I look up Natalie’s address and decide to pay her a visit. She doesn’t know I am in Melbourne and I don’t know what to expect. It’s almost been eight years since we last met which was also the only time we saw each other for a day during our trip to Singapore.
The address is in Port Phillip Bay, a suburb in the outskirts of Melbourne City very close to the ocean. I know she loves the ocean so this makes a lot of sense. I am hoping she still lives there. The internet is a beautiful thing. You find all that you need and then some more.
It’s almost 5.00 PM in the evening when I can get out of the office. I take the city tram to head south. The tram is loaded with people trying to get back home. Everyone wants to shave off that last second to reach home a bit earlier, earlier than usual to do the same mundane things that people do. Cook, lounge by the sofa, watch TV, pamper their dogs or fight with their spouses.
I reach the address and walk towards the area. It’s a leafy suburb with a lot of people walking around in the evening. I knock on the door. A lady opens it. She is around 50 but she has an aura about her. Something about her that makes you want to stop dead in your tracks and stare, without intending to do so.
She is wearing a red top and old faded jeans. Her hair is up and in a ponytail behind her head. “I’ve just oiled it.”, she said later…She has just got back from work only fifteen minutes ago. She is obviously not expecting me at this time. I apologize for the intrusion and introduce myself.
I am not sure how to do that either. I met your daughter eight years ago on a flight out from San Francisco or that she left without giving me her number or her address. I start to shuffle in my pocket to bring out an old photo that we took at the bay. It’s my only memory of her. The picture is old and shows the wear and tear of time. Folds and creases all over but the bright smile still stands out.
As soon as she sees that picture, she recognizes me, and her expression changes from quizzical to sheer warmth. She holds out her arms and envelops me.
“Z! You are Z from Singapore. You finally showed up!”
It’s my turn to be surprised.
“I am Christine,” she says as we head inside her cottage. It’s a small place but tastefully done.
There is a small glass table in one corner, a statue of Buddha with a small stone waterfall on the other. There’s a candle glowing in one corner. It’s getting dark outside.
“Natalie told me all about you. She couldn’t stop talking. Come sit”, she gestures towards the sofa facing the kitchen garden on the outside.
She serves some refreshments quietly and we talk some more about when I came to Melbourne and the places that I plan to go to this weekend. She talks about everything but Natalie or how she is and what she was doing.
The question that I came to get an answer for still lingers, like a 400-pound gorilla. How do you ask a mother if her daughter is still alive? I look around for clues and am not paying attention to what she is talking about. The conversion lingers.
“Come, I’ll take you up to show you her room”, she abruptly gets up.
I follow her down the hall into the narrow passageway and up the wooden stairs. The house is immaculate but you could see the lack of maintenance, the lack of a man around the house tinkering with tools, fixing things.
The room is a small attic. It’s spare and clean. The bed is made with a green bed sheet that falls over the side. It is clean, and the open window brings in the sunlight and air. There is a battery-powered cuckoo clock on one wall and a small photo frame of Natalie with a younger girl smiling brightly by the bedside. Her sister looks identical to her except more innocent, almost naïve.
She is standing behind me at the doorway and I have my back faced to her. I dare not turn back.
“When did it happen?” I ask.
“December 26. The same year you met.”
I am afraid to turn behind. It all comes back with a force that’s completely unexpected. I didn’t think it would matter much after all these years but it still does. I am not sure why. It was just a meeting for a single day., I tell myself. Some people have this way of leaving an impact on you long after they are gone.
It’s getting dark outside and she asks me to stay.
“Not many people come to visit me. Come sit, I will make dinner” she says with a smile.
While she is cooking, I offer to make her iced coffee, and she comes back into the kitchen with me. As I put the milk in the glasses, she sits on the kitchen counter, her legs dangling over the edge. I’ve had guests invite me to their apartment before, but nobody has done that. It is an informal, spontaneous gesture.
“Was it painful …..in the end ….for her?”, I am not sure I want to know but I ask anyway.
“They had her on the tube for a month but she was still smiling at times. I used to go visit her every day. She liked it when I sat next to her and told her stories about her childhood.”
She suddenly stops and turns around.
“She really liked you, you know that?”
I continue to do what I am doing, not sure how to respond to that.
“She wanted to tell you everything about her illness but she was afraid that you would dislike her, treat her like everyone else treated her, with pity, like a delicate porcelain doll, almost contagious.
I understand. For a change, she knew someone as she was before, beautiful carefree without all the preconceived notions. It was a gift.
She continues to cook. Her work is quick and precise. There is no wasted movement. I stand by and listen to her.
“Natalie was particular about a lot of things. When she was small, she needed to know everyone’s birthday so she would be able to pre-plan and make them a little goodie bag. She had to make sure that all of her toys were all in place and made weekly rounds to do so. What she needed to know the most was how long until the next visit to Dr. Steven”.
“There’s a reason Z …as to why this prison is the worst hell on earth. It’s hope. For the longest time, I thought she would get well. That a miracle would happen, that my little girl would be ok.”
She turns around to cut some salad and I start to get a faint idea of how she relives this grief day in and day out.
We have our dinner and talk late into the night. It’s almost 12 when I get up to go to sleep. Somewhere in between, she has convinced me to stay the night. The house is decently sized and there are enough rooms. The last train back to Melbourne city has long gone.
She comes by with blankets and takes care of me like her own child patting my head. She sits by the bed just like my own mother would and we talk about Natalie and how she always brought people into her fold, into her circle even at the consequence of getting hurt by it all.
I have never had the courage or the will to do that. I guard myself with a genuine fervor of someone who has always lived life on two different fronts — The faceless outside that cares less about anything and the more caring deeper realms of the inside.
I drift off to sleep and I dream of dreams that I cannot remember, yet each one of it is vivid in itself.
In the morning, I get up to the smell of her making breakfast. It’s a dinner-sized omelet with pancakes. In between, sips of coffee she looks up to glance at the sunrise behind me through the French window.
“Would you like to visit her grave? It’s not too far from here. She wanted it unmarked so it would be hard for you to locate it. I can take you there if you like”, she hesitates for just a bit and then asks.
“Yes. I would like to…” I start to say but don’t find the right words to complete the sentence, so I just nod.
We take her car to drive there. The area is beautiful and covered with greenery. Birds are chirping among the trees and it’s a beautiful day. It’s a Saturday and there is nobody around this early in the morning.
There’s still some dew on the leaves as we walk through the range of graves, some elaborate and wordy, some just a decrepit resemblance of mud and stone. The graves have become a symbol of our wealth and status long after we will be gone. I wonder how much of it has to do with the ego of the loved ones who created these graves. The ones who passed away probably don’t care anymore.
I remember an incident when I was traveling with a highly accomplished Buddhist lama and his assistant. We were driving through the road in San Francisco that faced a large-sized cemetery and the assistant had pointed out.
“Rinpoche, look how clean and well kept their places of the dead are”
It almost looked like Lama Kham had ignored his statement as his eyes were closed and he was mumbling a prayer. He opened his eyes, looked at the large houses on the other side of the road, and exclaimed with some amusement — “Yes. Even the places of the living dead are well kept”
We walk along the stone path with her just ahead of me. She points out a small grave in the corner.
She waits up for a minute and we both hesitate.
“I’ll be in the car,” she says as she starts to walk back without waiting for an answer. She has a sense that maybe I would like to be alone, even if just for a bit.
I step on a particular square of cement on the path towards the grave and look up and see a tree springing up. It’s just a slab of stone, unmarked with some old flowers on it. There is a large tree that shades it and a layer of leaves have fallen. The terrain is littered with memory mines.
I remember the laughter, the little things that amused her, the things that annoyed her. Life was lived in a heightened sense when I was around her and I get that same sense even when she is laying down now.
She had asked me to stay back for a night, to spend some time with her and I had refused. I wish I could turn back time even if just for a bit.
Instead, I sit by the stone under the shade of the tree.
After all these years, I thought had made peace with her memories but most of it, with myself. In that moment sitting on the rock looking at that dust lined grave the false sense of calm is shattered and before I know my vision clouds over.
I know what’s coming and I fight it, needlessly so. Men don’t weep, especially not over someone who they met 8 years ago for less than 24 hours.
It’s a futile attempt and I finally give up on it. The leaves continue to blow in the wind, the earth continues to revolve. Life in its own momentum never stops for any of us.
After a while, I stand up and head closer to the stone, sweeping away the dust with my hand, slowly but deliberately, a mark of respect but even more a sense of affection for her, from years past. In a world surrounded by a lot of darkness and grief, she had made me smile, even if for a bit. She would always be special.
As I walk back to the car where Christine is waiting, I am light. It’s as if I have left behind a part of myself.
Dust to dust, they say.
Someday we will meet again, my friend.
Just not yet….
