2007 Short Story Outstanding Entry

Marjorie Ward

The Long Goodbye

Waiting on the bench in the clinic I felt numb, gripped by the inaction of waiting. I looked down the pale grey passage where they had taken him into a pale grey room.  I knew they drew maps on faces and bodies in this place. Blue-lined continents of despair, boundaries laid out for the burning touch of radium, waves of energy to battle against  the cells that devour bodies. They were devouring my man's body. A vindictive legacy from the Australian sun.

For twelve dreadful months I watched doctors and nurses and clever equipment fight the awful things happening to him. But, as if they knew how it would all end, the nurses also served him red wine in his hospital bed, they sent musicians and singers through the ward to sing of the green, green grass of home, and they smiled when, during visits I climbed up on the bed beside him and read the Sunday papers with him, read John O'Brien, and Lawson, and Tennyson. It could actually be merry sometimes at that hospital. I suppose the nurses indulged those who had no future. I tried to find a perspective, but all the time the twisting cords of fear pulled at me, one way, then another, or sometimes lay mutely tangled in defeat.

We sat together, he took my hand, his voice was low, ‘The day comes, my love, when we mourn more for the living than for the dying. You must find strength to carry on.' I was unable to find words in reply.

The occupational therapist came and talked to me about nursing him at home. She talked about installing handrails, bathroom grips, special easy chairs, and on and on.   I listened politely and murmured ‘yes' in the appropriate places. I did not wish to hurt her feelings, she was so earnest, so wanting to help me. But I barely remembered what had been said, because I knew he would never be gripping those grips or sitting in that special chair. The doctors had already told me he was going to die. Soon.

My mind was raging with rejection. How could it be that this diabolical thing was going to take him away. That big, strong, generous-hearted man. I felt like screaming ‘You let me think you could make him better' but, instead, I thanked everyone and when we got home I quietly eased myself into the bed beside him. How long, I wondered, would it take. Through the venetian blinds the late afternoon sun cast horizontal bars across the white quilt. We both slept. 

The next morning he felt like talking. He questioned me on the progress of the new driveway, the completion of the carport, had the soil been delivered and spread over the lawn, had the nectarine tree been ordered? I answered ‘yes' to all his questions.

‘Then it has all been done.' He said. It was a six-word farewell and contained all the days of our life. It meant the song had been sung, the struggle was over, his planning finished.  The Grand Tour would never be taken, the small indulgence of writing his memoirs would not happen, there would be no more ‘lying back in a patch of clover to watch the wild swans flying over', no more Devon Sausage salads, ‘they used to call it German Sausage before the war, love' , no more reading the history of the Copts, or the bushmen of the Kalahari, or Manning Clark. A thousand no-mores were caught and held in his six words.

The grown-up children came and stood by his bed. Two boys, one girl. Within two days they would be fatherless, Father, father, lost Dad who picked plums for us in the summer, who taught us how to swim. Just for this time, though, they were children in shorts and rumpled socks, children who ran over the paddocks, watched brown snakes slide through grass, played ball, broke windows, and swung on gym rings under grapevines in high summer, children who said ‘remember when . . . ‘

After the children had gone, I knelt beside him. He let the paper on which he had been trying to write fall away. His eyes seemed to ask me to ‘part my hair, kiss my brow, and say, My love, why sufferest thou?' And we both paid silent tribute to Matthew Arnold, and were burnt by the red coals of memory, and knew that worldly people might smile at heavy old sentiments, but death wipes smiles away, death returns people to the basics of love and pain and at that moment we wanted to wrap ourselves in everything old and beautiful that we knew. I ran my fingers over his careless handwriting before putting it aside. Goodbye, Goodbye, Dear friend, dear yesterday's lover.

In the late dusk I stood beside the green tree that stood sentinel outside his window. I leant my forehead against the living trunk and it seemed that torn fragments were being tossed amongst its restless leaves, snatched by the wind and blown away out across the bay. I saw the little crying pieces and one was laughter, and one was sharing, and another was loving and touching, and these things that had been mine were never coming back, and would roam over the multi-coloured ball of the world looking for a new owner. Birds would still sing, white clover and rye grass would still grow in pasture, and an uncaring wind would move waters, ripple deserts, and breathe forever into every crevice of its beautiful round plaything.

I do, though, have something that no-one can ever take away. You left me the gift of memory, my love, my first, my only, laughing friend. Together we have been lucky enough to have had world enough, and time, to have known all the sweetest that life has to offer. Together, we made our own green-fringed legend, where the shining days can be explored again.

Judge's Comments

This is a beautiful elegy for a partner, written with a fine balance of sentiments. At times poetic, at others gently angry, the reader quickly gains a sense of a close and loving bond between husband and wife, and of a life of shared interests and passions. The words and wisdom of mutually admired writers are seamlessly woven into the text. The writer movingly says:  ‘I do, though, have something that no one can ever take away. You left me the gift of memory, my love, my first, my only, laughing friend.' Judge Arnold Zable, Author.

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