High Sobriety (38 page)

After

MELBOURNE IS UNWELL.
On the first day of 2012, the city is teeming with casualties from end-of-year celebrations. I go for a lunchtime walk in the sunshine and see vampires everywhere. They're pale and anguished, recoiling from the light. It feels good to be looking the day in the eye, not hiding in the shadows.

Chris Raine calls to congratulate me on my year without alcohol. We reflect on how much has changed since we first met.
Hello Sunday Morning
has grown from a small network of his friends and acquaintances to a movement of almost 3500 people in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. He's been selected as Queensland's nominee for Young Australian of the Year, and I'm so proud of him — he's come a long way from the sober freak at the party in a gimp mask and red undies. For me, it's been the most rewarding, productive year of my life. I feel as if I've achieved more in the last 12 months than I have in the last decade. I learned to run, I sang in public, I saved thousands of dollars, I shed my self-consciousness and danced on a bar with my mother, I took the leap and started grown-up dating, and my dream of writing a book came true. All I had to do was lay off the booze.

Today, as countless Australians wake up to a world of pain, some are drawing a line in the sand. The
Hello Sunday Morning
website has gone into overdrive: one person is signing up every four minutes. It seems there's an appetite for change. Sometimes, I don't think Chris realises just how powerful this thing he started is, but others do. If he can win this award, it will change everything. The publicity would catapult
Hello Sunday Morning
to a new level of community awareness. I can picture a time when taking a break from drinking won't be a big deal. You won't have to cop flak from your mates, convince people you're not a religious zealot, or face claims of being unpatriotic. ‘I'm doing
HSM
' will become such an accepted part of the Australian vernacular that it's all you'll need to say.

I'm optimistic, but the shift might take a long time. Economic forecasts predict that Australia's spending on booze will increase by 15 per cent, to reach an annual splurge of more than $29 billion in 2016–17. Consumption is set to rise to more than 11 litres per person — that's about a 4 per cent increase on current drinking rates. It's not suggestive of a nation looking to ease up on its boozing habits. More people will drink at home, with takeaway grog from bottle shops, pubs, and hotels set to account for 80 per cent of spending on booze by 2016. And the more readily available it is, the more we'll drink. Soon, you might not even have to go to a bottle shop: you could pick up a slab in your local 7-Eleven store, or grab a bottle of wine while you're filling your car up at the servo. The Australasian Association of Convenience Stores, representing chains including 7-Eleven, BP, and Caltex Star Mart, has asked the federal productivity commission to consider allowing them to sell booze. In its submission to an inquiry into the retail industry, the group claims that they need to be able to sell booze to counter increasing competition from the two supermarket giants. They argue that a ban on liquor in convenience stores is restricting the Australian convenience industry from a ‘potentially crucial revenue stream'.

There's no doubt that this stream is overflowing. The supermarkets already use booze as a way to entice us into buying groceries or petrol from their chains. Liquorland, owned by Coles, has offered 20 cents off a litre of petrol when buying selected alcohol products. Woolworths knocked 30 cents off a litre for motorists who bought two slabs of beer or pre-mixed spirits instead of one. If the convenience stores are successful, it will mean an extra 4500 outlets across Australia where you can buy booze. Only a wowser would see that as a bad thing, right? But at a time when alcohol-related problems such as domestic violence and sexual assault, known to be linked to bottle-shop density, are on the rise, public-health groups say that adding more places to buy grog would be disastrous.

How do groups such as
Hello Sunday Morning
convey the message that life can be fun without alcohol when it's everywhere we look, even next to the bread and milk? It's tough to convince Aussies to take a break from drinking when alcohol is so ubiquitous — used to commemorate our fallen diggers, back up our sporting heroes, and sell us the notion that it can help us to make friends and find love. As rewarding as my year without booze has been, swimming against the tide has been bloody hard, and at times exhausting. It could be even harder for the next generation of drinkers. As long as laying off the booze leads to claims that you're a boring, un-Australian loser in an environment set up to convince you alcohol makes you cool and socially functional, young people will continue to get pissed for confidence, comfort, and belonging.

Chris is undaunted by the challenge. He thinks that the culture can change, and his goal is 10,000
HSM
sign-ups by the end of 2012. He's more than a third of the way there already. It's remarkable to think it all started with one guy discovering that confidence, identity, and happiness can't be measured in standard drinks. That idea spread to five of his friends; ten of their friends followed suit. He believes if 10,000 people could find out first-hand that life doesn't have to revolve around booze, the ripple effect might spread far enough to change the nation's drinking culture forever. When that happens, how long before we can truly say that you don't need alcohol to be Australian?

Shortly before I'm due to fly back to Scotland, I receive a letter which addresses that question. It's from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. After a year spent doing something I was told was distinctly un-Australian, I've become an Australian citizen. The irony makes me laugh. The final legal step is making a pledge of commitment, and I'm invited to do that at a ceremony on 26 January: Australia Day. In the midst of all that's happened, it takes me by surprise. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I've bought a home here. I've been a permanent resident for four years, and lived here for ten, so this is the logical next step. And yet I'm torn. When I applied for citizenship, it wasn't a hugely symbolic gesture; it was mostly so I could vote. Now, it feels as if I'm turning my back on my roots at a time when the need to be Scottish has never been greater. I'm already so far away from Fiona when she needs me, and I worry that by becoming Australian I'll somehow be even more distant. But then my thoughts clear, and I realise that I'll always be Scottish. After this ceremony, I'll just be Australian, too. What my mum calls my ‘bigamous love affair' with two countries will continue.

I wonder if the immigration department knows that I haven't had a beer for more than a year. Will I really be ‘one of youse' without a drink in my hand? After all, this is the country that brought us ‘drinkwear' — in the course of my research, I discovered a Queensland-based company that makes a range of shorts, hats, and T-shirts for the ‘drinking enthusiast', with built-in twist-top bottle openers and detachable velcro stubby coolers. The animated advert on their website depicts a bunch of blokes at a barbecue and warns, ‘If you're hanging for a cold one, beware the beer lover who hasn't got essential drinkwear, because an Aussie desperate for a beer will try almost anything.' The cartoon characters then injure themselves attempting to open stubbies with various parts of their anatomy. It seems drinking is such an intrinsic part of being Australian, there's a market for clothes that eliminate those crucial lost seconds spent in trying to find a bottle opener; with these garments, you're ready to drink at the drop of a hat. Literally.

Perhaps I won't be issued with a passport until I'm back on the piss. A friend tells me that after I'm sworn in, we'll sing the national anthem and my local mayor will hand me a six-pack of VB as an official welcome to the country. I think he's joking, but I can't be sure. I'll find out in a couple of weeks.

MY TIME IN
Edinburgh is gruelling. These homecomings are usually such happy occasions, but this time, nothing is as it should be. The death of a child upends our understanding of the way the universe should operate. It's as if gravity has been suspended; waterfalls are flowing in reverse. Impossible is our new reality.

Normally I can't get to Fiona's house fast enough. Today, I sit in the car outside and wonder how I will put one foot in front of the other. She greets me at the door, and, as we embrace, I am swimming in her grief. I want to fall inside her, absorbing her pain and making it mine. But there's no willing this loss away. Inside their home, Jude's absence feels bigger than the house itself. I'm amazed at how strong she and David are. It's plain that a piece of them is missing, and that they're surviving moment to moment, but there's a calm acceptance of what's happened. They're taking comfort in the five happy years they had with Jude. He was in no distress. Even at the end, he felt no pain.

Fiona says that she stopped saying ‘why us?' very early on. She knows it was a medical problem, and that nothing could have saved him. There's no anger or denial, just missing him. Missing him so much it feels like she can't breathe. Lisa's here too, and although none of us — three pals since primary school — could ever have imagined this day, we are together, and there's comfort in that. We drink a lot of tea. We talk and remember, and listen. Fiona tells us about what happened. She knew that it was serious when she saw the number of consultants and doctors streaming in to see Jude in the emergency department. The day after he was admitted, he had an echocardiogram, to provide images of his heart. Nurses were whispering about ventilators. The mood was bleak. Fiona sat with Jude, telling the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table while he ate Rice Krispies. She knew he wouldn't be home in time for Christmas, but they talked about whether he could see Santa from his hospital window. As she cuddled next to him in bed, a nurse overheard him say that he had the best mummy in the world. What a lovely thing to say, the nurse commented. She wasn't to know that this was a daily occurrence in their house; they were an inseparable duo.

At lunchtime, the cardiologist told them she had some very bad news. A few hours later, Jude slipped out of consciousness. He died in Fiona's arms at 3.10 in the afternoon on Friday 23 December 2011, five years and four months, to the day, after she brought him into the world. Hearing Fiona relive this, it feels as though I might be crushed under the weight of her loss. But she has no tears today. So this is how I need to be for her. I listen, and somehow find a way to hold it together as she tells me how, after Jude was gone, they held him, then washed him and dressed him in clean pyjamas. They said their goodbyes and carried him to the hospital's Chapel of Rest, and laid him in a bed full of teddy bears.

Fiona tells us that she finds herself saying ‘at least' a lot. There was a time, just two weeks ago, when there was no room for the notion that there could be something worse than her son being dead. Now, these thoughts sustain her: at least he didn't suffer, at least there's no-one to blame, and at least they still have Isla. At least they were blessed with a boy who enriched their lives every day he was with them.

The impact that Jude's passing has had is clear by the number of mourners who turn up to honour him as he is laid to rest. Five hundred of them, packed into the cathedral where Jude was baptised, and where Lisa and I stood next to Fiona as bridesmaids. The details are too painful. The funeral of a child will always be an unbearably sad occasion — but sadness and tears are not what defined Jude's short life; his was a world filled with laughter and fun. He knew he was loved, and gave love in abundance in return. Even now he's gone, he's still giving love.

Over the eight days I spend at home, there is sadness so intense it sometimes feels as if it will devour me. But there are also moments that raise me up: watching Fiona go through this is more painful than I can bear, but in a strange way I have never loved her more. The strength that she and David have shown as they try to return their daughter's life to some semblance of normality is humbling, and testament to their devotion as parents. My love for Lisa, her heart broken by the loss of her godson and her family's grief, has been magnified by her loyal and gentle attention to Fiona and her family in their darkest hours. Of course we'd all give anything to have Jude back, but this deeper, richly textured love he has fostered among us is something special. It is his gift to us.

The day after the funeral, I catch up with a bunch of old school friends for a pub lunch. Some of them I know well, while some of them I haven't seen since the day we left high school. We gather because we feel helpless. Being together feels like we're doing something. So much time has passed since we last met, but there's no awkwardness, only affection, sympathy, and a common bond of history. When we were 20 and one of our high-school classmates died suddenly, most of us went to the funeral and piled into our local afterwards. We got hammered, singing and crying, and telling cracking tales about the friend we'd lost. The wake went on well into the night. In Scotland, farewelling the dead with a big drinking session is all part of the grieving process.

My year without alcohol is officially over; I could have a drink if I want to. But when we meet, I don't want booze. I've brought a bag of old photographs, and we look at ourselves on school trips and at teenage parties and twenty-firsts, so young and carefree. We laugh at our clothes, our hairstyles, and the boyfriends and girlfriends we swore we couldn't live without, but whose faces have faded from memory. Fiona and I are together in so many pictures, looking dorky, hugging and dancing and getting drunk, celebrating our wins and toasting our youth. In one picture, we must be about 22. Our arms are intertwined and our bodies so close we look like Siamese twins. I touch the photograph, looking into the eyes of this girl, who is often mistaken for my sister. My darling Fee. How I wish I could save her from what lies ahead.