Helpless

I emerged with a coke from the shadows of QV food court into the bright spring sunlight. I don't know how I got this tired and was contemplating lying down on a couch or park bench to sleep. Somehow I manage to call Zaman I'm calling him early this week because his daughter has been in pretty bad shape.

I didn't realise till now, but just how reluctant I was to call him every week the past two months, I just emotionally and selfishly didn't want to deal with the plight of Shafika's fight with cancer. I didn't want to hear the worst.

Today I heard the worst, Zaman was not good, and then he told me 'my daughter is dead...' and I can't really remember the rest, but who cares nothing else matters. I told him I wanted to visit and he told me he was in emergency where his wife had collapsed exhausted from the physical toll watching her daughter fade away must have taken.

As I walked to the hospital I couldn't cry. Couldn't comprehend and strangely even though nothing like this has ever happened to me before I felt like it had happened thousands of times.

I hadn't seen Zaman since the day I visited him in hospital when the first discovered Shafika's cancer, when I bought a 'get well soon' rabbit and learned I should have bought a bigger one, though none can ever be big enough to cure cancer I guess.
He looks terrible, and we are little comfort for eachother, when I tell his wife I'm sorry she starts crying and father and son go to her. Everybody looks and feels terrible, I make what small talk I can desperate for answers to those questions 'were you there with her when she died? was she in pain?' and some I can ask like 'are the others okay? are you getting fed? is anybody looking after you?'

Shafika has been buried and I missed it, which is what I was afraid of, in just four short days and its killing me that I was too scared, too tired, too timid to call more often.

But alas, I am little comfort to the living, Zaman would gladly lose a 1000 of me to keep one daughter, and that's not malace just being a parent. But me they have, and Heather, and David and Florence and their friends and family and eachother and hundreds in the community.

When I leave the claustrophobic darkness of emergency the day is undeniably beautiful outside. It's all surreal and I still can't cry.

Here I have to confess, Shafika is in part stranger to me, in part family. Unlike Zaman's other children I saw little of her due to her ongoing health problems, but what little I saw was her smiling and laughing of her seeing her family recieve their Citizenship papers and when all seemed to finally be righting itself in the world for Zaman's family senseless meaningless cancer comes along and takes her life away.

This is how I'm selfish, and how to the same extent as everyone I'm just another ugly human being, but I am upset for Zaman, I wish this tragedy hadn't happened, in part because Shafika is just a child 19 and just free from the life of a refugee, Zaman's first born and somebody he would die for gladly if it would do any good but it doesn't and so he must watch her die in front of him. This is a large part of my grief, but then there is the ugly part, the part of me that needs Zaman, needs Zaman to be happy and smiling and calling everything beautiful like he did when I just taught him english and it made me feel good about myself. And now I'm no good at all, just useless, just somebody else who feels bad.

Within 3 minutes I am in the park of Atherton Gardens heading to that heart of mine, the sanctuary, the Fitzroy Learning Network where people know Zaman's story and Shafika's and will possibly have the answers to all my questions.
In the park children are laughing, comprised of refugees (relatively) safe and free to be children, and it can't help but warm your heart. I remember Claire remarking that parks are Utopic places, and it's true, if life is worth living it is worth living for days in the park like this. I remeber days in the park like this with Miki, who got angry when I joked about recycling her petname 'pretty cake' that she never forgave me for and her overreaction to seeing a dead magpie and wishing I could react that much now. But I'm subdued and unable to cry.

I walk into the FLN and knock on the door of the office which turns out to be empty. As a volunteer is asking me who I'm looking for Heather walks into the hallway and points at me as I point at her and we both say 'just the person I was looking for' Heather begins the hard task of telling me about Shafika's death and I can at least spare her some sorrow temporarily by informing her I know.

Then we get to sit in the sun of the courtyard and Heather who visited the family every day answers all the questions I can throw at her. Yes they were together, Zaman slept on a cot in Shafika's room every night she was never alone. She died on the saturday from an infection that took over because her immune system was shot, her lungs filling with fluid and her body just shutting down. Her pain was managed although the morphine gave her hallucinations that scared her so they switched to methodone, and then when the pain was too much, morphine again. The most pain was psychological knowing that she was going to die and leave her family behind. The family knew she would die the doctors had told them that the only question was if it would be a couple of months or a couple of years. She had kept that characteristic hospitality of the family making sure heather always had a pillow for her back, even though she was the one dying. The funeral was segregated with the men closest to the grave, but one of the men had words to the Imam and the women were allowed closer. The children were distraught to varying degrees. The community turned out in numbers. Because it was the end of Ramadan the grieving, stress and emotions were amplified by the physical toll of fasting.

She answered one question I didn't ask too, and the answer is that the world is still filled with beautiful people, more than you would ever guess.

I try to stay in the sunlight as I walk back to town. I still can't cry and then for some reason I think of the 'Sending our love down the well' episode of Simpsons, where Bart ends up trapped in the well and laments at all the things he'll never do like smoke a cigarette and shave a dirty word into the back of his head... words that move homer to a furious rage and he digs Bart out. And that gets me finally, except I have no furious rage and I don't know what I could do. Cure cancer? better folks than me are trying, single handedly bring peace to Afghanistan and the greater middle east? Maybe. I got nothing better to do with my life.
But the day is just too beautiful and the tears stop. The truth is, I'm not the bereaved one here. I don't even really understand whats going on. I can't regret meeting Shafika or her life even with all its heartbreak and suffering because she was a beautiful child that got to live and bring joy to her family. Zaman and his family need to grieve for as long as they need and they will never be whole again, they will be scarred but the scars are from healing, from getting better. Not whole, just better.

'Life goes on' is a cliche because it's true. Life is for the living, and it's another beautiful spring day in Melbourne, children are playing and lovers are strolling and dogs are sniffing things to their great intellectual stimulation. That too, I can do nothing about.