weekends, when we sold lots of bottles of beer, lemonade and Coke, as well packets of crisps, salted dried nuts and many other groceries. The pace could get frantic when we were nearing closing time, with everybody wanting to buy cold drinks and last-minute essentials. On more than one occasion we closed the shop past 2:30 pm.

Although I have no clear recollection of having done so, I must have pointed out the house to Clea during her only visit to my home town in July 2005, aged 2 and a half. Who knows if she actually understood what I was talking about when I explained it to her who Iaia Carmen had been.

To me, it is completely absurd for an old uninhabited house to endure like this for years. The home of Clea’s great-grandmother is still standing many years after her death, while my little one was buried when she was six and nine months old. For quite unexplainable reasons, I sort of resent this old house now. It should have fallen down years ago, should it not?

The vagaries of death, decay and destruction seem quite incomprehensible and whimsical. The absurdity of it all is baffling.

Two Hearts Beating

“and once my mind is free and empty I hear the rhythmic hoot of owls. The two birds call each other and when suddenly one of them fails to respond my heart stops for a moment, waiting for the call. It soon follows and a strange pleasure begins to pulsate through my body.” (Subhash Jaireth, To Silence, p. 17)

The above caught my attention while I was reading my friend Subhash’s book. I’m not sure why exactly, but the passage brought back to me memories of the first night I was left to look after Clea on my own. She was just over seven months of age, and Mum went away for a much-deserved girls’ night on her birthday, her first night out in many years. Not that I was overwhelmed by responsibility. Far from that. I actually felt elated to be alone with my daughter.

It was, of course, a cold July night in Yass. After giving her dinner and her daily hot bath, I proceeded to hurriedly eat something. Then I sat down next to Clea. We read books and sang songs, played silly little games and had some giggles. At some point I went back to the kitchen and got myself a glass of red wine.

As the night progressed Clea became a little restless and began crying. I turned on the TV, put it on mute and picked the channel that was about to show the Bledisloe Cup match between the All Blacks and the Wallabies. I downed the rest of the wine and placed Clea on my abdomen, and a blanket on top of us both.

Heartbeats synchronised. Breathings became relaxed, restful. My mind was free and slowly drifted into sleep while the two hearts, father and daughter, beat in unison, a strange and rare joy of living synchronicity. A heart pulsating, calling on another heart, the heart of a pulsating being that is your own flesh and blood, to reply. Can anything else feel closer to the sense of a perfect union?

As weeks, months and years pass I find myself clutching at things, sounds, smells even that can prod my memory, willing myself to bring as many memories of Clea back as it is possible for me to do. G.W. McLennan’s One plus One was one of the songs Clea would sleep to during her first year’s afternoon naps. Two hearts beating, Papá y Clea, One plus One.

¡Andando!

About a month ago I had a car accident. Another driver called Anwar Kamal S. sped through the GIVE WAY sign at a roundabout and hit my Mazda 2 sideways. Luckily, I was not hurt. The car was written off, though. The accident temporarily revived some fleeting memories of feeling (seeing) my own body pushed, pulled and dragged by a force way beyond my control more than four years ago, in very different circumstances.

Over the next few days many different thoughts crossed my mind. I thought about Jason Carney and his best friend Alina, both of whom lost their lives after being broadsided by a drunk driver twelve years ago. I never knew Jason or Alina, but I feel sorry for them, for their senseless, absurd deaths, for the unbearable pain their parents were inflicted. I also thought the same could have happened to me – except it was at a roundabout (you have slow down even if just a little!) and in my case the driver (I firmly believe) was not drunk. Muslims (the vast majority of them at least) do not drink.

As days went by, I also thought about how the little car had been an integral part of our lives, Clea’s life included. Not that I feel any special attachment for the car itself, but rather for those indelible memories I cherish more and more as I get older.

The Mazda was the car in which Clea and I drove together to Sydney Airport one unforgettable night in September 2008. It was also the car where Clea and I shared those morning conversations every parent loves to have on the way to school. I reminisced about her first year of schooling, when her brothers went with their mother to a Childcare Centre in a different part of town, while Clea would jump in the car with her school bag, so full of vitality, so keen to learn.

It was the car whose engine I often had to turn on five minutes before leaving because the frost would make it impossible to drive off to school straightaway. I thought about Clea’s reply whenever I locked the home door and said ‘¡Andando!’ (literally, ‘walking’, but it’s one very idiomatic way of saying ‘Let’s get going!’). Although she already knew what it meant, Clea invariably said: ‘Andando no, ¡en coche!’

I have also been thinking that, regrettably, somewhere, there will be parents who will return home after the summer holidays without their child. Nothing can prepare us for the loss of our child. It is utterly unthinkable to consider that our child may predecease us. Nothing can bring them back. All we can do is to face up bravely to a new day every day. And that does feel too much sometimes.

¡Andando!

Tenses

A few weeks ago I read a blogpost titled ‘Forever 19 or What if?’ by Rebecca Carney, in her blog Grief:A Woman’s Perspective. Like with everything Rebecca writes, her words resonated in me, they made me think. This one post, however, made me think especially long and hard about language, not just the words in her post but rather about how our daily grammar has changed.

You see, I can't help being a linguist. A philologist. I have taught English and Spanish as second languages for many years. I have also been a translator and an interpreter for many years. I take notice of language and grammar. I perceive changes when they occur.

The conditional perfect is defined as “a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect”. One typical example of the conditional perfect in English is ‘I would have done things differently’. Thus, the conditional perfect is “used to refer to a hypothetical, usually counterfactual, event or circumstance placed in the past, contingent on some other circumstance (again normally counterfactual, and also usually placed in the past)”. All of those quotes are from Wikipedia.

For most people, the verbal tenses of their daily lives are both the present and the future. The rhythms of the everyday dictate their lives: the things they do or are doing at a certain time of the day, but also the things they plan to do or wish to do in the short and the medium term.

But for the parents of a dead child, their present and their future have been truncated. Their lives are anchored in the past, in a past that has become a ‘forever’. Forever 19. Forever a young man full of promise, like Jason Carney. Forever 6 years and 9 months. Forever a schoolgirl enjoying her first real holiday on the tropical sands of a paradisiacal beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, like Clea. Forever.

The conditional perfect is the verbal tense that defines the daily life of the grieving parent. We no longer think about our child in the future tense. We think about them – a lot, constantly, continually – but we do not think about what they will be doing in months or in years. We think about them and use the past tense as we reminisce about their interrupted lives. We think about them and use the conditional perfect as we muse over who they would have been, about what could have been, what should have been, what might have been.

For the parents of a deceased child, “What if?” is a ubiquitous question in our lives. And the answer is always in the conditional perfect, never in the future, forever in the past.

Snow

Snow has again covered the Brindabellas. Overnight, a white blanket had fallen on the hills and created a marvellous sight for Sunday morning. It will not stay there long. When snow makes its rare appearance on the smallish hills that surround Canberra, it is never a lengthy stay. It hasn't been a cold winter at all, and before we know it, it will be over. The chill in the wind will soon be the only reminder of the presence of the snow to the south-west.

I vividly remember the few times my parents would drive us outside the city of Valencia to see the snow. It was a rare phenomenon, too. But as a child I was mesmerised by it: there was something magical about so much whiteness. By the road, however, snow would become slushy and dirty; you had to walk away from the car park to see big stretches of the cleanest white stuff. We never had proper snow gear, and invariably would get cold and feel miserable. These days I think I actually dislike the snow: I can’t ski, I don’t see myself trying to learn now, and I much prefer the company of a book by a warm radiator, with a hot cuppa nearby.

This photo is the first time Clea saw the snow. It was September 2008. After the solitary wintry blast of the year – for that’s what it has become, winter: one very cold weekend per year! – we drove to the Brindabellas and parked the car near the Corin Forest Mountain Retreat. There would be another trip to the Selwyn Snowfields for a one-day snow ‘treat’. Quite uneventful, really.

There wasn't much snow on the ground, but it was enough to make a few snowballs and throw them at each other. Clea enjoyed the battles with her brothers and took aim at her parents. Laughing. Giggling. Shrieking with joy. Shocked when a snowball hit her near too close to her face. Feeling the cold in her hands. She looked beautiful, pure, as beautiful and pure as snow. My beautiful babita. I miss you, mi amor.

Treaty yeah!

A great Yolngu man died yesterday. Yunupingu died of kidney disease at 56 years of age, at an age much younger than most Australians have died or will die. Like so many of his indigenous people, he died too young. Australia has lost a great man, a great artist and a great indigenous leader.

Yunupingu was the leader of Yothu Yindi, a fantastic band. In 2009, during one of the school assemblies, my daughter Clea and all the students in her year danced and sang along to one of Yothu Yindi’s greatest hits: Treaty. She played these bimli, the clapping sticks, which she had hand-painted herself. It was a fantastic display of energy, of commitment, of youth who could believe in themselves and in a more just future for all their connationals.

It feels it was only the other day that I was standing there, watching and clapping along, encouraging the very young school kids in their singing and dancing, in their embracing the indigenous culture of the First Australians, in demanding a Treaty for this country.

Maybe one day there will be a treaty. Probably not in the next few years, I'm afraid. I think Clea would have liked to see a treaty for all her people, indigenous and non-indigenous.

She's now buried in this Ngunnawal land, where she was born: she's also part of this land.

Valid art

“The Moms revealed that if you're not crazy then speaking to someone who isn't there is termed apostrophe and is valid art. Mario’d fallen in love with the first Madame Psychosis programs because he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow letters she'd taken out of a shoebox on a rainy P.M., stuff about heartbreak and people you loved dying and … woe, stuff that was real. It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way. […] It’s like there’s some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy.”

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, p. 592.


Or that the real and the sad and the woeful have been becoming utterly unbearable for most people, to the extent that we appear to prefer fiction to fact, virtual worlds to tangible realities, and the safe remoteness of distance to any kind of uncomfortable closeness.

Breakfast with Friends

We get together for breakfast a few weeks before Christmas. But we don’t get together because we want to celebrate Christmas. In fact, Christmas may be a difficult time of year for some of us.

We come from various suburbs and we are from very different backgrounds. We have very different jobs and interests. We are very different people.

Our political ideas might differ vastly or be very similar, but we don’t talk politics. Our hobbies are also entirely different. Some of us are elderly, some of us may be in poor health, and some of us are middle-aged and relatively healthy. Some of us are men, some of us are women. Some of us are survivors ourselves.

Some of us write poetry. Some of us would not dream of putting a few words to paper. Some of us read a lot, but others don’t. Some of us love listening to music all day, while some of us would prefer total, absolute silence all day, every day. Some of us grow flowers; some of us cannot be bothered.

Some of us drink heavily, but some of us are teetotallers. Someone might argue that all of us have almost nothing in common, and somehow they would be right, to some extent. Still, we like to get together and share a table a few weeks before 25 December.

We sit there, at these tables, and we talk, and we may even try to joke and laugh, although deep inside there may be no mood for laughter. Not really; but we all know when to laugh, and what to laugh about.

We are perfect strangers, yet we like to get together. We seem to have almost nothing in common, but we all agree that we like to get together of a Sunday, a few weeks before that time of year they call Christmas. We do this because there is something that unites us, despite our vast differences.

We get together, and we eat a late breakfast – a very late breakfast for those of us who have been awake since 5 am, way before the sun rose. For some of us, waking up before dawn is our daily bread.

We have all brought a little something we would like to give away as a present. We organise a raffle, draw numbers and take a gift home, a gift for the one who is not there.

What is it that brings us together, you might ask? That something that unites us is enormous; it is, quite possibly, well beyond words. We get together because all of us grieve for our dead child. We all have one child that has predeceased us. For some of us, there may have been two deaths; children who have died before their parents.

We get together because we want to reach out to each other; we get together because we share our pain; we get together because one does not just “get over” losing a child. We all know that. We share that knowledge. We go through our loss every day. We get together because for some of us, the ones we might have relied upon for understanding and support have simply vanished into thin air or have cowardly hidden behind an unwritten code of silence.

We feel there is a lot of comfort in getting together. For some of us, there may be hope to be shared. For some of us, hope is an abstraction, no more. But the most important thing – at least for me – is that there is no room for pretence. There is no need to fake. There is no pressure. There is no silliness, no vacuous laughter.

For the rest of people, perhaps even for you, it may be the ‘silly season’. How silly is that?

Strawberries

Our family moved to the house where we now live, in early December 2007. At the time there was a fairly big birdcage in the backyard, near the tool shed. Very close to it the previous owners had kept a small patch of strawberry plants.

We soon gave away the birdcage, and trying to emulate the one I used to look after in Yass, I decided to create a veggie patch where the birdcage had stood – the soil there was richer there, for obvious reasons. For the veggie patch to be of a decent size, I had to get rid of the strawberries. I spent a fair bit of time converting that area into a veggie patch that summer.

As a child I remember keeping a few strawberry plants for myself, and I would be incensed whenever my brother ate my strawberries. Before throwing away the strawberry plants, I asked the neighbours, who were not interested. Then I asked Clea if she would like to keep any. Yes, she said. Clea loved strawberries – she loved just about any kind of fruit, actually.

So I moved the plants to another area in the garden where nothing was growing then. It was (still is) a smallish corner, and at the time it was covered with some weathered mulch and nothing else. I dug up the soil as well as I could, and pretty soon we had a few strawberry plants growing; we even managed to eat a few strawberries – just a handful – later that summer.

In 2008 Canberra was in drought, like most of Australia, so 2008 was not a great year for strawberries, but the few small ones we collected Clea would take to school for her fruit morning break. Like with any other fruit, home grown strawberries do not grow to be huge like the supermarket ones; but they are definitely tastier.

In 2009 I decided to give the strawberries a good boost and applied a generous layer of Moo Poo to them (Moo Poo? – yes, that’s the brand name of the fertiliser!). Some good rains that year – I remember seeing full dams everywhere that October day when we were finally able to return home from Samoa – produced a bumper crop. But Clea was not here with us to eat them.

Clea’s strawberries have kind of gone wild all over the place. These days they grow by the veggie patch (which is rather neglected, I must admit); they also grow beneath some rose bushes on the western side, and they now have invaded part of the terraced garden at the northern side. Recent rains have helped the plants produce wonderful blooms, and the coffee and tea dregs we pour on them seem to give them some extra strength, without resorting to Moo Poo.

One of the sonnets I wrote in late 2010 began like this:

Shall I imagine an infinite field

of strawberries for you, …

Amid an endless field of strawberries – that’s where I would have wished Clea to be then. Yet I knew she was gone forever. Depending on the day, my wish (not a hope… What on earth is hope? What is it for?) may take one form or another, but in actual fact, it never materialises. But let Clea’s strawberries grow, let the plants take over the whole garden if they wish to do so.

Clea’s brothers will soon be eating all those strawberries she cannot eat. As for me, if I were able to share one last handful of these home grown strawberries with her, the last one, something in this new life I have to live would make sense, somehow.

Blow, wind, blow: A sonnet

For Laura

Blow, wind, blow this piercing sorrow away,

Swell this lively windsock her forlorn friend

Made, her remembrance of much sweeter days,

When their playtime was not supposed to end.

Shine, oh sun, shine, dry all my loving tears,

Give blooms the life my darling was denied

On far-off shores; she’d lived only six years

And nine months, she was still a little child.

Their windsock soars today, it flaps and sighs

Proud yet feisty, suspended in the air,

Persuades me to pursue it with my eyes

Beyond space and light, an unknown place where

Happy giggles mark the passing of time

Pain fades to oblivion, grief has no rhyme.

(c) Jorge Salavert, 2012. 

I spy with my little eye...

Clea’s paternal grandmother, her iaia, has been to Australia three times. The first time was in late 1996, soon after I came to live in the ‘lucky country’. (I see a great deal of irony in that moniker for Australia. Do you see it, too?).

My mother made the drawing above, in return for a drawing Clea made of her family, and which I duly mailed to her. It’s a silly yet affectionate drawing; it was inspired by a photograph of the children at Christmas. Clea was wearing the typical reindeer antlers and her siblings had red caps on. The drawing has been on the fridge door for a long time, held in place by a fridge magnet.

My mother's second visit took place a year after Clea was born, in early 2004 —we actually travelled to Singapore to meet her halfway. That helped her split her long trip from Europe in two stages. For a few days I walked Clea around Singapore in a very comfortable baby backpack we had bought for her. From up there she was able to see a lot of the world, and she was of course admired and talked to by lots of people in Singapore. Asian people love children, as you know. She was a little princess, a starlet everybody smiled to.

The third and last time was in late 2008. My mum flew without any overnight stops to Sydney; I drove to pick her up on a Thursday night; Clea had the last day of the school term off because she wanted to come along on the three-hour drive; there would be at least a one-hour wait and then another three hours back to the ACT. We would probably go to sleep at around 3 am —which we did— but she did not mind.

I would like to share a memory of that first hour of driving, between Canberra and Goulburn. We set out after dinner, just as the sun was starting to set. Clea and I spent almost a whole hour playing the Spanish version of ‘I spy with my little eye…’ (veo, veo). Eventually it became a little difficult to play the game; it is not so much fun when you start repeating items! Apart from passing trucks and cars headlights, there was hardly anything else you could see.

At some point, when it was my turn, I began with my “veo, veo…”. Sitting at the back, excited about this night trip to the big city airport, Clea asked: “¿Qué ves, Papá?”. I paused for dramatic effect and then blurted out, feigning shock: “NOTHING! I CAN SEE NOTHING! It’s too dark!”

Clea cracked out laughing. She thought it was a hilarious response to the game, and I guess my contrived surprise added to her hilarity. Eventually we reached Sydney Airport, picked up Iaia Marisol and her luggage, and drove back to Canberra.

While my mum was here in Australia, we did lots of walks around the nearby lake. One afternoon we stopped at a park where the children could play. Suddenly big dark clouds were gathering to the west, and I realised a big storm was on its way.

We all got caught by the heavy rain; we were drenched to the bone by the time we got home. We rushed as much as we were able to when we got closer to home, but Clea stayed with her Iaia, who did not know her way home and who could not run or walk too fast. It goes to show how much she cared for her own family.

I don't expect my mother to visit again. In fact, I would rather she did not come over. I would rather not take her to see Clea's grave. I would rather she did not have to see what a sad person his son is: the grieving father.

I have often been told to hold on to hope, whatever that might mean. Yet like that night on the Federal Highway, I see nothing. Unlike then, though, I'm not trying to make anyone laugh.

29 September 2009: The children

The children’s names, their age.

Those of us who were there under the water but were lucky to survive, will never forget them. Never.

Eliza Taamilo 2

Sio Taufua 11 months

Dmitry Kikhtiev 1

Clea Salavert Wykes 6

Teancum Schwalger 2

Abish Schwalger 1

Joseph Purcell 4

Pili Poo 4

Maupenei Tofilau 1

Nonumaifele Tofilau 3

Siliva Eteuati 1

Amataga Tiotio 11

Vaisigano Lauvai 3

Rosa Lafaua 3

Filisi Tavita 11 months

Hatonaina Lauvai 2

Siaea Areta 1

Sima Sepelini 3

Manino Faaaliga 2

Aloalo Sao 6

Ana Iulai 5

JayJay Ulugia 2

Pefata Sau 2

Aneti Lueafitu 2

Togafalea Alesana 3

Kapeneta Viiga 3

Alema Tofu 3

Precious Malaga 5

Rachel Leuelu 5

Marilyn Ulugia 3

Quezon Lesa 3

Junior Livigisitone 2

David Sootaga 7 months

Tapuloa Taimane 4

Satelite 1

Losivale Faapoi 10

Lutia Faapoi 2

Gwenlyn Taufua 4

Aleki Taumoe 1

Aliceann Meredith 4

Malo Mikaele 3

Siu Pritchard 2

Ardmore Meredith 3

Gardenia Meredith 1

Shanna Lanu 2

Moanalei Long 9

Jayson Siu 6

Nifo Siu 10

Tuese Peilua 1

Anesone Gali 3

Leuti Sio 8

Maliumai Anetone 5

Etimani Taufua 9 months

Sili Taufua 11 months

Frazer Faaleaga 2 months

Tiloni Sio Pati 3

Seea Peilua 3

Feagai Fatuesi 2

Pelesasa Etimani 4

Ronaldo Aleni 5

Falevalu Segifili 9

Malo Vai 4

Willie Leio Taamu 5

Aleki Vai 1

Savelio Taeao 3

Jamie Viliamu 3

Alfie Cunliffe 2