An excerpt from the book - Why Am I Ill? - Due to be released this July $5

Memories of Bitterness
Every time we talk she complains and so now when the telephone rings and the caller ID announces it’s her, I breathe out first, prepare myself and then take the call and sometimes, a few seconds before I pick up the ‘phone, I am reminded of something I wrote in the book Kisses Burn and it makes it easier.

She was 10 years old when her father died, he was a postman, there were 4 children and war was imminent. Her mum didn’t know how to tell her that her father had died so she said that daddy had gone to heaven and was never coming back, but she didn’t know what heaven was or where it was so she thought that her daddy had just got up and left. A year went by and she found herself dusting, just another chore she’d taken on, her mum was in the parlour and she thought she’d go and talk to her about daddy.

‘Mum, why did daddy go to heaven?’

There was no response for quite a while and as she went to open her mouth to ask the same question again, as if her mum could sense that this was the case, with her back to her daughter, this is what she said.

‘He went to heaven because he got sick and they couldn’t fix him and so he can’t come back.’

Accepting everything her mum told her, she was just upset at the fact that her daddy couldn’t come home, so she went outside to the front garden where there was an old weathered wooden gate and as she sat on it, kicking her legs in the air, with her weight against the post, it began to swing back and forth. The rhythmic to and fro of the gate swinging stirred emotions in her and she began to beat the duster against the gate. ‘Daddy. Why did you have to go?’ she whispered down to the ground below her. ‘Daddy why did you have to leave us?’ she whispered up to the sky above her. ‘Daddy Why aren’t you here?’ she cried out to the gate. ‘It’s ok daddy! You can come back any time you like. It doesn’t matter that you’re sick, we still love you.’ She delivered through hot tears of pain from being separated from her daddy. And she convulsed with pain and shuddered with pain and twisted her hands with the pain in her heart that was aching to get out and she wailed a deep silent primordial scream that her mother sensed but could not comfort. So she looked on at her daughter, contorted on the garden gate that she’d swung to after sharing a thousand thousand mornings of kisses goodbye and hello with her husband. She looked on at her daughter, rooted to the spot, not knowing how to go to her, the one that she loved the most and a chasm of silence built between them until neither could take it any longer and words were said, that neither meant, but could never forget.

I was 2 years old when her mum died, so I don’t remember my grandmother, but when I asked my mum where my grandmother was, she said this.

‘Shelling peas from their pods in the eternal sunshine of heaven with your grandfather helping and eating the odd few before they’re cooked.’

And so I take the call and listen and agree and love her all I can even though she complains all of the time, even though ...... I just know it’s worth it, ignoring the bitterness from the pain she did not understand that is emotional cake, that she may always have, but deep inside, hate.

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