you know that jim carroll song, people who died, where he lists all the people he knows who have died. i used to listen to that song and think no way could anyone know so many people who were dead. now when i think about it, i know it's possible. i look back at my life and can see the friends that didn't make it for one reason or another.
when the phone call came from seattle, it was expected. the phone call that would tell me that matt was dead. well it wasn't matt that was dead. but it was kendall who rang me. she called me to tell me that it was blake who was dead. i dismissed it as bullshit. but kendall sadly assured me that it was true. blake and carlton had been driving back from portland when their car left the road and plowed into a tree. they must have been travelling at a decent speed because the car was shorn in two from the impact.
what carlton and blake were doing in portland i didn't know and it didn't matter to me. what mattered was that blake was dead. and charlie would never meet his father.
we flew to seattle for the funeral, charlie and me. i don't think i was prepared for the emotional outpouring that was going on. it was if the whole city was
in mourning. and for all the attention i was paying to it, that may well have been the case. or it might not have been. i was travelling in a fog.
the biggest shock though was when i saw matt. he had lost a soul brother.
kendall told me that when matt found out, he locked himsefl in his den, and played the most earsplitting music she had ever heard. she said it went on for hours. then the silence came. and the keening that told her that matt was totally broken. when she managed to get through the door, she found matt clad in only pyjama bottoms covered in blood. the pages of his notebooks were strewn about the room. the platinum record that zuma had recieved for their second album lay shattered in the grate of the fireplace.
matt was sitting rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around his knees. the doors to the outside patio stood open letting in the winter wind that left matt frozen to the touch.
when we hugged, matt didn't want to let go, so i held him. kendall raised her eyebrows at me as if to emphasise her concern for her husband. she need not have bothered. i could feel his grief in his whole body.
when it was time to fly home, it took all my energy to get on the plane. charlie however took it all in stride. when we were at the funeral home and we went to visit with blake, charlie told me that he had seen a dead body before. i was so shocked i couldn't respond. my son was twelve. when had he seen a dead body? what exactly was it that he got up to when he walked out my front door? i willed blake to wake up. with all my heart i willed it. but he didn't. of course. he was dead. i was alive and charlie was alive. but a little part of me died the day they lowered blake's coffin into the earth.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Down the street you can hear her scream youre a disgrace
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
the weeks following blake's death were a time for me to return to a self loathing haze of drinking. waking up with hangovers and not always in my own bed. as it turns out, it was also a time of revelation.
sometimes i'd wake to find charlie sitting on the edge of my bed holding my hand. he'd ask me to tell him about blake. so i did. when he asked me if i loved blake,and i said i did and probably still do, charlie asked me if i loved him more than james. i told him it was a different kind of love. i don't know whether he understood but he said nothing else about it.
talking about blake with charlie made me deal with his memory and my past - as unflattering as that was sometimes. who am i kidding? it was more than sometimes. i was grateful to charlie for helping me through a period that perhaps i should have been helping him through. and i suppose in a way i was. charlie got to hear about his father. and it surely made an impact on him because he started listening to blake's music. though he was still to show any interest in picking up an instrument, he did write. as i was to find out later, on any scrap of paper he could find. a lot of it done on those envelopes bills come in. you know the ones with the windows. he kept it all in a shoebox under his bed.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
matt wasn't getting any better. he hadn't worked since before blake's death. kendall told me that she couldn't get through to him. and though he tolerated her presence, not even his daughter could break through the wall. lainey mckenna was a couple of months younger than charlie. and was very much ehr father's daughter. man, i know how that goes. though she had her mother's temper, lainey was generally quiet and introspective. she enjoyed her own company, much like her father did. but matt was a brooder. lainey tended to explode. i don't know what possessed kendall to ask for my help. cause lord knows in the past matt and i had been willing participants in our mutual destruction more than once.nevertheless i flew to seattle to see what i could do.
looking at matt made me see exactly how it was i was feeling inside. a part of me was missing and nothing was going to fill it. except maybe some self loathing and gallons of booze. that first night matt and i drowned our sorrows. it didn't help. when he told me that he loved blake, i knew how he felt. was i being selfish in deciding to lose control? you bet i was. but it's how i had coped with every crisis that has occurred throughout my life. and i was doing it this time in a city that felt like a second home to me.
kendall was okay with matt and i spending so much time together, cause she figured we were helping each other through blake's death. and we were. but something else was going on and neither of us felt especially keen to stop it.
when kendall went on the road, she took lainey with her. at least she had the forethought to know that two drunks wouldn't be able to take care of a child. to matt and i it was if our parents had gone away for the weekend and left the kids home alone.
if you wanted the truth about what happened with kendall out of that house. i would have said blake's death was just an excuse. i don't know what matt was looking for and i don't know what i thought would come out of our actions. if i thought anything at all. but decisions were made with out regard for anyone but ourselves. actually now that i think about it, it not that decisions were being made with no thought to the consequences,so much as no decision was being made to stop.
but stop it did. after weeks of drinking ourselves into a stupor, smoking hash and a couple of nights of dropping acid, it all came to a screeching halt. one day, i woke up in the hospital. as best as matt can remember it, i went to the bathroom and smashed my head on the porcelain sink. he can't be sure how i lost my balance, but he found me out cold and in a pool of my own blood. he told me later he thought that i was dead. anyway i was carted off in an ambulance wearing nothing but a pair of matt's pyjama bottoms and a silk kimono. i don't remember any of it. how convenient for me. all i know is that i had a gash in my head that required seven stitches and a massive headache. and just like a child who had misbehaved, i was chastised by kendall and told to stay the hell away from her husband.
that was the last time i was in seattle.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
i was in disgrace when i returned home. kendall had called james and told him what went on, cause she knew i wouldn't tell him if i could get away with it. and she's right. what had gone on in seattle was not something i was especially proud of. the fact that matt was involved made james less forgiving. he didn't ask me what ,if anything, happened between matt and i. and it wasn't information i was going to volunteer. but things had to change. i knew it. and james for the first time gave me an ultimatum. either i got help or he left taking the children with him. i was so sick, i would have agreed to anything. but above all else, i had enough respect for james to believe that what he said, he meant.
four weeks after i got home, we moved down the coast, away from the city. james had rented a house in the same beachside hamlet that my parents took lily and i to when we were young. despite being reminded of my father, it was a place that held fond memories for me.
i was going cold turkey. there was to be no drugs, no alcohol, no caffeine, no anything that could tempt me. james wouldn't even allow any aspirin or codeine in the house for headaches. i started seeing a counsellor and going to group threrapy. i stuck at that for a couple of months before i begged james to let me stay home. surprisingly he relented.
hayley loved being so close to the beach. but we started to lose charlie again. he missed the city and his friends. a couple if times he went awol and i blamed myself. well why wouldn't i. if i had managed to keep my own life in some sort of order, we wouldn't be hiding in this sleepy little burg.
towards the end of the year, james had to fly to melbourne for some convention. it was school holidays and hayley was staying with lily. and charlie went with james. i was alone in the house. on trust. and for the first couple of days i was a saint. two days later, i couldn't remember the first couple of days. when james and charlie got home, i was in the same clothes as when they left. i doubt charlie noticed, buy james sure did. but like the gentleman he is, he waited until charlie was out of the house before he turned on me. he said he was taking charlie up to sydney to see my mother. and that he expected me to make a decision about what it was i wanted out of my life. whether i wanted to spend the rest of it with him and charlie and hayley or whether i wanted to piss it all away.
six days later he turned up without the children. when he asked me what decision i had made, what could i say? i lied. i told him that i wanted him and charlie and hayley. it wasn't really a lie. it was true, i did want my family back. but i also wanted to keep drinking. anyway two days later, hayley came home from lily's and charlie arrived with james.
over the next couple of months, james hardly worked. he was too busy keeping an eye on me and making sure i stayed sober. it was such an unfair burden i was placing on him.
and then i ended up in hospital. but it wasn't because i was drunk or stoned. or cause i'd smashed my head open. it was way more serious than that. in the middle of the night, i woke up in agony. my side hurt like hell and i couldn't even stand up straight. james drove me to the hospital, because even though i was a drama queen at times, he thought it prudent to be on the safe side. he saved my life that night. i didn't know it, but i was pregnant. it certainly wasn't something james or i planned, but it happened. and what had also happened was that the baby had decided that it'd grow in my fallopian tube. which of course doesn't have the capacity to sustain a full term pregnancy. or any pregnancy for that matter. the doctor operated and removed not only the baby, but also my left fallopian tube and ovary. i recovered. maybe i blamed myself. i don't know. but i did come to the decision that something had to change in my life. and it did. since that day, which was nearly two years ago, i've been sober. i've had a lot of help. and it hasn't been easy for anyone. but i've been true to my word and for me that is a whole other deal.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
so here i am, back where we started. i look up and see james walking towards me. he sits down on the sand next to me and takes my hand in his. he tells me that it's time. i take a deep breath and look out at the ocean.
this little seaside burg where my mother thought my father would get his act together did nothing to curb his enthusiasm for drinking. and it was here that it was thought that i could deal with my demons. i was more successful than my father. but it's not a contest. there's a pub on the far headland that we could see from the backdoor. my father would spend a lot of time there. how many times i hoped that he'd go for a midnight swim and just not come, i couldn't tell you. i often wonder if charlie had that wish for me. or himself for that matter.
james stands up and holds his hand out to help me to my feet. he drapes his arm around my shoulder as we head back to the house to collect our son. hayley is at the door waiting for us. she presses her still sticky hand into mine and i manage a smile. as the tears well in my eyes, she squeezes my hand tighter and kisses it.
we stand on the headland looking east towards where we figure chile is across the waves. my mother is there, as is lily and her partner will. as i hold in my hand what remains of my fourteen year old son, a wind whips up, stinging my legs. as i open my hand with the heaviest heart i have ever felt, charlie's ashes are carried away. my son was dead and no amount of soul searching would ever bring him back.
it was almost a year ago that he he first told james he thought about killing himself. they call this suicidal ideation. his therapist said that all we could do was keep a watch on him. oh great. shit, we'd been doing that since he was eleven years old. and get him to talk to us. well that was easier said than done. we learnt early on if charlie didn't want to talk, he wouldn't and no amount of coaxing would help, but he'd never said he wanted to kill himself. in fact he had told me on occasion that he wished me dead. but charlie kill himself? that we never thought would happen. but that's exactly what he did.
last week he went up to sydney to stay with my mother and catch up with friends. or so we thought. the first couple of nights he was fine. or it was an act. we don't know. and now we never will. those trains that fascinated him as a child proved too much of a temptation.
Comments
when the phone call came from seattle, it was expected. the phone call that would tell me that matt was dead. well it wasn't matt that was dead. but it was kendall who rang me. she called me to tell me that it was blake who was dead. i dismissed it as bullshit. but kendall sadly assured me that it was true. blake and carlton had been driving back from portland when their car left the road and plowed into a tree. they must have been travelling at a decent speed because the car was shorn in two from the impact.
what carlton and blake were doing in portland i didn't know and it didn't matter to me. what mattered was that blake was dead. and charlie would never meet his father.
we flew to seattle for the funeral, charlie and me. i don't think i was prepared for the emotional outpouring that was going on. it was if the whole city was
in mourning. and for all the attention i was paying to it, that may well have been the case. or it might not have been. i was travelling in a fog.
the biggest shock though was when i saw matt. he had lost a soul brother.
kendall told me that when matt found out, he locked himsefl in his den, and played the most earsplitting music she had ever heard. she said it went on for hours. then the silence came. and the keening that told her that matt was totally broken. when she managed to get through the door, she found matt clad in only pyjama bottoms covered in blood. the pages of his notebooks were strewn about the room. the platinum record that zuma had recieved for their second album lay shattered in the grate of the fireplace.
matt was sitting rocking back and forth, his arms wrapped around his knees. the doors to the outside patio stood open letting in the winter wind that left matt frozen to the touch.
when we hugged, matt didn't want to let go, so i held him. kendall raised her eyebrows at me as if to emphasise her concern for her husband. she need not have bothered. i could feel his grief in his whole body.
when it was time to fly home, it took all my energy to get on the plane. charlie however took it all in stride. when we were at the funeral home and we went to visit with blake, charlie told me that he had seen a dead body before. i was so shocked i couldn't respond. my son was twelve. when had he seen a dead body? what exactly was it that he got up to when he walked out my front door? i willed blake to wake up. with all my heart i willed it. but he didn't. of course. he was dead. i was alive and charlie was alive. but a little part of me died the day they lowered blake's coffin into the earth.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
sometimes i'd wake to find charlie sitting on the edge of my bed holding my hand. he'd ask me to tell him about blake. so i did. when he asked me if i loved blake,and i said i did and probably still do, charlie asked me if i loved him more than james. i told him it was a different kind of love. i don't know whether he understood but he said nothing else about it.
talking about blake with charlie made me deal with his memory and my past - as unflattering as that was sometimes. who am i kidding? it was more than sometimes. i was grateful to charlie for helping me through a period that perhaps i should have been helping him through. and i suppose in a way i was. charlie got to hear about his father. and it surely made an impact on him because he started listening to blake's music. though he was still to show any interest in picking up an instrument, he did write. as i was to find out later, on any scrap of paper he could find. a lot of it done on those envelopes bills come in. you know the ones with the windows. he kept it all in a shoebox under his bed.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
looking at matt made me see exactly how it was i was feeling inside. a part of me was missing and nothing was going to fill it. except maybe some self loathing and gallons of booze. that first night matt and i drowned our sorrows. it didn't help. when he told me that he loved blake, i knew how he felt. was i being selfish in deciding to lose control? you bet i was. but it's how i had coped with every crisis that has occurred throughout my life. and i was doing it this time in a city that felt like a second home to me.
kendall was okay with matt and i spending so much time together, cause she figured we were helping each other through blake's death. and we were. but something else was going on and neither of us felt especially keen to stop it.
when kendall went on the road, she took lainey with her. at least she had the forethought to know that two drunks wouldn't be able to take care of a child. to matt and i it was if our parents had gone away for the weekend and left the kids home alone.
if you wanted the truth about what happened with kendall out of that house. i would have said blake's death was just an excuse. i don't know what matt was looking for and i don't know what i thought would come out of our actions. if i thought anything at all. but decisions were made with out regard for anyone but ourselves. actually now that i think about it, it not that decisions were being made with no thought to the consequences,so much as no decision was being made to stop.
but stop it did. after weeks of drinking ourselves into a stupor, smoking hash and a couple of nights of dropping acid, it all came to a screeching halt. one day, i woke up in the hospital. as best as matt can remember it, i went to the bathroom and smashed my head on the porcelain sink. he can't be sure how i lost my balance, but he found me out cold and in a pool of my own blood. he told me later he thought that i was dead. anyway i was carted off in an ambulance wearing nothing but a pair of matt's pyjama bottoms and a silk kimono. i don't remember any of it. how convenient for me. all i know is that i had a gash in my head that required seven stitches and a massive headache. and just like a child who had misbehaved, i was chastised by kendall and told to stay the hell away from her husband.
that was the last time i was in seattle.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
four weeks after i got home, we moved down the coast, away from the city. james had rented a house in the same beachside hamlet that my parents took lily and i to when we were young. despite being reminded of my father, it was a place that held fond memories for me.
i was going cold turkey. there was to be no drugs, no alcohol, no caffeine, no anything that could tempt me. james wouldn't even allow any aspirin or codeine in the house for headaches. i started seeing a counsellor and going to group threrapy. i stuck at that for a couple of months before i begged james to let me stay home. surprisingly he relented.
hayley loved being so close to the beach. but we started to lose charlie again. he missed the city and his friends. a couple if times he went awol and i blamed myself. well why wouldn't i. if i had managed to keep my own life in some sort of order, we wouldn't be hiding in this sleepy little burg.
towards the end of the year, james had to fly to melbourne for some convention. it was school holidays and hayley was staying with lily. and charlie went with james. i was alone in the house. on trust. and for the first couple of days i was a saint. two days later, i couldn't remember the first couple of days. when james and charlie got home, i was in the same clothes as when they left. i doubt charlie noticed, buy james sure did. but like the gentleman he is, he waited until charlie was out of the house before he turned on me. he said he was taking charlie up to sydney to see my mother. and that he expected me to make a decision about what it was i wanted out of my life. whether i wanted to spend the rest of it with him and charlie and hayley or whether i wanted to piss it all away.
six days later he turned up without the children. when he asked me what decision i had made, what could i say? i lied. i told him that i wanted him and charlie and hayley. it wasn't really a lie. it was true, i did want my family back. but i also wanted to keep drinking. anyway two days later, hayley came home from lily's and charlie arrived with james.
over the next couple of months, james hardly worked. he was too busy keeping an eye on me and making sure i stayed sober. it was such an unfair burden i was placing on him.
and then i ended up in hospital. but it wasn't because i was drunk or stoned. or cause i'd smashed my head open. it was way more serious than that. in the middle of the night, i woke up in agony. my side hurt like hell and i couldn't even stand up straight. james drove me to the hospital, because even though i was a drama queen at times, he thought it prudent to be on the safe side. he saved my life that night. i didn't know it, but i was pregnant. it certainly wasn't something james or i planned, but it happened. and what had also happened was that the baby had decided that it'd grow in my fallopian tube. which of course doesn't have the capacity to sustain a full term pregnancy. or any pregnancy for that matter. the doctor operated and removed not only the baby, but also my left fallopian tube and ovary. i recovered. maybe i blamed myself. i don't know. but i did come to the decision that something had to change in my life. and it did. since that day, which was nearly two years ago, i've been sober. i've had a lot of help. and it hasn't been easy for anyone. but i've been true to my word and for me that is a whole other deal.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
this little seaside burg where my mother thought my father would get his act together did nothing to curb his enthusiasm for drinking. and it was here that it was thought that i could deal with my demons. i was more successful than my father. but it's not a contest. there's a pub on the far headland that we could see from the backdoor. my father would spend a lot of time there. how many times i hoped that he'd go for a midnight swim and just not come, i couldn't tell you. i often wonder if charlie had that wish for me. or himself for that matter.
james stands up and holds his hand out to help me to my feet. he drapes his arm around my shoulder as we head back to the house to collect our son. hayley is at the door waiting for us. she presses her still sticky hand into mine and i manage a smile. as the tears well in my eyes, she squeezes my hand tighter and kisses it.
we stand on the headland looking east towards where we figure chile is across the waves. my mother is there, as is lily and her partner will. as i hold in my hand what remains of my fourteen year old son, a wind whips up, stinging my legs. as i open my hand with the heaviest heart i have ever felt, charlie's ashes are carried away. my son was dead and no amount of soul searching would ever bring him back.
it was almost a year ago that he he first told james he thought about killing himself. they call this suicidal ideation. his therapist said that all we could do was keep a watch on him. oh great. shit, we'd been doing that since he was eleven years old. and get him to talk to us. well that was easier said than done. we learnt early on if charlie didn't want to talk, he wouldn't and no amount of coaxing would help, but he'd never said he wanted to kill himself. in fact he had told me on occasion that he wished me dead. but charlie kill himself? that we never thought would happen. but that's exactly what he did.
last week he went up to sydney to stay with my mother and catch up with friends. or so we thought. the first couple of nights he was fine. or it was an act. we don't know. and now we never will. those trains that fascinated him as a child proved too much of a temptation.
.............................................finis......................................................
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say