LITMIR.BIZ

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disorder.’

      I laughed. ‘You’re making that up,’ I said.

      He turned his computer screen so I could see for myself.

      I sat with the psychologist in a windowless meeting room furnished with brightly coloured lounge chairs. A box of tissues was placed handily on a side table, along with a long glass of chilled water. The psychologist looked to be in her early thirties, pretty, neatly dressed. She took notes as I told her the history of my disease up to now. She asked a few questions about my home life, about my husband and children, about my daily routine. She asked if I was sleeping, eating, exercising, whether I had any fears.

      ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’m frightened of dying.’

      ‘That’s perfectly normal. How do you deal with your fears?’

      ‘I try to think about other things. I read, I watch television, I see friends.’

      ‘Have you ever heard of mindfulness?’

      I had heard of mindfulness. A counsellor visited me in hospital after my brain surgery. She took me through a few of the basic exercises: how to breathe, how to listen to the sounds around me, how to observe my thoughts as they passed.

      ‘I use it sometimes,’ I said.

      ‘It’s good,’ she said, ‘to set aside time every day, to just enjoy the small things, the taste of an apple, the play of sunlight on the water, the smell of the rain.’

      ‘I know,’ I said, feeling a sudden urge to leave the room.

      This was not what I’d come here to listen to. Surely this highly trained bright spark had something more up her professional sleeve than basic relaxation tips I could have picked up online any day of the week. I’ve read that the profession of psychologist is one of the forty or so predicted to disappear in the near future, along with bus driver and hotel receptionist. The research says that people are now more forthcoming about their problems when they’re communicating virtually rather than face to face. Or perhaps it is because people like me expect more of psychologists than they can possibly deliver, some superior wisdom about the mysteries of life and death. It was a good thing I wasn’t paying for my counselling, I thought, or I might have asked for my money back.

      I ran out of things to say. Obviously I wasn’t a particularly challenging patient, my adjustment disorder being mild to non-existent.

      ‘Really I’m just sad,’ I said, trying to wrap up the session. ‘About all the things I’ve lost. I could have had another good ten years. But then, as Sartre says, everybody dies too early or too late.’

      The psychologist nodded. I’m not sure she had heard of Sartre, or rated his opinion on anything. ‘Grief can accumulate,’ she said. ‘Little losses one after the other can mount up. Perhaps that’s something we can talk about next time.’ She closed her notebook to signal that my hour was up.

      ‘You can book your next appointment at reception.’

      ‘Thanks,’ I said, although I had no intention of coming back.

      The psychologist was right about one thing. Losses do mount up. Sometimes, when I’m sitting on the front verandah being mindful, I’ll be distracted by the sight of a couple out on their evening walk. They’ll be heading for the river, which isn’t far from our house. There’s a park down there that runs along the riverbank for a good three or four kilometres. I would walk with my husband along that stretch of the river every morning and evening. It was how we bookended the day. The water is never the same, sometimes calm, sometimes rough, sometimes rushing out to sea, at other times racing in. We might stop to watch a mother duck guide her ducklings to shore, or a cormorant on a fishing expedition. As the evening sky darkens, the fruit bats come streaming across in the hundreds from their rookeries on the far bank to the giant figs on this side. We don’t do that walk anymore. I’m frightened I’ll fall and break something. Nor do I ride my bike along there, another pleasure gone. With envy, I watch the passing cyclists, gliding along the way I used to, pedalling hard when they come to the hill. I even envy drivers. I had to give up driving after my brain surgery, because of the risk that I might have another seizure. How I’d love to pack the car and head off to some deserted beach for a swim. But I weigh less than my neighbour’s retriever. I’d never make it beyond the first break. And so it goes, the endless list of pleasures I can no longer enjoy. Pointless to miss them of course, as that won’t bring them back, but so much sweetness is bound to leave a terrible void when it’s gone. I’m only grateful I tasted so much of it when I had the chance. I have had a blessed life in that way, full of countless delights. When you’re dying, even your unhappiest memories can induce a sort of fondness, as if delight is not confined to the good times, but is woven through your days like a skein of gold thread.

      °

      You do reflect on your past when you’re dying. You look for patterns and turning points and wonder if any of it is significant. You have the urge to relate the story of your life for your children so that you can set the record straight, and so that they can form some idea of where they came from. In recognition of this need, my home-nursing service employs volunteers called biographers, who visit patients, record their stories, then put together a bound copy of the finished product to present to the families of the dying.

      Susan Addison was my biographer. She came every Wednesday for more than three months to listen to my tales of triumph and failure, during which time we became more like friends than volunteer and patient. It was a happy coincidence that we were both interested in books and writing. Susan had a daughter who was a screenwriter in Sydney and knew some of the same people I’d known when I’d lived there and worked in the same job. Having a lot in common, we talked quite freely during our sessions together, and I came to learn almost as much about Susan’s history as she learned about mine. Very early on, for instance, she told me she had lost her only son to brain cancer when he was nineteen, a loss she had written about in her published memoir Mother Lode.

      She lent me a copy and I read it with a mounting sense of humility and respect. For someone like me, who knew so little about death, it was chastening to read this beautiful, unsentimental chronicle of someone who knew so much about it. Soon after her son’s death, Susan had lost a number of other close family members in quick succession, and it had made her something of an expert in grief. But in spite of her losses she had refused to succumb to self-pity. She’d had help, she told me. After some searching around for spiritual solace, she had joined the Quakers and was a regular member at their meetings. It was the silence of the Quaker meetings she liked, she said, preferring it to services where there were sermons and singing. And she had the support of a loving husband, to whom she had been happily married for more than forty years.

      Under the circumstances, Susan’s attentiveness to my ramblings about my own life was flattering. None of my past troubles could compete with the death of a child, not my parents’ messy divorce, or my own romantic flounderings, or my failures and setbacks as a writer. Mine was the privileged tale of someone who had not truly suffered. The fact that I was dying now was sad, but not tragic. I had lived a full life. Susan’s son had died on the brink of manhood. The two deaths didn’t bear comparison. This fact reminded me over and over again that my circumstances were less a cause for sorrow than an opportunity to feel thankful for my unearned good fortune. My two sons were still alive. I would not have to outlive them the way Susan had had to outlive her son. That alone was an immeasurable comfort to me. And I think Susan knew that. I think she understood that she wasn’t just my chronicler, but my guide, my travel adviser to that bitter country she had already traversed a number of times before me.

      And then one Wednesday Susan didn’t turn up. I waited for her to call to say she was running late, but no call came. I heard nothing for a day, until Leanne from the nursing service rang me with the saddest possible news. Susan had suffered a massive stroke and was in hospital.

      ‘It’s not looking good,’ said Leanne. ‘I’m so sorry.’

      ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘I was the one who was supposed to die.’

      ‘I

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