So how did my parents survive? Because they had to. Even then, Mum was clear—us kids kept her alive. She says if she hadn’t had me to care for, she would have died from sorrow. I was the youngest. I needed her the most. She says it was that need which got her up in the morning. She’s said this for as long as I can remember. I loved that sense of having been useful, of having done my job. And, yet, it was a heavy feeling to carry. Guilt always is. I remember how bad I used to feel when I demanded her attention. I felt I was robbing Rowena. I tried, very hard, to ask for as little as possible, but I was not very successful. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I needed more, all the time. More attention. More reassurance. More food.
And somewhere in all of this, I made a little bargain with myself: that my mum would be okay as long as I made sure that nothing bad ever happened to me. I would need to be very careful, always. Later, much later, that was the thought that took up residence inside me: that I was not, under any circumstances, allowed to die. That even thinking about death was a sin.
On this particular afternoon, Mum helped me step up onto the train, one of the old Red Rattlers; grand and solid with tragically slashed leather seats and black linoleum floors tacked to the original wooden boards underneath with brass nails. Back then, you could open the train window and feel the wind on your face.
‘Too loud!’ I said as the train blew its whistle and rolled out of the station. I remember the feeling of slowly slowly and then quickly quickly as the train gathered speed, remember bright staccato strobes of sunlight and being blinded momentarily. I carry in me an image of my mother from this day, an image of her profile in bright silhouette, one of her hands clutching her necklace, her medals, her crucifix, the one she still wears to this day. I could not pick her expression. I watched so closely, trying to work it out. When she noticed me watching her, she cracked a smile and made a face, gave me a little wink.
But there was something wrong, and I knew it. I rested my head on her lap and, even though we were smiling, my stomach felt sick and I had no words for why.
We would have stopped at every station—Hampton, Brighton and then, later, South Yarra, Richmond and, finally, Flinders Street. And then we were there, at the hospital entrance once again. I don’t remember how we got there; I think we must have caught a taxi. Mum can’t say either. She can’t remember. The shock, she says.
I have tried many, many times to piece it together, to work out what might have happened, which parts are real and which I have imagined. Sometimes, I see pictures in my head of things that I’m not sure actually happened. I see us stepping into the elevator, Mum pushing buttons, not laughing, and I know I need to be quiet, but I am scared so I talk. I see us entering Rowie’s ward, then her room. She is not in her bed, which is impossible because she never left her bed, not even to go to the toilet. And then I have a memory of my mother, which I don’t think is a true memory, but I feel horror when I think about it, because it’s like I can hear my mum yelling in panic, saying, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ and there is a sense then of a nurse walking towards her calmly with her arms open, trying to speak, and then my mother goes limp.
I also recall another scene, a different one, in which my mother never yells, ‘Where is she?’ In this scene, we are met at the elevator by two nurses, one of whom whisks me downstairs to the occupational therapy room and says, ‘Don’t worry,’ when I ask where Mum is but she doesn’t really answer the question. ‘She’ll be here soon. Can you see a doll over there? You go and get it. Let’s play a game.’ I think this might be what actually happened, although I cannot say for sure. I don’t think I saw Rowie dying, but I just can’t be sure.
All these decades later, all I really know for certain is that we were at the theatre, we were listening to Prokofiev, and then we were at the hospital, and after a bit of time my dad came, and then Anna and Lisa and James were there. Mum says they were brought to the hospital by their principal Sister Lois and the parish priest Father Coakley. Then Dad came into the waiting room and kneeled down in front of me and Anna and said very gently, ‘She’s gone.’
Even this bit is not quite clear, but when Anna reminds me of it, there it is: the feeling of truth, hot and cold like panic in my chest. Rowena was in heaven now, Dad told us. She was gone.
I heard a voice in my head that day. The voice was like my voice, but bigger, telling me that this was all a bit silly, and for some reason I became quite sure that she was not really dead at all, and would soon reappear. I would definitely see her again. It was not a big deal. This comforts me—the thought that I did have a kind voice inside me, a voice reassuring me that everything would be fine. I wish that feeling could have lasted.
I never knew my sister as I know people today. I can remember very few details of conversation or playing games or eating meals together. I see from the photos that we did all these things, but I
