Хелен Браун: Cleo

“I saw the most beautiful sunset just now,” she said. “Glorious streaks of reds and golds. I thought Sam must be part of it.”

My ravaged mind interpreted her words as callousness. How could she surrender her grandchild to a sunset ?

A funeral director turned up while she was unpacking. Harbor lights twinkled malevolently behind him as he sat in the corner of the living room asking for Sam’s measurements—height and breadth. Didn’t he have a nine-year-old son of his own to go by? White coffins, he said, were favored for children. There were fashion trends in death? I couldn’t face a church service. Not when there was so much business to discuss with God over this. Someone had recommended the new university chaplain. A short ceremony conducted by him at the graveside would do. The funeral director made no effort to hide his disapproval. While I was stunned by his coldness at the time, I now realize he probably had no idea what to say so was clinging to the framework of his professional training.

Soon after the funeral director strode into the night, the university chaplain stepped cautiously over the shag pile. He was young, barely out of school, and nervous. He told us he’d never buried a child before. We said we were in the same position. When he asked what we’d like I wanted to scream: “Isn’t it obvious? We want our son back!” But he was faced with a daunting task. There was enough sanity left in me to feel sorry for him. I offered to write a poem for him to read at the graveside.

Our family doctor arrived and scribbled a prescription for sleeping pills. Over a mug of coffee she mused that maybe it was a good thing from Sam’s perspective, because the adult world was so hard to survive in.

Steve mentioned he’d taken the Superman watch away from Rob—he hadn’t felt comfortable passing it on so quickly. I protested but he assured me Rob understood. Steve had put the watch away in a box inside his desk.

Rata collapsed across the boys’ bedroom doorway. We tried to coax Rob into his old bed, but he refused to sleep in the room he’d shared with Sam. His eyes flashing with terror, he said a dragon lived in there. Steve carried his mattress into our bedroom and placed it in a corner under the window. Like shipwrecked sailors we drifted into our first night without Sam. I thought falling asleep would be impossible, but unconsciousness dropped like the blade of a guillotine, delivering me into merciful nothingness.

Leaving what our world had become was the easy part. Returning to it was almost unbearable. Opening my eyes next morning, I heard a thrush call, its “took took” echoing across the hills. For an instant I imagined life was normal. I’d just woken from a nightmare of grotesque proportions. With sickening horror, the events of the previous day exploded in my mind and sent me plummeting into despair.

It was no easier for Steve. A few days after the accident I awoke under a waterfall of his tears. He’d never cried in front of me before. I should have reached out and embraced him then, but I was half-awake, unprepared. Distraught, momentarily confused, I simply asked him to stop. I didn’t imagine the request would be taken literally and he’d never express sorrow in front of me again.

Our house choked with flowers. As days passed I became weary of their sickening fragility. Water in their vases turned rancid in the summer heat, filling the air with the stench of stagnant ponds. In every room stalks drooped, petals dropped like tears on the floor.

Steve decided flowers upset me. Maybe he was right. He took to hiding freshly delivered sheaths of chrysanthemums, lilies and carnations, deathly in their perfection, under garden shrubs to keep them out of sight. It’s impossible to judge whose behavior was more strange—the grieving woman who went hysterical at the sight of floral deliveries or the husband who hid them under bushes.

The front door stayed permanently open as scores of people, many of them strangers, streamed down the hallway over the carpet I’d never liked. Some oozed platitudes or quotations from the Bible till I wished they’d go away. The only words that resonated with me were Shakespeare’s—“time is out of joint.” Other visitors appeared angry—among them a doctor who said he’d seen the accident. It affected him personally, he said. He had two sons of his own. His anger was irrelevant. Doctors seemed to excel at injecting negative interpretations into the atmosphere.

A few (women, mostly) claimed to be suffering similar levels of anguish. Spurting tears and demanding comfort, they thrust their sobbing faces at me. Their words were tactless: “I wouldn’t survive if it happened to me” “At least it’ll give Rob a chance to flourish. He was always in his big brother’s shadow.” I assumed they were self-indulgent, possibly even crazy, though I was no longer capable of judging the dividing line between sanity and madness.

A distorted remnant of what was left of me, a hysterical joker, wanted to screech with laughter at their pale faces and quivering lips. When they said they’d “felt the same” after their father/dog/grandmother died I wanted to slap them. How could the predictable death of an old person compare with this?

Still others brooded silently out the window over the harbor. Immune to human suffering, the bay sparkled, ridiculously turquoise. I found no comfort in its beauty, loathed its shimmering indifference.

A Maori friend from journalism school, Phil Whaanga, turned up unannounced and simply put his arms around me. We’d never been particularly close, but there was more comfort in his embrace than the thousands of words I’d been forced to listen to. From a culture less afraid of death than our own, Phil didn’t feel a need to examine aloud the freakishness of what had happened. I was grateful to him.

Mostly I sat on the sofa, nursing the scar where my hand had been burnt making Sam’s birthday cake. It was impossible to accept the scar was still part of the living world while he was not.

Adding to the disjointedness of our situation was the lack of our bathroom door. Our bathroom was like our hearts, torn open for public viewing. Visiting mourners had no way of relieving themselves in private. Neither did we. Steve pinned a shower curtain over the door frame, but its flimsy floralness stopped well above floor level, exposing visitors up to their knees. I hadn’t realized what a substantial, noble piece of furniture a door can be. But then there were a lot of things I hadn’t thought about before.

Several days after the funeral I assured Mum we’d be okay. She nodded uncertainly and climbed into her Japanese hatchback. Steve’s mother phoned from England. I sighed when she said she’d been in a theater audience to see the famous medium Doris Stokes. Apparently Doris had called her up onstage and said she had a message from Sam. Doris told her Sam wanted us to know he was all right. I’d nodded impatiently when Steve passed this on. Every spiritual medium says the same thing. Doris went on to describe a strange new setup Sam was in. Like boarding school, but more fun. Just as I was about to make derogatory comments about English mediums and their tendency to re-create images involving pubs, tearooms and scenes that were quintessentially British, there was one more thing. Steve’s mother said she had no idea what Doris was talking about, but perhaps it made sense to us. Sam said it was okay. Rob could keep his watch.

The Intruder

A cat doesn’t go where it’s invited. It appears where it’s needed.

Forever. Sam was gone forever. How long was that going to be? Was it some kind of infinity? The symbol for infinity is a figure eight. If I waited long enough in some universal bus shelter would Sam spiral back to me?