Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga Read online

  When we did get Kate to the vet, the prognosis was not great. The toe had become infected and would need to be amputated. Jeff called me and delivered the news and without any hesitation I said for him to go ahead. It was going to be a very expensive little procedure, but after five years of raising all these animals, I suppose I had become dedicated to their wellbeing and unlike poor old Barry when we first began, and Brooke’s disturbing fate, leaving Kate’s toe untreated was not an option. We went through the stress of administering her painkillers and antibiotics twice a day by forcefully shoving them down her throat and switched on the heat lamp every night to keep the chicks warm. Wearing our new grey Block Eight uniforms, I’d never felt more like a zookeeper but given half the chance I would have spent all day every day tending to the animals.

  ‘She’s only got three chicks . . . should we keep them all?’

  I’d sworn Tom and Shelley would be the last peafowl we added to our family, but separating Kate from her three just seemed a little cruel and senseless.

  Tom and Shelley, as is a peafowl’s nature, got hold of one of the chicks and traumatised it. Kate knew its fate and ignored it so we brought it inside and I stroked the little warm body until it died in my hands. Though we knew nothing of this bird or its personality, it was still a very sad moment; senseless that one of the birds should attack its brother or sister, just because.

  ‘She only has two babies now . . .’ Jeff said.

  ‘Okay, we’ll keep them,’ I said.

  The next day we discovered that Freddie was sitting on six eggs of her own. Again on hatching day some of the eggs looked to have been cracked and, being a new mother, Freddie abandoned the others and raised only one. It was such a lovely sight watching Freddie and Freddie Junior roam the property, just as Kate and Freddie had done before, and have them come to eat the morning porridge Jeff so dedicatedly provided them.

  When a Father Calls

  In July 2015, Dad called from Gosford Hospital: Mum had been admitted to Emergency. Mum’s lifelong fear of hospitals and the fact that Dad was calling (Dad rarely called) told me the situation was serious. Mum had been experiencing abdominal pain for a few weeks but tests failed to detect the cause. She’d woken that morning in extreme pain, went to her GP and was finally referred for a scan, which had shown a large black mass somewhere near her appendix. I was in the middle of feeding the animals when I took the call and became completely distracted. I knew Mum would loathe being cooped up in a hospital bed and would be petrified of an uncertain diagnosis, filling her mind with horrific worst-case scenarios. I hoped Dad would be able to keep his cool and guide her through this.

  Mum never gets sick. In fact, the only story she ever tells of being ill was back when she was a young mother in the seventies. She’d got my two older brothers ready for school while dealing with a particularly nasty head cold and once they’d left she had zero energy so was forced to climb into bed. Usually an active and demanding toddler, I’d crawled right into bed beside her and quietly lay there against her spine for hours as she slept. We emerged from bed together late in the afternoon, Mum feeling refreshed and able to face the after-school onslaught of my brothers. She tells the story often and I love that she remembers it so fondly.

  More tests in the hospital proved inconclusive. In short, no one was able to tell her why she was in pain, or what the black mass was. It was such a large and obtrusive growth the doctors and specialists couldn’t get a clear view of what was going on. Mum was administered pain relief and it was decided that rather than cut her open for investigative surgery, the safer course of action was to put her on an antibiotic drip. Hopefully this would clear up the mass a little, perhaps even diminish it, and then they’d be able to identify the root cause of her pain. Thankfully the treatment worked and it, coupled with a heavy dose of more medication at home, showed a clearing up of what they now assumed was a significant infection, though not of the appendix. Outwardly, Mum slowly returned to normal but she would later confess that inside she knew things were not quite right.

  It was a few months later that the bleeding began. Mum was referred to her surgeon, the doctor who’d come close to opening her up that July night in Gosford Hospital. He sent her for more tests, an MRI and another scan and I drove down to his surgery to meet Mum and Dad and get the results. Mum was quiet and pale. I overcompensated for her fear by talking too much, making stupid jokes about the world’s ugliest tissue box cover in the waiting room and generally trying to take her mind off things. Finally it was our turn to be seen and once we were seated, the doctor cut to the chase.

  ‘We have identified a small number of malignant cells in your bowel.’

  Tears welled in my father’s eyes, Mum tried her best to be stoic. I focused intensely on what the doctor was saying so I could relay it to my brothers, and remind Mum and Dad of what he’d said once the shock had worn off.

  ‘Our first course of action is to remove that part of your bowel. Whenever these types of cells are present this is our best treatment, a preventative course.’

  ‘Will I need a bag?’ Mum asked barely above a whisper. Thankfully she was told no. A colostomy bag represented ill health, sickness . . . states of being my mother resists at all costs.

  Mum was booked in for her major operation for late October. About one third of her bowel would be removed and though it would result in a long period of considerable digestive problems, it should also mean that malignant cells would never return. The operation was a success and after five days in hospital Mum returned home to continue her recuperation.

  Every year for the past twenty-one years, my mother and I treat ourselves to a fancy meal on Melbourne Cup night. It began in response to my father’s decision to take my eldest brother, Grant, out to the races one year and while their tradition soon fizzled, ours only grew in strength. Our rule is simple: no one else is ever invited except my middle brother, Glen, when he is home from Canada, and we can never visit the same restaurant twice. This night has provided the three of us with a lifetime of funny tales and fond memories.

  One year we decided to take Mum to a drag show at the Albury Hotel, affectionately known around the scene as The All Blurry.

  ‘Well, well, well, what do we have here?’ One of the drag queens asked my mother, mid-act. Not usually one for public attention, my mother stood up fearlessly.

  ‘My name’s Judy!’ she said boldly.

  ‘And what the fuck brings you to a place like this, Judy?’

  ‘I’m here with my two gay sons,’ Mum said proudly. It was the first time I’d ever heard her say those words.

  ‘You lucky fucking mole,’ the drag queen said. ‘They’re never going to love another woman as much as they love you.’

  ‘I know,’ Mum said as she sat down, ‘I know.’

  I’d never seen my mother so bright eyed and in her element but then she had been somewhat of a disco queen in her thirties. Complete strangers came up to her and asked what she was doing there and when she told them her story, many of them cried on her shoulder that their own parents had rejected them, kicked them out of home or never spoken to them again. It was as if Mum had become a celebrity for the night and though she was new to the role; she took to it like a second skin.

  Mum was sworn to secrecy; that evening was never to be mentioned to Dad, it just wasn’t something he’d be all that fond of, to imagine his wife in that sort of environment playing den mother to Sydney’s gay children. Months later, my parents were driving Glen and James to the airport and Mum piped up: ‘Isn’t that the All Blurries?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Have we been there?’ Glen asked.

  And the car fell silent. We could only imagine the thoughts running through Dad’s mind.

  At another Melbourne Cup dinner, Glen told us of his fear that his death would be at the hand of an axe-wielding madman. It was little wonder he worried about it given that during his adolescence Grant hid scary photos of Rasputin beneath Glen�
��s pillow and left Glen’s Western Suburbs Magpies clown hung from his wardrobe pole, knowing full well that Glen checked the wardrobe every single night before sleep (thanks to watching When a Stranger Calls as a young kid). One night he spent the best part of an hour crouched in said wardrobe so when Glen checked it just before turning out the lights Grant burst out with a yell. To this day Grant likes to give his daughters frights and I’ve no idea how his long-suffering wife, Bec, deals with living with a boy-man who loves playing these little games. But then, nothing quite fills me with the same joy as hiding around corners to frighten Jeff.

  With Mum just out of hospital, still in pain and with barely any appetite, she and I decided to delay the dinner until she was better. I teed it up with Dad to surprise her with a home-cooked meal instead on Melbourne Cup night. Dad was out calling bingo so it gave Mum and me a chance to have a proper catch up.

  Over the ensuing weeks Mum got better and aside from gastro problems everything else seemed to return to normal. That she’d sailed through the trauma with hardly any painkillers, zero complaint and no talk of doom was no surprise to any of us. My mother is the backbone of our family and she wasn’t about to let a little thing like the removal of a third of her bowel get her down.

  ‘You’re looking thinner,’ I said to her. ‘Has half your poo shoot been removed or something? I know Cher had a rib taken out to look thinner, wouldn’t that have been easier?’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, Toddy; it hurts too much to laugh.’

  ‘I’d be avoiding mirrors in that case . . .’

  ‘Stop it!’ she said, clutching her stomach.

  We finally celebrated our actual Melbourne Cup dinner at a local Hunter Valley restaurant shortly before my birthday in December.

  ‘Were you scared of dying?’ I asked over the second bottle of wine.

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘But I’m not the type to dramatise things. I had to face the operation, what other choice did I have? Get on with it.’

  But then in May 2016 the bleeding returned. Mum was sent for yet more tests, just like the ones before and we were once more summoned to her surgeon to receive the results.

  ‘Bleeding after an operation like that is completely normal, Mum,’ I’d said to her repeatedly. ‘You’ll see, it’s going to be nothing at all.’

  ‘You have bowel cancer,’ her surgeon said frankly.

  Mum and Dad were both crying. I felt like I’d been smashed into by a road train. It was the worst possible news and a scenario I’d never entertained – not even for a millisecond.

  Just a few months since her operation to remove part of her bowel where cancerous cells had been found, a cancerous growth in the remaining bowel was now visible. Mum would require intensive radiation – every weekday for six weeks.

  Outside the surgery I gave my mother a long hard squeeze.

  ‘We’ll face this together, Mum, you have my full support. This bastard is not going to beat you!’

  I drove them both home and made us all cups of tea.

  ‘You heard the doctor, Mum,’ I said to her concerned face, ‘You’re not going to lose your hair and they have such good medication for nausea now it’s likely you won’t even get sick. It’ll be a walk in the park for someone as strong as you.’

  Dad, who always wore his heart on his sleeve, was not quite so firm in his positive resolve and was already on the phone to my mother’s family sharing the news and crying. I raised my eyebrows at Mum.

  ‘It’s important you stay positive, Mum. And I will be with you every step of the way.’

  I went with Mum to most of her initial appointments and we were both shocked to learn that she would also be undergoing chemotherapy when her surgeon had said it would just be radiation. But the meeting with the oncologist was the worst. While most of Mum’s appointments and treatment had taken place at the new, light, airy and rather lovely Central Coast Cancer Centre (which coincidentally had a painting in the waiting area by our friend Cheryl’s painter ex-husband, making me feel Cheryl’s positivity was with Mum and me every step of the way), that first meeting with the chemo guy was at Wyong Hospital and it was the drabbest, most soul-destroying environment you would never want to see.

  The gravity of the situation slapped my mum hard and on the way out she stopped in reception to pick out two cheap and nasty headscarves. She was crying as we walked to the car.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Jeff asked her. (He also came to most of the initial meetings.)

  ‘Just some scarves, just in case . . .’ Mum tried her best to hide the tears.

  ‘Oh Jude, if you go bald you won’t be wearing some two-dollar op shop scarf, give those to me.’ He took them off my mother and ran to put them back in the basket. I threw my arms around Mum as we waited for Jeff to come back.

  ‘It’s okay to be scared, Mum,’ I whispered in her ear, ‘but you don’t need to be, because you have me.’

  ‘If you go bald, after I slap your head like Benny Hill used to do to his sidekicks, I will be going out to buy you the fanciest scarf I can find. You don’t need to look sick and cheap, Jude,’ Jeff said when he came back.

  We all got the giggles.

  ‘Shame my old boss threw away his toupees,’ he went on, ‘I could have saved them for you.’

  ‘Oh, what about hair in a can, Mum? I hear these days it comes in more colours than just baby shit green and mission brown.’

  ‘Leroy loses a lot of fur too . . . I’ll brush him every night and pop it all in a freezer bag for you.’

  ‘I think you’d look even better than Liz Taylor with a shaved head,’ I offered. ‘But you won’t be gettin’ no diamonds so don’t even think about it.’

  ‘Thanks, you two,’ Mum said wiping away tears that were thankfully now happy ones, ‘I really don’t think I could do this without you.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘You’re the strongest person I know.’

  For six weeks I took Mum to some of her radiation and chemotherapy sessions and Jeff came whenever he could. Those hours with my mother were among the most beautiful we have ever shared, or are ever likely to share again.

  At one of her first treatment sessions, the nurse couldn’t find a vein to insert the chemo needle. She poked and poked, and having never been a fan of needles (or doctors or hospitals or medicine) Mum turned green but never once lost her cool.

  ‘You should be used to that sensation,’ I told her after the nurse had left, ‘Dad’s been sticking pins into a doll resembling you for years.’

  When Nurse Andy came to Mum’s bedside Jeff got all giddy. Andy was tall and muscular with a kind and handsome face. I swear Jeff blushed.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ I said, after Nurse Andy had left.

  ‘What?’ he played dumb.

  ‘My mother is about to get her first bout of chemo and you’re flirting with her nurse?’

  ‘I wonder if he offers sponge baths?’

  ‘Mum! Don’t be crude!’

  And this is how most of our time played out. Waiting hour after hour, answering the same questions about cigarettes and alcohol and family history, surrounded by some very sick people and some very loving and dedicated hospital staff members. And crosswords, lots and lots of crosswords – though clearly the poison in Mum’s system was also taking a few brain cells.

  ‘Thirty-seven down? You can’t get that? It’s obviously “make” and the “d” you had is wrong. It can’t be “made”, you silly old bag because now “kilt” fits in perfectly.’

  I feel honoured and privileged that Mum allowed me to share those moments of intimacy and fear. Yet in our determination to defeat cancer, we also shared some of the biggest belly laughs of our lives. I remained a bastion of positivity and hope while in the presence of my mother but would come home to Jeff and burst into tears, overwhelmed by the sickness surrounding her every day; amazed at her strength.

  Each Monday morning I drove the ninety minutes to Mum’s house to collect her for treatment (‘Morning, my lady
! Ready for another dose of lethal poisons?’) then drove her back to Block Eight for a brief respite of a decent meal, a glass or two of wine, a visit with the animals and a night of talking and laughing before turning around the next day and taking her back to face the music all over again. On one hand the six weeks flew by, on the other it dragged like time had stood still and Mum and I were the only two trying to move forward. Mum’s hair thinned but that public sign of sickness, a bold bald scalp, never came – much to her relief. I would sit looking at her jumper covered in long grey strands and wonder how close she was coming to losing it, a physical sign so innocent yet so menacing and pitiful. Mum pushed through the few days of nausea she experienced and never gave even one split second of complaint. Not even on the days the staff failed to explain things properly, or made her wait for unnecessary hours with me by her side shifting in my seat, got the dates slightly wrong and told her she needed even more radiation than the exact number she’d been counting down with a highlighter pen on her calendar on front of the fridge; not even when thick heavy bruises appeared on her arm from more failed attempts to find her veins, when countless professionals prodded her up the bum, and she nearly shit her pants more times than any person would ever wish on their worst enemy, when she was forced to drive herself to treatment on some days because none of us could get to her in time . . . As I write this now I wipe away heavy tears of pride, pain and unquantifiable love.

  ‘How have you stayed so calm and positive, Mum?’ I asked toward the end of the treatment.

  ‘There are a lot of people a lot worse off than me.’

  Jeff and I took Mum and Dad to their favourite Central Coast restaurant overlooking Terrigal Beach to celebrate the end of her treatment. Then we simply had to wait. Weeks of anxious not-knowing.