Before I Sleep (30 page)

It requires effort to remain in contact with old friends. I have not yet made it across the road to the home opposite Bleak House where one of my friends, Dr Donald Beard, lives. Nor have I ventured just up George Street where a school and RAAF friend, Dr Dennis Shortridge, has his home. I did make it to The Parade once but found it a fairly stressful experience. The choice to go or not is mine, but Mavis cannot take the initiative. She must wait for people to visit her. A few do, and the knowledgeable ones, like Claire Withers, bring fresh fruit and yogurt, which Mavis enjoys. My regular visitors include Gordon Barrett, an Adelaide barrister, who arrives on Friday evenings with a supper of fish and chips and the latest issue of
The Adelaide Review,
Max Dawson, a scouting colleague for seventy years with homemade biscuits, and Rory Barnes, with two or more stubbies of Coopers' Light Ale. Rory is one of my former Canberra scout patrol leaders, vintage 1960s, a professional writer now living in Adelaide. If these memoirs ever get published it will be because of his skill in knocking my raw material into readable shape. I remember our last combined scout and guide campfire on the Murrumbidgee at which Mavis and Rory were present. It had been a happy week in the bush and we would be leaving in the morning. We would have finished the evening by all singing together that well-known campfire song which in part goes:

Adieu, adieu good friends. Adieu adieu,
I can no longer stay with you, stay with you,
I'll hang my harp on a weeping willow tree,
and may the world go well with thee, well with thee.

And the Guides would have sung their version of “Taps”, that traditional bugle call played at nightfall in all Army barracks, which goes:

Day is done, gone the sun, from the sea, from the hills, from the sky, All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

The campfire embers burn low, the warm cocoa is all gone, and now is the time to retire, TO SLEEP. Good readers, I'll also say, “Adieu, adieu.”

Later on you might have an opportunity to sing the second verse which goes like this:

Dig a grave both wide and deep, wide and deep,
Put headstones at its head and feet, head and feet,
Inscribe on it a turtle dove, turtle dove,
And say he died of love, died of love.

Diary entry: Sunday, 25 March 2001

Mavis had a rough night according to the night sister who gave her morphine.

At 10.10 a.m., Mavis left Ruthie and I to go to “heaven”. When she arrives there I expect her to start a Residents' Committee and personally organise some overdue consumers' input. Over the years she has always respected and where necessary fought for the recognition of everybody's inalienable rights. She firmly believed that these are based on the universal principles of democracy and not on those emanating from a celestial theocracy. For far too long the Triumvirate have been impervious to repeated criticism from intelligent humans that their creation had been imperfectly planned. The outcome of that production is that in this world Happiness is at least matched by Misery. In many cases the Misery is quite undeserved. Mavis is a good example. All of her life she has given first consideration to the needs of others. During the many years we were “best friends” to each other, I never knew her to be other than the Perfect Girl Guide — trusty, loyal and helpful, sisterly, courteous, kind, obedient (to God's laws), smiling, thrifty, pure as the rustling wind. As proof, our loving and responsible children reflect that credo.

Her ageing years deserved, in Australian terms, “a fair go”. Yet one consequence of the imperfect planning has been that for nearly four years she had been aware that parts of her brain were wasting away. It is true that from time to time odd flashes of her former clear-thinking mind broke through, but her once happy face was eventually replaced by a heart-breaking grimace. It was the very best that her damaged mind and weakened muscles could produce. It became obvious to me as I held her hand that she was struggling to get messages through to me. Twice I was able to make sense of them. She was asking me: “How are you?” To the very end she was more concerned about my well-being. In these last few days she could not drink or eat. She became emaciated and the nursing staff asked if the family wanted her to be force-fed. I thought that this was an indignity that she would not want to suffer, and the family agreed with me. I spent my last hours with Mavis reminding her of our happier times. I felt sure she could hear what I was saying for occasionally she would twitch her eyelid. It was ironic that we were communicating in this way. Ironic because for the past year her eyes have given her very poor service. With one completely artificial eye, only ten per cent vision in the other and an inability in recent months to sit up, her sensory deprivation was considerable. This must have caused her much frustration. But she hung on — a remarkably resilient lady who gave out Happiness to others all of her lifetime and was then rewarded with such Misery.

Wherever you are, Mavis, please understand that not only I, but also your family and all of your many friends, were greatly saddened by your illness. Yet I know we are inspired by your courageous example of how to face unjustified adversity. May we be as strong as you to withstand the blows of this imperfect world and, like you, continue to strive for the betterment of our fellow beings. Please, please, do not completely leave us. In my memory I can see you in a thousand happy situations: swimming with me at Henley Beach, dancing with me in the Scout Hall at Black Forest, standing alongside me at Flinders Street Church when we undertook to be with each other for the rest of our lives, my visiting you at the Memorial Hospital with our three babies, Andrew, then Ian, and later Ruth. I recall your encouragement to me at the Adelaide Railway Station when I left you and the boys for four long years. I remember clearly at a later time how you stood, for a further seven long years, shoulder to shoulder with me in Queensland when, under media and other attacks, we were ignored by most of our church fellowship and abandoned by a goodly number of fair-weather friends.

I only wish I had your confident hope that we will meet again, somewhere, somehow, some time, and that once more, we will hold hands and be together again to face the future, whatever it may be. Your face smiles down upon me from the photographs on my bedroom wall. I shall sleep better tonight knowing that you have at least been freed of all your suffering. Tomorrow will bring its usual challenges and I promise that I will do my best to face them in the way you would expect of me. I will always be forever grateful for the happiness you first brought me when I was seventeen. A happiness that only gained in intensity in the next sixty-nine years. Shalom, my dear wife.

First published 2001 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
This edition published 2015

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© Ray Whitrod

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