Letter from my Father (19 page)

Henry, adventurer that he was, was happy to risk it and set out. I agreed. I could not account for my single-minded pursuit of this holiday. It was as if the little girl in me had set her heart on it.

Just before boarding our plane at Sydney airport, Henry disappeared to make a phone call to his doctor. He casually mentioned that he wanted to find out the results of some tests and discuss his intermittent high blood pressure.
Don't worry
, he told me.

After some delays, we finally did get to Rarotonga. Our hotel had the typical low wooden huts, a dining room open to a swimming pool surrounded by a wide deck with comfortable deck chairs under huge umbrellas and vibrant landscaped gardens. The locals spoke a type of Pidgin English, which Henry took to immediately, having learned a similar dialect in Papua New Guinea. He beamed. Together we relaxed, walking along the beach in the evenings and gazing in wonder at the star-studded sky.

By our third day, Henry was debating with himself whether he should go for a fairly shallow scuba-dive or a much deeper, more challenging one. Scuba-diving was one of his passions. He had described the magical stillness and sheer beauty and diversity of the living creatures in the underwater world. It was his natural habitat, he said.

He returned from his day out deep diving enchanted, but that night and the subsequent ones I noticed that the sound of his snoring had changed. It was louder and more raucous than ever. I felt as if I were sleeping next to a roaring lion. I woke him every few minutes to tell him to stop and let me sleep. But as soon as he fell asleep it would start again.

One morning we went to a secluded beach with the whitest sand I had ever seen. Henry disappeared with his snorkel while I swam and then chatted to a couple sitting on the beach in deck-chairs. A large deep blue starfish had just been washed up on the shore, they said. I had never seen one as big as this. We wondered whether it could survive the heat of the sun.

I waved to Henry, who had emerged from the water to come and admire this solitary creature. He approached and started poking and hitting it with a stick he picked up. He seemed furious. The other couple retreated, leaving me embarrassed, perplexed and, yes, frightened of this savage behaviour from my civilised husband. What was happening?

Henry spent the rest of the holiday reading, swimming and sleeping a lot. Only occasionally did he display his usual good humour and zest. While I swam, alone most of the time, a phrase kept repeating itself in my mind:
It will be all right. I can stand on my own two feet.
One wonders at the workings of the unconscious, because I did not perceive any danger to my and Henry's relationship – so what did
on my own two feet
mean? On our flight back to Sydney we were both somewhat subdued.

XVI

Shock, Grief, Survival

O
n our return from the Cook Islands, Henry drove to Canberra to spend Christmas with his mother and Kim. A week later he came back and we set off to Pearl Beach for a week's holiday at a summer cottage lent to us by good friends. Henry and I loved this place and had enjoyed some glorious summer days there. A gentle 500 metres from the beach, the house had sliding glass windows, wide verandas front and back and overlooked a slightly overgrown, luxurious sub-tropical garden. It was a place for reading, yarning with friends over a glass of red wine, being quiet and – yes, for lovemaking.

On this holiday, however, some strange things happened. Henry had previously been effortlessly able to swim from one end of the bay to the other. One day I was sitting on a rock on the south side of the beach and, with some pride, told a man also there of my husband's swimming prowess. We watched Henry's steady slow strokes as he made his way towards us, and I expected him then to turn round and swim back out to sea. Instead he waded out of the water.
He was not being my hero.
I immediately asked him why he'd given up. He just mumbled about his snorkel.

That afternoon during our usual pre-dinner walk, Henry turned to me and said:
I want you to understand that if anything happens to me, I don't want to live on in a diminished state
. I quickly started talking about his mother and her enjoyment of life in spite of her failing powers, but he interrupted forcefully:
It's important for me that you understand what I'm saying.
I, reproved, replied:
I do hear and understand you
.

He was also taking his pulse regularly and when I asked why, he just replied:
Oh, I'm just checking that I'm still alive.

In preparation for the evening's barbecue on New Year's Eve 1991, I had marinated snapper fillets bought that morning at the fishing village of Patonga and made a crisp green salad. Henry had put a couple of bottles of white wine in the fridge. We decided to spend the evening on our own. At dusk we walked down to the beach and strolled along it, arm in arm, while Henry slowly savoured the aroma of his pipe. It was so peaceful. The stars were out and I enjoyed every moment of our togetherness. We made our way back home, ate dinner in a leisurely manner and sipped our wine. Five minutes before midnight we turned on the radio and waited for the count-down for the New Year's Eve toast, champagne glasses at the ready. Henry's customary toast, one that filled my ever-anxious heart with hope, was:
Here's to a vintage year!
This time the moment came but the toast did not. He said quietly:
Here's to next year.
My heart faltered. I protested:
Isn't it going to be a vintage year?
Henry responded even more quietly:
I hope so
.

That night I woke with a start, reliving that crucial moment of the New Year. This was not my Henry.

The next day we headed back home to meet his Swiss cousin and her friend who were visiting Sydney. He would drive them both back to Canberra. He also went to see a doctor about the shoulder he had injured while doing a handstand at Pearl Beach – or at least that's what he told me.

As he set off to Canberra he seemed rather fatigued. He had, of course, to pack the car with the visitors' luggage after picking them up very early that morning at the airport. He phoned me the following Monday to ask whether he had left his blood pressure tablets in the bathroom at my townhouse. I told him he had not. A few hours later he phoned again with the same question. It was unlike him to fuss so much. But now I knew that he had high blood pressure, a fact he
had hidden from me. This was probably why he had gone to see the doctor.
How impossible men were!

That evening as we spoke by phone he told me that he had a bad back and was going to a chiropractor. I strongly advised him to ask a doctor for a diagnosis. He did not heed my advice. His back pain became worse, though I found this out only indirectly from his secretary, Greta, since he refused to admit I had been right to warn him against the chiropractor. He even had another session with him. During our Tuesday night phone call, he promised me that he would see a doctor and report the next day. The following night, however, he was still procrastinating.

Thursday was a demanding day for me, as I busily prepared university material for the person who would replace me while I was on sabbatical at McGill. I went to bed fairly early for me, around 10.30pm. Henry and I had agreed that he was not to call me after 11pm, since I woke very early every morning to go for my walk and then to work. This had taken a bit of training as Henry only truly woke up to the world around noon and went to sleep late.

I fell into a deep sleep. At what seemed a very late hour, though it was probably only midnight, I half-heard the phone ring. I ignored it since I wanted to stay within my sleep. The ringing stopped and I continued my peaceful slumber. Then the ringing started again. Now I was awake. However, I continued to ignore it, thinking:
Bloody Henry. Why can't he stick to our agreement?
I was annoyed by his lack of consideration. He knew how much I loved and needed my sleep. Whatever it was could wait until morning.

On Friday morning, I phoned Henry in his Canberra office to get some information on obtaining a gold American Express card. He was out, but Greta was able to supply me with what I wanted. Towards the end of our conversation, Henry returned to the office and Greta asked whether I wanted to speak to him. I blithely said that there was no need since I
would be seeing him in a few hours when I picked him up at the airport in Sydney to have Friday night dinner together.

Later on I organised what we needed for dinner, set the table and went up to my study to do some work. The computer wouldn't start. I systematically went over each of the required steps. Nothing. So frustrating. I thought that I might have to ask Jonathan, a computer wizard among his many other accomplishments, to have a look at it over the weekend.

At 6pm, just as I was getting ready to drive to the airport for Henry's 7pm flight, the phone rang. It was Greta. She told me that he had collapsed at the foot of the stairs leading up to his office and had been taken to hospital, most likely suffering from concussion. She said that he had not been feeling well all morning and that when she had suggested he see a doctor, had refused. He would rather go for a swim, he said, his cure for everything. She had seen his car returning but it had been a long time before she heard him open the door downstairs. Then she had heard the thud of his fall.

She had gone down to investigate and found him collapsed in a dazed state at the bottom of the staircase. She had helped him up the stairs and, only when he agreed did she call an ambulance. She thought that I'd better fly to Canberra that very night.

I phoned the hospital and was told that Henry was under investigation and that I should call later. I managed to find a seat on an 8.20pm flight and quickly packed my overnight bag with a change of clothes. I was feeling anxious but not alarmed. I knew concussion could be quite unpleasant, but after a few days one did recover. I then phoned the GP who had seen Henry six days earlier. He told me that he was not concerned as much about the impact of the fall as why he had fallen.

I phoned my friend Lydia and her surgeon husband Ron to talk to them about what was happening. They invited me
over and Ron phoned Henry's hospital and asked to speak to the physician in the Intensive Care Unit. As he listened to what he had to say, his face turned pale. He carefully put down the phone, looked at me and said:
Ester, Henry has had a stroke. It looks bad
.

I heard the words. I knew what they meant but I also did not know. My friends drove me to the airport and I arranged to have Greta meet me and drive me directly to the hospital. During the flight, unsettling thoughts battered me.
Did stroke mean paralysis
?
How much? Which parts of Henry would be affected? Was he in the best hands? What rehabilitation would he need? What was happening now?
I even thought that it was a shame I had prepared such a nice dinner.

On arrival at the hospital, a doctor took me aside and explained that Henry had suffered a haemorrhage to the left frontal lobe of his brain. He was in a deep coma. The phrase he used,
irreversible brain damage,
was beyond my understanding. Henry had been allotted a single room in the unit, located on the top floor of the building, with wide windows right across one wall looking out on to the blue hills surrounding Canberra. It was a splendid view – but of course Henry could not see it.

He was lying unconscious, his face tranquil, the only sign of life his deep regular breathing as he inhaled oxygen. He had always had a strong heart. It kept on beating seemingly unaware of what had happened to the person for whom it had laboured all its life. I sat beside the bed, stunned.

All sorts of things were happening around me. Doctors wanted to know what Henry's blood pressure had been in the last few weeks. I had no idea.

As soon as they heard the news at 11pm, Jonathan and six-months-pregnant Paula got into their car and drove through the night to be with me. On arrival, Jonathan established exactly what was happening since some of the doctors in charge had been his fellow medical students. He
took me aside and explained in his usual clear manner that if Henry were to wake from his coma, the person waking would no longer be the man we knew. He would be a person functioning at the level of what he called
a vegetable
. The full force of Henry's instruction,
I don't want to live on in a diminished state,
hit me. He must have felt or known something that he had not shared with me.

I knew at once that he must not be allowed to linger on like this. I talked to Kim, herself completely stunned, and she fully agreed with me. But we also wanted to get Henry's brother Ernest's consent for our decision not to prolong his life artificially.

We had already phoned Ernest in Florida and he had got on the first flight to Australia, practically in his pyjamas. He arrived at noon on Sunday. He went directly to his younger brother's bedside, gave him a nudge, and said firmly:
That's enough. Wake up! Come on
,
Jungchen
(he always referred to Henry as
young one
in German).

We had lived with the situation for what seemed many days, though it was only two. It was important that Ernest grasped the reality of Henry's condition very quickly, since the conference with the head physician was scheduled for 2pm that day. Jonathan took Ernest for a walk and talked and talked, repeating patiently and in different ways the level of his brother's functioning. Finally Ernest took it in.

At the conference with the physician, Jonathan kept on repeating the question:
What sort of person would Henry be if he were to regain consciousness
? The answer was starkly clear. It would be a much-diminished shadow of my husband. That Sunday evening we took the decision to take him off the life-support system. His doctors expected him to die in the next couple of days.

During this period I slept on the couch in the waiting room adjoining the unit, still in the clothes in which I had arrived. Paula made cups of tea for me and was very kind and
patient. Since she and Jonathan needed to be back to Sydney the next day, I asked them to send me some of my clothes.