My friend’s big heart gave out. In the end, he still called the shots
It was midnight and I had drunk a midnight’s worth of wine and the party was nearly over. I was talking to a friend about the difficulties of getting to Bachsten Creek, a faraway and spectacular stream few people have seen.
He’d been all over remote Australia. I never mentioned any far-flung place when he wouldn’t say, “Yeah, the sandflies there are outrageous,” or some such thing. So I was picking his brain. Most people had gone home, only the staunch were left standing amid the smeared symphony of midnight thoughts, saying our last foolishly fond things to each other before the Uber ride, making declarations to meet soon and to be more frequent, if not better, friends.
He was looking good. His smile flared as it always did, and his laughter rolled out as easily as ever. He was jovial, and while that might sound like faint praise, it isn’t to me. Joviality is chosen moment by moment, again and again, over all the other ways you could be, and as such is a type of decency in this world, I think.
Credit: Robin Cowcher
When I was leaving we shook hands and wished each other the platitudes because, you know, nothing more than platitudes are needed when you’re bound to meet again soon. Then Sarah and I left the party.
And he went home and his heart went rogue and his wife and their houseguests worked his chest until the paramedics arrived and took over. From there he went into the ICU where they put him in an induced coma – a kind of anesthetist’s aspic, a holding pattern while they run their tests and examine your fate and discuss sotto voce likelihoods with your family.
When a doctor lowers their voice you don’t hear their words as much as the softened tone – as ominous as muffled church bells. The sentences can’t be untangled from the roar of the whisper. Lord save us from the hushed airs of doctors. Their concern isn’t fake, but it is practised – and dressed up as intimacy. And a dirge to those who’ve heard it more than once. You grip the arms of your chair until your fingers ache when doctors speak in their crescendo of hush.
At our house we were having bacon and eggs and saying what a fun party it had been when we got the news. When a loved one is on life support you’ve got a choice. Or you think you do. But you don’t. It’s no choice at all. Machines are running his organs and there’s no possibility he will revive, no path back to self. So do you turn the machines off? In this day-and-age of dazzling triage it’s a question a lot of people are forced to answer. An overwhelming decision – at first.
But in truth, you defer to a higher authority. Not a deity. No, no … those days are gone. You ask the man lying there what he’d do, knowing the answer, knowing exactly what he’ll say. “For Christ sakes, Sal. Me like this? Get on with it, girl. Pull the bloody plug.” Him, lying there beyond human communication, communicates with you perfectly. The decision is made by the person in the bed. If you love them they’re still calling the shots.
Sometimes, when someone dies out of the blue you want nothing more than to see that little red A+ at the top of the page on the story you wrote as your grade three teacher hands it back to you. You want to be riding your first bike, a green and silver Malvern Star, downhill with your feet hung out wide as the pedals whir circles. Sometimes you want to see your Dad land a trout and hear him say, “Isn’t it a beauty?” Being a kid seems the right, adult, option when pillars of mirth are crashing around you at midnight and you know the temple roof is cracking.
And I never met anyone who didn’t say he was a good man. Salt of the Earth and kind beyond measure. The sort of bloke who would turn up when you were stalled, stymied, wondering which path to take or bruised by some setback. He’d turn up. Knowing that turning up was the thing to do. And his death has made me think since that I’d like to die at midnight, after a party, sitting on the edge of the bed taking my socks off and saying to Sarah, “Wasn’t that nice”.