Reality Fragments
Fragment 1
Walking through the streets of Kingsville with Jules and Isla. It is late afternoon and the cold wraps itself over the suburb. Isla is enjoying walking backwards, a new trick. Jules and I are voicing, tentatively, for the first time the conversations that have playing eternally internally in our heads.
"I don't know where I want to be buried."
Jules nods, I can tell her mind has been along these same tracks.
"You'll need to make a will."
"I know."
Fragment 2
I lie in our bed, in darkness, listening to Jules breathe. She's restless, tossing and turning, only a little more asleep than I'm not.
I live in Australia. I was born and raised in New Zealand. Where should my body lie? These thoughts I don't want swirling around my head, night after night. I need to consider them, understand them and make a decision. To get rid of them. Where should I be buried?
This leads inevitably to where do I want to die? Not in a hospital. In my bed? In our bed? How will Jules feel about that bed and our bedroom, even our house, if I am dead? If she has heard my death rattle in our very room? Do I want to die instead, back at my childhood home, at my parent's house? If I do that, then Jules will be alone, surrounded by my family and not hers.
I decided that I don't need to decide this yet. I have other options to explore. Having made this decision, I still don't sleep.
Fragment 3
There's a donate button and a tally. It is past $10,000. I'm stunned. It feels weird and that feeling is not going away. I'm humbled. I cry.
Fragment 4
Jules goes through our cupboards. Cathartic, completely. Mostly she throws out the baby clothes we have been saving for our second child. She holds onto the ones she loved most on Isla, then eventually throws half of them away too. She then lists the pram on ebay. The high chair to follow. Isla's cot when she gets her big girls bed.
Neither of us look at my section of the wardrobe, though we're both staring.
Fragment 5
I wake up, mentally examining my body, searching for flaws, for pain, for something wrong. Will today be the day I feel it? I wake every morning and do this.
Fragment 6
We sit in Jules's office, me on the bed, my best friend, Whitey, in the chair in front of the computer. I've known him since we started high school together. We talk about the fundraising, about how uncomfortable Jules and I feel about it, how I've come to terms that it is a way that people, that friends, can help us. Jules still isn't quite there, but she's coming round.
"I asked for your bank details," he says.
"Yes, you did."
We sit in silence. He nods, then tells me he can help out.
I tell him I'll hit him if things get real desparate.
We laugh that I don't have cancer, that this is some elaborate scheme where I'm defrauding not only colleagues and friends, but family in the most callous way possible. We consider what should be done with the money, both agreeing that is should be wasted and then shown to the giving public that is was wasted. Hookers, cocaine, booze, penthouse apartments, gamblng, that sort of thing. We laugh harder, but then realise this is the sort of behaviour that would be expected from someone who would do that.
It would be better, we decide, if I spent the $20,000 on a new fence. Now that would be complete fucking waste of money! We imagine the photos taken, the paint job, the reactions.
The laughter continues. It feels good.
Fragment 7
I sit in my study pondering the shelves of cds I have spent the better part of my life collecting. What for? Jules doesn't know a third of it. Isla certainly doesn't care, though she likes getting them out of the shelves, bringing them over to me and asking 'who's this one?' or 'can I put on?'. I've been spending money on remastered cds this year. I'm the only person in this house who appreciates the aural difference. I feel I've been wasting my money, filling up my house with shit. I love my music. I stop buying it. I don't bother downloading it.
Fragment 8
Whitey sends an email asking how the new fence is going.
Fragment 9
I sit in my study pondering the shelves of books I have spent the better part of my life collecting. The shelves are overflowing and some are double-stacked. I haven't read half of them. There are fantasy trilogies unstarted and incomplete. I can't die until I read my library. Then I think what is the point of even reading them? Who benefits from that? Not my family. I have read over 33 books this year. It's the most I've ever read in one year, and we're only 2/3rds through.
Fragment 10
Port Douglas is a small place. The world even smaller. The first good friend I made at university, Blackie, is here with his family. I lived with him for two years, in another place and another time, before our lives drifted apart as they do. I hadn't seen him for ten years, then we cross paths twice last year, once at a wedding of one of our best friends, then again two weeks before I'm diagnosed the first time. And now here again, with our families. He tells me that I look good, that he was worried what he might find when he saw me. He kicks water at me and tells me I'll get through this. We dig holes on the beach and build sandcastles with our daughters in the morning sun.
Fragment 11
Isla must be confused. Blackie. Whitey. Whitey's partner Brownie. Then Mummy sells a painting to a guy called Bluey in the local pub where her artwork is on the wall.
Fragment 12
There's a box sitting in my study on our return from Pork Douglas. My first thoughts are that it is a pc server one of my clients has finally managed to send my to configure for their system. I open it to find a Chinese valve cd player. No note. No address. No from. No nothing but an A4 printed technical spec. Whitey is still here. He likes valve hifi. But it's not from him. He googles the brand on the internet and we uncover a Geoff from QLD on eBay leaving positive comments. The Cryptosystem has sent a gift. It sounds more than lovely.
Fragment 13
We are at a two-year old's birthday party, a friend of Isla's. I don't know many people at all. They talk, laughing, hands shake. Beers. Coffee. Skewers of spiced chicken. Mini-hamburgers. Conversation. People mix and swirl and move and touch. Kids play on the floor with old toys. Paper hats are being made, smothered in glue and glitter and feathers. I'm drowning here. These people's lives are so normal, so good. I can't bring myself to socialise, it's too hard. There are questions that are asked, and I don't do white lies and I don't want to do the real answers. This is a celebration of life and joy and happiness. And my life is fucked.
It takes me until late evening to rise from the trough in which I have sunk.
Fragment 14
I contact my solicitors about making a will.
Fragment 15
Adam Browne loads me up with books to read. I tell him I already have heaps to read but he says he doesn't care and that I should read these too. I suspect he knows I cannot die yet with my library unread, even though I've never voiced these thoughts until now.
Fragment 16
My wife decides to book us in for family portraits, something I do not want to do, have never wanted to do, don't ever want to do. She wants to do it sooner than later. Real soon. Before my hair falls out. And though we don't say it, just in case there is no time to get them done at all. We drive up to Chateau Tahbilk in Nagambie, a place we have driven through for twelve years and always talked half heartedly about stopping to check out. The place is stunning, the wine fantastic. I buy a bottle for my father seeing as how I don't drink anymore. I'll rinse my mouth with it, just once though, when he opens it. We want to go back to Tahbilk, to enjoy it in warmer conditions, in a better place in our lives. We drive back from the photography session. Jules states the irony in getting these pictures done in the unhappiest time of our lives. Isla sleeps in the back of the car most of the way home.
Fragment 17
I have a wine cellar, although it is more of a cupboard, and more of a dwindling quarter-full cupboard at that. I don't drink alochol at the moment. Or any more. For the rest of my life? There is a bottle marked for opening in 2012, our 10 year wedding anniversary. I know that I should be thinking Jules and I will drink this when it's time, but where I am now has me thinking whether Jules will be able to bring herself to drink it on her own.
Fragment 18
Jules lies on top of me, naked. We have the doona pulled tight to stay warm against the Melbourne winter's night.
"I'm okay now," she says, then kisses me.
Fragment 19
I stop by a Dirt Cheap Books warehouse near the Fairfax offices after picking up extra copies of The Footscray Mail with our cancer story in it. I buy Jules a book, can't find anything for Isla, and Book 3 of a trilogy I haven't started yet, all sitting in the queue on my shelf. I'll read it some day, of that I'm sure.