Io means yes
I started this newsletter promising "small stories about big things in 1000 words or less". This one is about dying, and visits to Kmart.
Many new subscribers have signed up for my sports writing. I also write about other stuff. Today, it’s a slice of the other stuff. This is the third in a series about my neighbour. If you would like, read part one and two here to help this make sense.
Yesterday I went next door to visit T. The heavy security grille barring entry to her front door was shut and locked. This is unusual. I rattled the door, unable to get a hand to the wooden door, and waited. I noted a laua’e fern was growing in the garden behind the fence, hidden from the street.
Her niece, M, answered.
Ah! she said. Shjorshjina!
She has a way of almost singing my name that makes it sound sophisticated and mysterious.
She’s asleep, she said. I don’t want to wake her because then she will get cold, and then she will get angry! We both laughed, but I knew it was true.
T is in the final stages of a cancer. I am pretty sure I’d be angry too.
A delivery of boxes – containing the sorts of things needed to retain dignity whilst also signalling loss of agency and control – were sitting in the rain. We took them inside, had a whispered chat about how T was feeling, and I left.
M has come to Sydney from Tonga, to care for T during her last months. She has her own family in Tonga. A husband, children, grandchildren. She cooks for T, bathes her, cleans the house. She responds to her calls in the middle of the night, sometimes sleeping on the floor of T’s bedroom, “because by the time I get up and get to her, she will be annoyed”.
She has told me she works as a carer in Tonga. Here she is working, but also not ‘working’. She’s doing a job that is difficult but invisible. A job everyone considers essential, but few know how to get done.
I’ve got to know M while she has been here. We’ve spent some time together shopping. She wanted to buy some gifts for people back at home. We organised a time and a day that worked for her, when the paid carer would be there for her short shift.
When I called to pick her up she told me she’d been ready since 6.30am. T had told her to get up and shower at 6, so she would be ready for me. Once we got into the car and she started talking, I realised I was giving her the chance to escape for an hour or so. This wasn’t just about some shopping. I haven’t been out of the house for a long time, she said. Every day, just getting up, doing the same things, going to bed. Responding to the calls of someone else.
I was happy that she could show the cracks in her carers surface to me. No one is a saint. We’re not allowed to recognise that this job is hard. It’s assumed – because it’s convenient to those not doing the work – that people do this sort of thing out of love. They do, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes they’d just like to sit in the sun with a cup of tea while birds fly overhead, without being called upon from the other room.
I took her to Marrickville Metro, on her request. She wanted to go to Kmart. The first time we went, I wasn’t sure whether to stay with her, or go my own way. I didn’t know her well enough to chat while we walked around, and yet didn’t want to leave her and I’m generally awkward in these situations. I decided she wouldn’t want to feel hurried, so I wandered around, keeping a loose eye on where she was, in case she needed me, and looked at things.
(Do you know Kmart sells slippers that you can heat in the microwave? Men’s underwear with Sriracha logos on them? Circular pieces of silicon that fit around your massive Stanley cup in the car, providing a tray for snacks? Who needs a charcuterie board while they’re DRIVING? Wooden kettle sets for children? I would have loved one of those when I was 4, but when I looked at it, I recklessly imagined having ‘tea’ with a grandchild who may never exist. I hurried out of the toy section, embarrassed by my own thought).
M loaded up a trolley with goods. School shoes for her children (“Two dollar!”). Dresses from the sale rack for daughters. Children’s clothes. Sandals. Small handbags. She spent hunderds of dollars. She bought nothing for herself.
Maybe you could just leave me here! She laughed. Tell everyone I am living in Kmart!
They do have inflatable two-seater sofa beds.
We made two more stops - for perfume and a mango to for T that I couldn’t find - then I drove her home.
Did you get everything you need? I asked. M looked at me sideways and smiled, closing her eyes so perhaps I would understand without her saying the words. We can go again, I said. Next week. This time you will get something for yourself.
I wonder if T thinks about Tonga. I wonder if she’d prefer to be at home. I wonder if this is her home now? I can’t ask her. What would be the point? She speaks more and more in Tongan, rather than English. Sometimes I sit in the chair facing her bed, with my back to the window while she and M converse. I can’t understand anything, except Io (yes). I let the words drift around me.
Driving down the road yesterday, during one of those moments we allow ourselves behind the wheel, when our mind wanders before we bring it back to the job at hand, I came to an understanding.
While I think of T as a neighbour, I can continue to sit in that chair, I can continue to go in and out of my house, go about my business, whilst knowing she is laying just inside the front window I pass multiple times every day. If I think of her as friend, this rhythm is fractured. It all breaks. The presence of death, of the end of a life, comes like a blow.
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It's great that you have T as a friend, but now you have M too, so that is a gift from T, even though she may not realise it.
Beautiful.