I'm very conscious that I am heading into the fading twilight of my parents final years. My mother would call this maudlin and laugh that they are not dead yet. Indeed, this is true as they are most vibrant in their vitality, even though my father is entering into the last moments of his cancer treatment, radiation to his brain to mop up any last vestiges of this dis-ease. Of course I don't tell her what I am really thinking - that without them my life will rearrange itself and I am not sure what that might look like yet.
Last weekend they came for lunch. Dad would do anything for food right now. The medication has made him irrationally hungry and he complains that he has put on weight. I tease him and call him pudgy. because it's a long standing family joke where once he said that to me. We all know one does not call a woman pudgy (I'm not, by the way - I'm deliciously curvaceous, according to the other half). My mother was mortified.
When he walked in the house he went straight to the Namitjira painting that he lent me money for years ago. We had been window shopping in Melbourne on the way out for a family lunch and we saw it in the window of a junk shop. Although he wanted it himself he lent me the hundred bucks, which I never paid back, and re framed it. Dad loves it and jokes since I never gave him that money it really belongs to him. For years I've been telling him to get stuffed, and that it's my painting. However, this time I said "Dad if you want the painting, you can have the painting - I don't mind"
To which mum said 'Oh for god's sake, don't be maudlin'. Stiff British upper lip, my mother.
I have been so lucky in my life. I am so close to my parents and I know that that isn't always a typical thing. But even in my 20s when I was wild and lost, it was my parents house to which I'd return, curl up on the couch and have one of Mum's famous raspberry and coconut muffins and a big mug of nettle tea. The energy in that house was always so peaceful. They had a beautiful garden (and still do) and it felt like a retreat from the world. Dad would often joke: 'are you still here?' and 'stop messing up the lounge room.' But they never minded really. They still make me feel really welcome. I still walk straight to the cupboard and take fix a handful of almonds without asking. I often leave with handfuls of books and bags of lemons. They are generous people.
Even when I'm feeling so anxious that I can barely breathe, I gain a few hours respite when I'm with them. They accept me utterly and completely - I never feel any judgement from them, no matter what I do. Even when I left Australian on a whim to go to a man that I'd known for a whole 3 days, they said they just wanted me to be happy and I sounded passionate, so why shouldn't I follow my passion? My husband adores them and the family never forgets the moment that J. accidentally called my father Dad.
Mortality is a funny thing. We know it's coming, but we pretend otherwise. The older we get, the more we shy away from mirrors that betray our age, showing as wrinkles the other marks of decay. Maybe if we celebrated age in this culture it would be less difficult to go head to head with. I feel unprepared because I've never lost anybody particularly close to me. Sure, I've lost friends and my grandparents but they seem different somehow. I find myself without the resources to cope with this. Maybe it's something that you learn as you go on. I'm starting to suspect that this is the case.
J. is going to England for Christmas to see his mum and sister, but understandably after Dad's illness I just want to stay home and be with them. J. of course will face the same thing with his family and for him, I guess it's even sadder because he could probably count the amount of times he will see his mum now as we live in countries so far away from each other. I'm grateful that he can deal with it better than I can, and that he didn't mind choosing to live in Australia.
I wonder who I will be without this compass point to return me to a solid centre. Maybe I need to find my own centre I guess. I know I have one, and I've used it many times before, don't get me wrong. I'm not so dependent on my parents that I could not live without them, and I certainly have, and I know that I can and will. As I said to Dad when he told me he had a 60 percent chance of surviving his cancer, of course I'll be fine, and I'll carry him in my life always, out in the ocean, in the yoga room - he'll be with me. But the thought of them dying leaves me a little lost and it's not something I can say to them. Again I guess it's just something that you get used to. Spring moves to summer, autumn moves to winter after all. I know it's the way of the world.
Dad came to do yoga with me today at the studio for the first time in 6 months. It's a hard class that I go to, a vinyasa flow. Dad's been doing yoga religiously, for longer than I have. A year ago I was admiring his strength and wondering how on earth you could be so fit at 70. When he had his heart attack, which now we think may have been his body's way of responding to the cancer before we even knew anything was wrong, he got back in that yoga room and blew everyone away with what he could do. The teacher's were very cautious of him and worrying about him, conscious that he was an old man that it just had a heart attack. I could hear it in their dialogue, reminding the class that it was fine to come to balasana, child's pose. But he was fine. Yoga made him feel good even when he was feeling crap. For months, he persisted, despite the pains in his legs. The doctor told him it was a kind of and would get painted his legs which the doctor said was a kind of myalgia. He also had a lump in his groin which the doctor dismissed a number of times. Turns out the whole time he was practicing next to me with such strength and grace, the cancer was working away at his body. He was feeling really under the weather, old and tired. We would laugh and tease him because we would say of course you were tired Dad - today you have done yoga and surfing and gardening and and a walk. He would insist that he felt really old of a sudden, but he would still come to yoga with me and we would sweat out through the shapes and breathing and he would feel momentarily good. When we got the diagnosis everything made sense. It wasn't myalgia at all but the lump in his lymph glands pressing on nerves.
In the first days of his cancer treatment Dad would be attached to a drip and doing yoga in the hospital room. Then he got weaker, but discovered a lot of poses that he could do lying in his bed. He didn't want to lose his muscle mass or his flexibility, but as he got sicker and sicker this was inevitable really. He didn't really anticipate how sick he would get. I think Dad was shying away from his own mortality. It is hard for men to all of a sudden become weak, as their whole sense of self is challenged. What is a man, without strength? And my father's philosophy that you 'just keep moving' could no longer be put into action.
In class today he struggled. I could hear his breath, short and struggling to gain control. On the mat breath is everything and it keeps you steady and true, despite the struggle. I found myself breathing harder and clearer for him, encouraging him to breath steadily with my own breath. He moved more frequently to child's pose and chose alternative poses when it got too tough (one struggles with garudasana or warrior 3 at the best of times, let alone having been ill for so long) but he made it through. He left his beanie on the whole time, too vain to take it off and show his bald head, but I did say no one would even care or mind. It's funny what we feel about ourselves. But he did it - he bravely got through, and I'm hoping he will come back next week. It's the only non heated class of the week, so maybe I'll go over and practice with him in the lounge room just so he starts building strength again. And the next step too, is to go out on the ocean with him again, get paddle boarding on the river perhaps before we go back out in the waves together.
I'm not ready to let him stop moving yet.
How have you coped with aging parents? With your parents mortality?
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All paintings by Albert Namitjira and found [here](https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/81.1997/