2016: Out with a bang

‘Out with a bang’ was originally published in The Victorian Writer (Writers Victoria, February 2016).

The sun had finally left us. It didn’t seem right for everything to be so bright, so exposed. The night felt more dignified. I don’t know why. But, it seemed she agreed, my Nan that is, because not long after the sun disappeared, so did she. 

It was almost as if she was waiting for the best time, the right tone, the perfect moment. I think she was trying to slip away when we weren’t looking. Trying, as she always did, not to be a burden. 

The day Nan died was a day of gentle winds and warm air. May 10th. Not yet winter but with summer long departed. She was found on the floor by her bed at the first light of morning, not yet gone but going. She only spoke a few more times.  

Mum sat down by Nan’s bed and tried to tell her what was going to happen now, but Nan wouldn’t have it. 

‘Mum, I’m going to call an ambulance. You need to go to the hospital–’ 

‘I’m not going back to that hospital. I’m not going...’ Nan said. Her voice was little more than a croak.

Mum stroked Nan’s hand the same way she would later that night as her mother died. She was quiet for a while before asking Nan the important question. 

‘Do you know what that means?’ Mum said. 

‘I know what it means.’ 

The palliative nurses came to make her comfortable. They hooked her up to a syringe driver that gave her doses of morphine and midazolam that filtered through her body and made her sleep until the end. But, still she listened to our sad goodbyes and breathed in the country air. 

At the time we lived in a century-old farmhouse in Springhurst, Victoria. Nan lived with us for about two years, when the doctor said she was too sick to live alone. A nursing home was not an option, if not for anything else, Nan wouldn’t have been able to take Tommy with her, the true love of her life. 

Tommy was a tabby cat. A beautiful old cat who was dying of cancer just as Nan was dying of emphysema. They needed each other, and to separate them would have been inhumane. There was a lot of talk about who would go first. We promised Nan that if she was the first to go, we would have Tommy put down and make sure he was buried with her. 

Nan nodded. ‘And what if he goes first?’ 

‘Well then,’ said Dad, who never failed to make Nan laugh, ‘you better watch out.’ 

Her tears quickly turned to those of laughter, but her laughter just as quickly turned into a spluttering, choking rattle as she struggled for breath. 

Nan’s illness destroyed her lungs. She needed an oxygen concentrator to breathe. It was a big grey machine, and it did most of the work for her. The concentrator sat in a quiet corner of the house inhaling and exhaling, whirring an almost whimsical vibration of oxygen that swam through plastic tubes and down into Nan’s broken lungs. That noise became a part of our home. You’re never aware of how much a sound comforts you, until it’s just dead air. 

Mum suffered the worst though. She woke up on May 11th, and had forgotten. Forgotten the oxygen machine didn’t have a job anymore, and when she realised it was off she panicked. 

‘Mum–’ Tiffany, my older sister, said. 

‘What are you all doing just standing there? The machine’s off, someone go check on her now...’ and in the most painful half-second it came back to her, and she turned the kettle on instead. 

A while after Nan died we started sorting out her things. We disposed of her medications and returned all the medical equipment: the hospital bed, the oxygen machine and portable bottles, her wheelchair and commode. It was also time to start taking her clothes to the op-shops, and asking family if they wanted anything of hers as a keepsake. I have one of her blouses. It’s a red cotton button-up shirt with pale pink roses on it. One of her favourites. Among her things, in with her socks, we found a rolled up hanky and inside it was a single cigarette. I think she was saving it for one last smoke, and I would have been mad at her but, honestly, I was mostly sad that she never got to smoke it. 

The day Nan died, Tommy settled into his place. He curled himself into a ball at the end of the bed, keeping Nan’s feet warm. He didn’t move from that spot all day. He didn’t move from that spot when the funeral home people came in the middle of the night to take her body. He didn’t move from that spot when Mum made the empty bed. He stayed there all night, and was still curled up there the next day. 

Tommy stopped eating. He lost even more weight from his already bony body and a week or two after Nan died he collapsed in the lounge room and started to lose control of his bodily functions. We had Tommy put down and cremated. Mum had already spoken to the funeral home about burying Tommy with Nan, but they refused, they said it was a ‘health risk’. 

‘She’s dead,’ said Mum, ‘She’s as far from healthy as anyone can be.’ 

They still refused. So, one sunny afternoon, with the permission of the cemetery care taker, (who told us, ‘If anybody asks, you’re burying Great Grandma’s ashes.’) we dug a hole in Nan’s grave and buried Tommy’s ashes with her anyway. 

‘Fuck them,’ said Mum, ‘this is what Nan wanted.’ 

There was more than just Nan’s illness to deal with over those two years. Dying is expensive, and besides having to pay for hospital equipment and medication, oxygen tanks and doctors appointments, we also had to buy truck loads of water. We survived on rain water alone in Springhurst, and during the time Nan lived with us, Australia was experiencing one of the worst droughts on record. The local news caught wind of our situation, a dying woman to care for and too poor to afford water. The very generous Anglicare Organisation in Wangaratta pulled together enough money to pay for a few thousand litres of water for our family. Our struggle caught the attention of the bigger news outlets like the ‘Age’ and the ABC. We sat at home one night watching Peter Mitchell talk about us on Channel 7. I think his words were, ‘A dying woman’s wish for a cup of tea was finally fulfilled...’ Nan really clung to that one. 

Months after that, Nan would sit in bed, watching the footy or ‘Deal or No Deal’ and she would call out to Mum, ‘Jenny, could you make a dying woman a cup of tea,’ her voice falsely strained and weak as she held her hand to her chest. It always got a laugh. 

Her final day is a bit of a blur to me. After speaking to Mum I found out I had spoken to Nan that day. She asked me to watch the film Beaches with her, her favourite movie. I remember watching the film at her bedside; I don’t remember her asking me to. I only remember her sleeping, with her tongue swollen and her mouth hanging open. Her pallid, yellowish complexion that was once pink and rosy. I remember reading Little Women to her, because it was her favourite book. And I remember wanting to write a letter to her while she was still, technically, alive, but I wasn’t quick enough. 

The change came quickly. It was as though a switch flicked off inside her, and she started to shut down. Her breaths became few and far between. She seemed to be pulling at the air, trying to breathe it in but she just wasn’t strong enough. I sat by her side until my sister, Tiffany, burst into the room. She couldn’t speak, she couldn’t see through the tears that were burning her eyes. She thought Nan was dead already, that she’d missed it and would never get to say goodbye. In some ways seeing my big sister so distraught was more painful than watching my Nan die. It was like all the pain Tiffany had held inside her the past two years was seeping out of her every pore. I gave my seat by Nan’s side to her. I put Nan’s hand in her hand and went to stand at the end of the bed. I gave Tommy a pet, to which he was completely unresponsive, and I wrapped my hands around Nan’s blanketed ankles. 

Someone had turned on ‘The Rose’ by Bette Midler. It was Nan’s favourite song. Bette’s voice drowned out the sounds of crying, and my Mum’s gentle reassurance to Nan that everything would be okay. It became all I could hear, and to this day the first note of that song brings me to tears. 

Nan’s death wasn’t an awful fight for life. After a while she just stopped breathing, after a while she was gone and she would never have to struggle for air again. 

She was buried in the clothes she was supposed to wear to Tiffany’s Deb ball. Her casket was double the weight it should have been because we all sent her away with gifts and essentials. A can of VB, a pack of cigarettes, a strawberry scented teddy bear that I gave her when she moved in, her favourite broach given to her by my sister and a lot more. The funeral was held in the Wangaratta Cathedral, the biggest church in the town and it was overflowing with mourners. Some people had to stand outside it was so full. 

Rain came down in a torrent as we filed out of the church, Nan was being put into the back of the hearse and the pallbearers were drowning in water. As the guests scattered and ran for the safety of their cars, the hearse started up and there was loud CRACK. The hearse had back fired, and we had to laugh because Nan always said she wanted to go out with a bang. 

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