How I Rescued My Brain Read online

  Lily had recorded a CD with a series of scales and exercises that had become my vocal homework. In the morning, when the kids were off at school and not much else seemed worth doing, I went into the room downstairs, closed the windows — so the neighbours were less likely to hear — turned on my CD player, and sang to her recording, moulding my face and breathing as she had shown me. And my lumpen body and despondent mood responded.

  Without a weekly lesson at which I was required to demonstrate progress, I would’ve forgone these exercises. But I couldn’t disappoint Lily. When I turned up at her house, she’d call out with a singsong ‘Halloo.’ Her joyousness, and her commitment to willing me on, didn’t let up from that moment.

  In time, Lily had me singing an Italian aria, ‘Amarilli, Mia Bella’. It was a love poem; I’d never sung anything like it before. It was a good song, she said, for people who were changing their vocal technique. My voice was too nasally and needed to come from the belly.

  ‘You have to get out of your head. Feel love in your heart,’ she said, placing a hand on her chest, her face expressing yearning. ‘Imagine the person you’re singing to.’

  I wondered if the song choice was not only about vocal technique, but also Lily’s ploy to get me more in touch with expressing my feelings.

  After weeks of this, I said, ‘Lily, singing is different from playing an instrument; it wakes up the whole body. The body is your instrument. You can’t be depressed and sing at the same time.’

  She smiled: this revelation wasn’t new to her.

  The discovery that I couldn’t sing properly while slumped in despondency showed me that working the body in certain ways changed one’s mood. It bypassed the head — that ruminating heavyweight in which I was so often stuck.

  Lily’s choice of songs had extended me, vocally and emotionally. I had discovered that I was a baritone, with a two-octave range: from a resonating low to a flute-like high. Singing awakened a joyousness that I thought had been quashed — a feeling that came with the beauty of the sound I could make.

  I HAD BEEN visiting Dad intermittently over the last fourteen months, since he’d been in the nursing home. Now in a wheelchair, he used his feet to paddle through the corridors, and, like a lizard, he fossicked out the sunny spots during the day’s diurnal changes. He liked the food they served and had bulked up, his sunken cheeks now a memory. He didn’t ask about home anymore.

  Dad enjoyed socialising with the staff and other residents, who soon learnt about The Petition. Since his retirement, he had engaged in environmental activism — in particular, in starting up petitions to promote various environmental causes. He was a ceaseless letter-writer, and in an age of digital speed, he wrote long letters in a feathery-like script. He used to collect signatures in public places, setting up a table and chair. When my siblings and I were younger, he had embarrassed us many times with the way he pounced on any new friend or visitor who came to our home, asking, ‘Have you signed the petition yet?’ with a cheeky grin. After the expected ‘no’, he’d passionately argue his case for protection, and the newcomer would duly sign. His petitioning efforts brought success, too: he became a formidable force in advancing awareness of potential dangers to the Great Barrier Reef, and his amassed signatures helped in the ultimate declaration of the area as a marine national park.

  In the nursing home, the deputy director of nursing had, like a colonial governor granting parcels of land, given him a wedge of territory in her office — a drawer in her filing cabinet — where he stored his papers and correspondence, away from the cleaners’ zealous clutches.

  Sometimes, on my visits, I found him in his room, in the wheelchair, by the windowpane tinged with the gold of afternoon sun, asleep. His papers sliding off his lap, pen limp in his hand, chin resting on his chest, and a line of spittle hanging from parted lips. And in that sagging body I could see the boy he once was, still driving this old man. If a painter were asked to interpret the scene, he might have depicted a boy in old man’s clothes, climbing up the mature eucalyptus tree outside the window, determined to explore.

  Then, in mid-October, I got an unexpected call from my sister. ‘Dad’s not eating,’ she said.

  This was a federal election year. Dad had been working with a preoccupied feverishness, writing letters to all the politicians he thought would promote his views. When I went in to see him, I learnt that he had been off his food since he began his letter campaign. He drank enough of the protein milk given to him in the little cartons to keep the nurses off his back, but my siblings and I found bits of food hidden away in his drawers and under the bed. He told me that he was trying to fool the staff into believing he was eating more than he was. It was a bit like me when I was a boy, slipping the dreaded peas under the dining-room table and out of sight.

  A couple of weeks later, once his last round of letters was posted out, he stopped eating altogether. I asked him why, but he didn’t really answer. I wasn’t sure if he was being evasive or if he was just tired by the line of questioning.

  He was becoming skeletal again.

  The deputy director of nursing asked my siblings and me if we wanted him to be fed by a nasal tube, in which case he would need to be transferred to the hospital. I thought of that white, antiseptic room. Dad liked it here — it had become his home. My siblings felt similarly; we agreed that we would encourage him to eat but we would not sanction forced feeding. My father was showing obstinate self-determination; that was his character, and I admired him for it.

  DAD AND I had spoken about death before. I knew from these discussions that he did not fear it, and this comforted me. I did not need to reassure him about something that was a mystery to me.

  There were no unspoken grievances between us. Two years earlier I had undertaken an online course taught by professor Martin Seligman, a founder of the positive-psychology movement, a relatively new field of social science that focused on increasing contentment and happiness in individuals, groups, and institutions. One of the exercises had been to write a ‘gratitude letter’. The aim was to choose someone important to you, tell them the ways in which you felt grateful to them, and thank them for the positive things they had done for you. Then you met with the letter’s recipient, if they were still alive, and read it out to them. Seligman told us that this had a positive and lasting effect on the letter-writer.

  I had sat almost knee-to-knee with Dad by his dining-room table while I read out my one-page letter. I told him of specific incidents in which I was grateful for what he’d done, and how I’d always felt supported and loved by him. I got choked up, but Dad’s encouraging smile kept me going to the end. ‘Thank you, Dave,’ he’d said. ‘You’ve been a wonderful son.’ After that, the kettle went on the stove and we had a cup of tea: our family’s ritual.

  At the time, it had seemed irrelevant to tell my ninety-year-old father of the things that made me unhappy with him, the disappointments. As a parent, I knew how easy it was to make mistakes, even with the best intentions. What I hadn’t foreseen was how this event released me from the need to say anything further to him now.

  While I was in Sydney with Dad, I stayed with my old friends Peter and Ros, even though they lived on the other side of the city. I didn’t want to be on my own, and they offered me their garden studio for as long as I needed it. Each day, I caught a bus and then a train to the hospital. Dad was noticeably weaker and less alert with every visit. I usually only managed a few hours with him; any more and the heaviness would’ve drowned me. But I knew that I was spending the last days of his life with him. It was a difficult but important time. As I sat beside Dad, I stroked his arm. I remembered how, when I was a boy, he had sat by my bedside at night, tousling my hair with parted fingers. In the glow of the lamp, he’d answer my questions from the day, before sleep’s final wave rolled over me.

  Four days after I began to visit Dad daily, on 7 November 2007, the deputy di
rector of nursing said his end was close. Dad was moved into a room by himself. A new phase had begun.

  My sister, my older brother, and I gathered by his bedside. Our younger brother had left work and was on a train to the hospital.

  By late afternoon, Dad’s breathing was terribly laboured, and we took it in turns to have time with him alone: my brothers first, and then my sister, and then me.

  I rested my hand lightly on his chest. The pillows propped up his head and shoulders. His face was so gaunt, his shoulders barely there, and his skin as white as a marble bust.

  He was trying to speak. I leant in close.

  ‘Hi … huff … flew,’ he said. His mouth had trouble wrapping around the words; each required a whole breath, and came out with the same explosiveness as someone puffing out birthday candles.

  His hands rested on his lap. I clasped them in mine. ‘What is it you want?’ I said, looking into his face.

  With great effort, his shrunken chest filled with air, and I heard again, ‘Hi … huff … flew.’

  What was he saying? My bafflement was distressing me now. ‘Do you want me to call the nurse?’ I glanced behind me to the doorway, hoping she might be coming around the corner. I was not going to leave him.

  Then, his bony, elegant fingers took my hand tenderly. He lifted his head from the pillows, brought my hand to his lips, and kissed it twice. He let my hand down gently, his head slumped back into the pillow, and his eyes closed.

  I called in my sister and brothers. Soon, a deep gurgling rose from Dad’s throat, although his mouth remained open. His cheeks were hollows. He was losing his humanness.

  The deputy director came in soon after, followed by a doctor. After the doctor examined my father and left, the deputy director said, ‘His personality has gone now. His brain is on automatic pilot.’ She left us to be with him. That’s when it sunk in: he was never going to come back. Ever.

  My eyes began to water. I glanced at my siblings standing around the bed, all silent, with a touch of horror in their eyes.

  Dad’s convulsive breathing continued, and then (why was it this particular one?) he drew his last breath. The silence was so sudden that I was not sure if his body’s life force had really gone, if his breath would erupt again. But he was unmoving, and no matter how intensely I studied his face for a sign of life, I could not urge it back into existence.

  That evening it struck me: Dad had been saying, ‘I love you.’ The same fingers that had caressed my hair as a boy had spoken again of his love. I thought about how one breath separates life from death, father from son, and I wasn’t sure if I said it or thought it: Goodbye, Dad, and thank you.

  THE DAYS THAT followed involved funeral arrangements: contacting Dad’s friends and relatives; writing a eulogy. Anna and the children joined me. We located an eco-friendly coffin, made of thick recycled cardboard, covered by the image of a magnificent forest tree; Dad would have liked this. The wake after the service was a happy one. Many felt affection for Dad; he’d made a difference, and he’d left this life without regrets.

  When it was over, I was keen to put Sydney behind me and get back to the bay. On my first Sunday back, Ian, Lily, and I rounded the surf club for the start of our swim, and my heart leapt. The beach looked idyllic. Before us, the aquamarine sea was laid out like a banquet, and the swell was nosing onto the beach. It was as if the sea was conscious of how magnificent it looked. The breeze was not up yet, and we walked through a stillness that somehow felt alive.

  The Sunday-morning ritual had begun with the familiar sound of Ian’s Subaru Forester pulling up in my driveway. He had let himself into the house. The rest of the family were asleep. I had already squeezed in a short meditation before he materialised, with his jocular ‘Hello,’ in shorts, sandals, and a T-shirt.

  ‘Hi, Ian. Meet you out front?’ I said, and went to the garage to collect my swim bag and towel. Then I walked along the side of the house, up the driveway, to his car, and plonked into the passenger’s seat. ‘Can we pick up Lily?’ She sometimes called to say she’d like to join us.

  ‘Yep.’ Ian turned on the ignition, and his favourite radio station trumpeted out from the speakers.

  A few minutes later, we stopped outside a blue timber house. Tall tiger grass in need of a trim blocked most of the view to the house from the road. A tradesperson’s ute and a rusty Toyota Camry wagon stood in the drive. I got out and peeked through the grass to see a beach towel flopping out of an African basket that had been set upon the porch. The front door was ajar. These things meant that Lily would appear soon.

  In a few minutes, Lily came out, blonde hair tousled. She’d probably only been up for a short time; usually she’d had a performance or she’d been to see live music the night before.

  She came and lowered her face to my window. ‘Halloo.’ Then, with basket and handbag, she nestled into the back seat.

  It was the familiarity of this routine that was comforting. Sometimes, when the week was an act of survival — as it had been many times in the last year — the Sunday swim was the main thing I looked forward to. And I knew that whatever miserable state I was in, my swimming buddies and the ocean would accommodate me.

  This morning, sixty or so swimmers were gathered. We walked into a cloud of excited conversations, as well as hazy greetings from those still waking up. Then, at the agreed time, the group trod down the stairs and onto the sand. For twenty minutes, we strolled up the beach at an easy pace, chatting in duos or trios, small groups forming and re-forming. Goggles and caps were tucked into swimmers or dangled from hands; some carried flippers. As we walked, I looked beyond the waves to see if there was a current running. Was the surface smooth, so that I could glide through it, or was it becoming choppy in the lifting breeze, so that the waves would slap my face and slosh into my mouth as I turned to breathe?

  Once we reached the end of the beach, we all entered the water to swim back to the club: a distance of about 1.5 kilometres. The swim would take around twenty-five minutes, depending upon the strength of the current.

  When waist-deep, I dove under the first few waves and began to freestyle. The water whistled and sizzled in my ears. My hands pushed through it, my elbows lifting high, shaped like the bent wings of a gannet diving for fish. Each arm pulled back in an S-shape, the hand cupping the water and thrusting it past my hip.

  On a day like this, I could see the bottom of the ocean. The ripples of sand, like dunes in the Great Sandy Desert, curved and snaked, displaying the vagaries of the invisible micro-currents. Fish weaved lazily, and then bent and darted off. A cloud of sand swirled up every now and then, as if an invisible urchin was stirring the ocean floor mischievously in order to surprise the passing swimmer.

  I glided over a turtle as it hovered by some waving seaweed. Disturbed by my presence, it turned and moved with a grace that belied its bulbous shape, flying like a bird, its tail flippers steering gently.

  The swim was therapy, a purging of the week’s psychic stains. Tensions sloughed off like discarded skin. Today, I felt it was washing away the intensity of the last fortnight.

  In front of the surf club, I turned and made for the beach. At the water’s edge the ground raced up towards me, as if I was an aeroplane falling out of the sky. I could make out single grains of sand and shell fragments — bone, yellow, black, brown, clear silica. I emerged out of the sea, at first unsteady on my feet, my mind clear and light. I was home, at last.

  Afterwards, Ian, Lily, and I joined our other swimming friends and went for coffee. Our conversations usually moved from the superficial to the humorous to the personal and back again. Everything was up for discussion — health, our children, relationships, movies, books, and politics. Years of this routine had lubricated the ease with which we talked and joked. The others asked me about Dad’s death, the funeral, and how I was feeling. Some of them had had parents die, and I asked w
hat it had been like for them. At this time in my life, and in the aftermath of my father’s death, the Sunday-morning swim was more than just a swim — it was a life rope.

  5

  THE LAST TWELVE months had been difficult — it seemed as if I had been hurled from one crisis to another. By early 2008, it was clear that I was not going to return to full-time work. We’d have to draw further on our financial investments to stay afloat. This, along with the strain of my mental and physical health problems, was taking a toll on Anna, and on our relationship.

  I had met Anna when she was in the final year of a visual-arts degree. I was in the midst of a PhD in clinical psychology, working part-time at my university. A mutual friend, who had been trying to get us together for some time, introduced us. What first struck me about Anna was her stunning Mediterranean complexion. In appearance we were opposites: she, fine-boned, with long black hair, brown eyes, and an olive complexion; I, a sturdy physique, fair skin, blue–green eyes, and auburn hair. Her parents had separated early, and events had transpired to create a difficult upbringing for her, the type that made a child either sink or swim. Anna swam. It may have been this that gave her an easy maturity beyond her years, which I found seductive. She was twenty, and I was thirty-two.

  When she’d first invited me back to her student bedsit, the main room filled by a sofa the size of a continent and a spongy double bed, she made baba ghanoush for lunch. This was a favourite of mine, one I’d thought only came from the Lebanese restaurants along Cleveland Street in Sydney. I watched as she placed a taut eggplant on a wire-gauze stand perched over a Bunsen burner. As the skin burnt, giving off a smoky pungency, she turned it until it collapsed into itself. Then she mashed the cooked flesh into a paste with tahini and lemon juice. I was impressed.

  Over the coming months, we’d discovered how aligned we were. We were both comforted by nature. We camped in national parks by creeks and rivers, and lay in their cascades of water. We made love under the trees beside our tent. I marvelled at the inventive ease with which she made meals on our campfire.