Chapter 1: What has gone before...

Reboot

December 1998 – January 1999

Reboot your life. Start afresh. Simplify. Remove anything that will remind you of what you’ve lost. It will take time, at least twelve months, but gradually, you will recover. You will never get over the loss, not completely, but after a while, the thoughts of Lisa won’t be the dominant things in your mind. A new place to live, without all your old habits, the old environment. You don’t want things that will be a constant reminder of her.

I was sceptical, but Margaret had always given me sound advice before; she had helped me get through some previous tough times. This time, it felt worse, much, much worse, but, then again, what did I have to lose? Only my sanity if things didn’t work out.

So, a few weeks after selling Banksia Lodge and moving into Garry and Kate’s apartment while they were overseas, I was starting to notice some small changes. I no longer work up lathered in sweat from nightmares about Lisa’s drowning, I could start to look back at the good times we shared, and smile – not burst into tears. A big part was my close friends, Fiona, Allison, Michelle, Mary Beth, Alexa, Chris, and Paul Ramos. Garry, of course, except he was on the other side of the world, but we kept in close contact via emails.

At least I still had my good, close friends, friends that I had worked hard at being close to, ever since the first set of tragedies in my life, in the early 1980’s. Garry – he had been a friend since our first days in kindergarten, we had stuck together, through my failed romances, his breakups, our changes in careers. The timing worked out well; he and his second wife (it would be too unkind to say ‘current wife’) Kate had decided to spend quite a few months back in the UK, he would get a chance to meet her family in Shropshire; I offered to ‘flat sit’ for them, living in their apartment in Neutral Bay.

The apartment was small, basic, but had all the facilities I needed; from the balcony there were views of Sydney Harbour through the trees and other buildings. It was a block down from Military Road, so I could either take any of the buses from there into Wynyard to get to work, but I invariably started each day at the company office at St Leonards; there were regular buses from where I was to St Leonards. After an hour catching up with projects there, I walked the few minutes to the St Leonards station, took a train to Wynyard, and then walked to the State Office Block to the Y2K project.

At the end of the day, I would take the short walk down to Circular Quay and catch a ferry to the Neutral Bay wharf. If I felt too tired in the evening to walk up the hill from the wharf to the apartment, there were regular buses. I felt it was important to keep up the exercise; particularly as I wasn’t sailing, I didn’t want to get out of condition. Besides, there was always something interesting to see in the walk up from the harbour.

Evenings, there were at least twenty decent restaurants and cafés within a few minutes from home, or I would cook something. I preferred eating out, not because I was too lazy to cook, but I enjoyed having another person to talk with and other people to see once I left work. After dinner, I would spend an hour or two playing the piano or guitar; this was the perfect opportunity to get back into some serious music practice or work on tunes that I had been trying to write for some time. I would use headphones so as not to disturb the neighbours; apartment living was quite different to the large block of my previous house with its sound-proofed studio. That wouldn’t help when I sang along with my playing, but in consideration of people in the apartments around me, I kept the volume low, no amplifying my voice, and never played after 9:00 p.m.

There was time to catch up on reading, it had been a long time since I had read novels for the simple pleasure of enjoying the story. There was little on the TV that took my interest, the temptation to sit mindlessly watching the boob tube and drinking was a little too strong. Far better to keep my mind active, music and books became my ‘addiction’. I also got back to attending church on a regular basis; while I had gone to St Michael’s Roman Catholic Church while I lived at Lane Cove with Lisa and Fiona, I never felt truly comfortable with the Catholic doctrine. Besides, that was the Church that I attended with Lisa, it was all part of the ‘old life’ that I was trying to rid myself of. There was a Church of England church not far from the apartment, St Augustine’s which I attended each Sunday morning.

I made sure I kept a regular set of appointments with my friends; of course, I worked every day with Michelle, more than ever she was my irreplaceable right hand. I had no idea how I would have kept my sanity and stayed alive without her being there for me. She was the one who kept on top of projects, made sure I knew what meetings I had, what reports were due, and prevented things from falling into a huge pile of shit. More than that, it was Michelle who really loved me (and I loved her), she stayed by my bedside during the night when I was in hospital recovering from being shot in the leg, calmed me when the opioid painkillers gave me terrible nightmares. In the first few weeks of living by myself, she would call me, or have me call her each morning when I woke up and each evening before I went to sleep. That sounds crazy, given that in the morning, she would see me at our office before we caught the train into the city, and we worked close to each other all day. But there was something reassuring in knowing that someone was sufficiently concerned about my well-being to make sure everything was fine at the start and end of each day.

I spent time with Mary Beth almost every morning in the office, as she and Chris stayed in one of the studio apartments in the office building during the week. I had made her CEO of ‘WTM Consulting’ some time ago, since I knew I would be involved almost full time on the Y2K project for the NSW State Government. She was probably the best person possible to manage the company, she kept her fingers on the pulse of company finances, she had a gut feel for what sounded like a good business decision, and what was too risky to be worth chasing. I felt that she was the primary reason that the company had been so successful and had grown from a few people working in my house to almost a hundred people across two locations. She would still run ideas and plans past me to get my thoughts and views, but the strategic direction was all her responsibility. The other senior staff – David, Garry, Michelle, Linda – all had significant input into running things, but the buck started, and stopped, with Mary Beth.

Likewise, once a week Fiona and I would have lunch, somewhere around Pyrmont or Darling Harbour. She seemed happy in her new life, like me, she also missed Lisa deeply but was also moving on; I’m sure being in her new apartment with Jeff and her baby, Dennis, certainly helped her cope. She had taken Lisa’s death particularly hard; of all the lovers that Lisa and I had taken, Fiona was the one closest to Lisa; there had always been a special bond between them. Except for the two years that Fiona was overseas getting her post-graduate degree, the three of us had been almost inseparable. I felt that Lisa loved Fiona almost as much as she had loved me, and for Fiona ... well, she was devastated when we heard about Lisa’s death.

Fridays I still maintained my regular lunchtime appointment / consulting time with Alexa, but she knew that I needed time to recover, and our meetings were strictly ‘professional’, not like they had been in times past. Friday nights Allison and I would have dinner together, one week up on the Peninsula, close to where she was still living and working, the alternate weeks at one of the dining places near me. She and Sandra were going through (another) rough patch, she resented how Sandra wouldn’t allow their relationship to be ‘public’, she felt that Sandra was somehow ashamed of her. Our meals together, our conversations were just as therapeutic for her as they were for me.

Monday mornings – at least during the sailing season – I would check the sailing results for the Avalon Sailing Club in the Sydney Morning Herald to see how ‘ktv@sea’ was doing. Not surprisingly, Ross, Peter and Ritchie would have a first, or maybe a second place, they were doing very well on the ex- ‘Young Lovers’, I realized that my decision to sell the boat to them was the right one.

I could have easily fallen into a deep pit of depression; raging at the turn of fate that took Lisa from me. If I had never caught the mumps when I was fourteen, I wouldn’t have become sterile, and we would have been able to have the children we had planned. There would have been no need for me to ‘set her free’, as I termed it, she would have been able to have the children she so badly wanted with me, and not felt the need to leave, and seek a new life in Brisbane. Then, she wouldn’t have been caught in that flood ... But I digress, there’s no point in going over all the ‘what if’ possibilities in my head. It is what it is, as Margaret told me; I can either give in to my grief, or make a fresh start, and get on with my life.

Of course, I was still in daily contact with Michelle; she was my rock at work, just as she always had been since I started as a tutor at UNSW. When I left the University to start my own consulting company, she never had a second thought about leaving her job and working with me as my main project manager / personal assistant. While I had picked up some good organizational skills from various people – Cathy, Lori, Mary Beth – it was Michelle that had kept my mind focussed on the company, keeping track of paperwork, invoices, payments – particularly tax payments. There had always, right from when we first met, always been some strong sexual attraction between us, which with one exception, we had worked hard at putting behind us. Every so often one of us might suggest we get together for a night, but the other would remind us of how that ended in a huge disaster the first time. I felt having a level of sexual tension between us worked well; we never let things get too serious, but if I had to sum up our daily interactions, ‘fun and flirty’ would be the phrase.

When I sold the house, the others who were sharing it with me had to move; for Mary Beth and Chris, the timing worked out perfectly; her parents were thinking of selling their place at Newport; moving up to the north coast to Coffs Harbour and retiring. They bought the house from her parents; and were now quite happy up there.

Living where I was, I really didn’t need a car, even though I had bought Garry’s old Suzuki Sierra four-wheel drive, it rarely left the garage. It was a short walk from the bus stop into the city; it was just up the street on Military Road; or I could take another bus down to the ferry wharf at Cremorne point. There were grocery shops, restaurants, and cafes within walking distance, and on the weekends, I would generally stay in the apartment, play some music, and sing to myself. The only time I would drive is if I was going up to Mona Vale to see my parents, or to visit Allison in Newport.

Strange as it might seem, the hardest thing to adapt to was living alone; I had never lived by myself. I went from living at home with my family, to living with Lori and then Megan moved in. At the end of 1976, I moved to Gresham Terrace, where we had a multitude sharing the three adjacent terraces, then it was to Banksia Lodge. There were always lots of other people living there, not just Lisa and Fiona living with me. The first few nights the silence in the apartment was unnerving; there were the noises outside or from other apartments, it wasn’t that far from the busy Military Road – but there was no one else in the apartment with me. I started turning on the radio – tuned to ABC Classic FM, just so there were some sounds in the apartment, and every so often, the voice of the announcer. It wasn’t turned up loud, I could still sleep with the music on, but it was somewhat comforting.

Allison’s Changes

February 1999

By the time summer was over I was pretty much settled into my new routine. I was still seeing Doctor Sleigh every week, but she suggested we reduce the visits to every three weeks, unless I felt that I was regressing. All in all, I was now feeling that I was back in a ‘good place’. I no longer cried myself to sleep at night, I could look at photos of Lisa and myself without falling apart. There were still some things that I didn’t feel completely ready for; I didn’t think I would be able to resume sailing, not only were there memories of Lisa, but also Lori, going back much further. Career wise, ‘WTM Consulting’ was still doing very well, the Y2K impact contract we had got with the NSW State Government was well on track, proving to be quite profitable. Of course, I was still technically on a long-term sabbatical from the University, I was still ‘Professor Morris’, and I could be called upon to give lectures to the computer science students. I was still on the course advisory committee for the School – now the School of Computer Science and Engineering. I guess that at some stage, they would ask me to return to the academic staff, but while Professor Hiller was still Head of School, I couldn’t imagine him being all that happy with my return.

“Hey, Will, can we make our dinner this Friday somewhere near your place?” Allison asked me. “I’ve got something important that I really need to talk to you about.”

I suggested we go to the Thai restaurant just down Military Road from my place, and we agreed on a time to meet on Friday. I could walk the short distance to the restaurant from my apartment, while Allison could park her car somewhere close to it, since she would be driving directly from work.

“Great to see you, Will,” she said, as we met outside the restaurant. “I’ve got some good news, and some bad news.”

“That sounds like the lead in for some corny joke,” I replied. “How about the bad news first, so we end on a positive note?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We were shown to a table, and we ordered our food.

“Well, bad news first,” Allison said. “Sandra and I have broken up.”

“What? You’re kidding me, right?”

She shook her head.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. “What happened?”

“She decided that she really wanted to be with a guy,” Allison said. “I don’t know if you remember Simon Corben, from high school, he was two years ahead of us. Peter Corben’s older brother.”

“His name rings a bell; Peter, of course, I remember him.”

“Well, she left me for him, saying ‘she felt the urge to become a mother’.”

“Where have I heard something like that before?” I said. “I am so sorry for you, Allison, there’s no real way you can respond to Sandra’s concerns, is there.”

I reached my hands out to hold hers, and I gave them a squeeze.

“I am really so sorry, Allison. When did that happen, and what are you going to do?”

“It happened over the weekend; I’ve moved into a spare room with Mary Beth and Chris temporarily, but that brings me to the good news. I’ve got a new job, a big promotion; I am the pharmacy director for the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital groups, not just RPA, but King George the Fifth, too. So, I’m going to look for a place to live close to the city. I called Chris Ramos, I know they’ve got some places around Balmain / Rozelle, and I’m looking at a place tomorrow morning. Would you be interested in coming with me to look at the place?”

“Sure, do you want to pick me up on your way through? What time?”

“Is 8:30 too early for you? I’m meeting Chris at 9:00 at the house, so...”

“That will work. Now, tell me about the new job.”

Her job was a substantial promotion for her, she would be managing a large pharmacy department at the Royal Prince Albert hospital, which was attached to Sydney University, and include the King George V hospital, and several specialist clinics on the University grounds (including the Melanoma Clinic where Traci worked). I was pleased for her; she had certainly had worked hard for it. It was sad that Sandra had left her, but I felt that the two of them had been going through a sequence of rough patches. She told me that she would be starting there in just over two weeks’ time, on February 18. With luck she would be able to find a place to rent and be moved in there before she had to start the new job. The meal was good, as it usually was, and when we had finished the meal, I asked Allison if she wanted to come back to my apartment for coffee.

“Just coffee, I’m not suggesting anything,” I said. “Now is not the time for both of us to rush into anything.”

We walked down Military Road to where she had parked her car, then drove the short distance to my apartment. She parked in one of the visitors’ spaces, then it was up the elevator and into the apartment.

“This looks nice how you’ve got things set out,” she said.

“Well, it’s pretty small, but it’s all I need. Coffee?”

I went into the kitchen, turned on the electric kettle, and put some scoops of coffee in the plunger. While the water was heating, I put a CD on the stereo – it was the first ‘Triplex’ album.

“Now this is good music,” she said, laughing. “I think I know that lead singer well!”

“And I’ve slept with the backup singer, too!”

“Do you remember that first time ... you took me to the Hilton, and we ended up as the subject of some trashy gossip column?” Allison said.

“That was a lifetime ago, Alli,” I said. “So much has changed, we were young, idealistic, the world was at our feet.”

“Yes, I was expecting to spend the rest of my life with Jillian, you were with Lori and Megan. I wonder sometimes how we’ve managed to get through all our heartbreak. Sorry, I shouldn’t be bringing up sad memories, not with you trying to get through your latest...”

“And you have some new heartache, too,” I said. “I know how hard it is to get through the end of a relationship, when someone leaves you. You know I’m always here for you. You should call Doctor Sleigh, make an appointment to see here. I’ve found her advice and counsel has always been so good.”

“Who was it that referred you to her?” she asked. “I’ve already made an appointment for Monday, I gave her a brief outline of what has happened, and we will have a good discussion then.”

When we had finished our coffees, Allison said she would get home, since she had to be up early to pick me up to go and inspect some houses. I kissed her as she was leaving and told her I would be ready and waiting at 8:30 for her.

Allison arrived about 15 minutes early, not that it was a problem, I was up and ready for her. I asked her where we were going, where the house was, and she handed me a printed flyer. It was for the new mixed development that the Ramos Brothers were working on in Lilyfield, my investment company, Sedgebrook Investments had put several hundred thousand into that.

“I know those places,” I said to her, explaining how I was one of the investors.

“So, would you be my landlord? Maybe I can offer something in lieu of rent?”

“It doesn’t work that way! I am just one of the investors in the property development company, ‘Inner West Developments’, that Chris and Philip Ramos own. That company contracted their building company to build the town houses, and another company, ‘Bitola Property Management’ are the property managers. There’s a whole web of companies involved all I did was provide some capital to kick off the development. From what I understand, each town house is rather nice, three bedrooms over three levels, off-street parking in a garage accessible from the real lane.”

“So, you could park in my rear entrance?” she said, suggestively.

“Well, there’s that too,” I said. “I didn’t think you were into that!”

“No, I’m not. Not to say that at some stage it might be fun to try, but there’s been no man in my front entrance for many years...”

“Well, the time might come to remedy that,” I said. “If and when we feel the time is right. But back to the townhouse, the only real downside to them is they aren’t close to any shops; you either must go up to Balmain Road and almost all the way to Parramatta road in Leichardt, or to Victoria Road near Balmain.”

“Not all that different from where I was living in Bilgola Plateau,” she replied. “I would have to shop in Mona Vale, there were a few places in Newport or Avalon, but nothing within walking distance. Now, can you give me directions, it’s in Justin Street, just off Lilyfield Road.”

“Okay, take a left just up here, opposite the old power station,” I said. “It’s maybe six hundred metres down Lilyfield Road...”

She turned where I had indicated, and we continued down Lilyfield Road. I recalled seeing the construction site, a few months back, and it was a few intersections up ahead.

“Turn right here into Justin Street, and this is it, just on the right.”

She parked out the front, and we got out of her car, Chris was waiting for us outside the front door. He was surprised to see me, but I told him that Allison had asked me to come along.

“She didn’t know that I was one of the investors in the property,” I said. “They look good from the street, now everything is finished.”

“Yeah, these first three places are ready to rent, we are just finishing off inside the others, they will be done by the end of the month, all going well,” Chris said. “Come on inside, Allison, I’ll show you around. You too, Will, you should have a good look at what you’ve invested in!”

I was impressed with the town house, it wasn’t all that large, maybe 120 square metres, but the kitchen, dining and living rooms were all a good size, on the ground floor. Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a reasonable bathroom on the first floor, and the master bedroom, ensuite and a nice balcony on the second floor. My initial thoughts were that the apartment was a bit short on closet space, but there wasn’t much opportunity to make them larger, given the footprint of the building. There was a two-car garage at the back, which was useful. As I expected from the Ramos brothers’ work, the finish was of a high standard, the place wasn’t opulent by any means, but the fittings and finish were of a good quality. Nice carpeting in the bedrooms, good curtains, the light fittings were certainly not budget quality.

“I like the place,” Allison said. “How soon is it available to move in?”

“Right now,” Chris said. “Well, as soon as the lease paperwork is completed. For you, since you’re a good friend of Will’s, and I know you as well, we can forgo the usual reference checks and all that crap, plus the deposit, it’s not like you’re likely to run off owing a shitload of rent or having trashed the place. How would next weekend work for you, Allison?”

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “And thanks for skipping the bond, not that it’s a problem for me, but, there’s a lot of stuff to organize at the moment.”

Chris produced the lease document, Allison read through it, and signed it. Just like that, she had a place of her own. He would arrange for me to pick up the keys from Alex’s office during the week, and Allison asked if she felt the others from the band would be able to help move her furniture next Saturday.

“I still have the trailer,” I said. “It’s at the storage unit, but we will need someone else to drive, my car won’t tow it.”

“I’ll give Paul Winters a call, see if he and Phil can help, maybe Bruce, Stewie, Andrew can add some muscle. I’ll have to see about getting some packing boxes, bubble wrap, paper sheets. I guess that storage place at Warriewood sells them?”

“They do, but I got stuff from K-Mart, all those clear plastic big storage tubs, they weren’t all that expensive. They are more durable than cardboard boxes, too.”

Allison made one more walk around the townhouse; Chris had provided a set of floor plans which would allow her to work out what items of furniture would fit in, and sizes for other things she might need. With everything done, she drove me back home, she said she had a lot of packing to start. I told her I would be available next weekend to help her move in.

First thing next Saturday morning I met Phil at the storage unit and helped him to get the trailer connected to his car, then we drove to Mary Beth and Chris’s place to meet with the others, and Allison. We had the trailer loaded by mid-morning and started unloading the furniture into her townhouse at Lilyfield just before lunchtime. With all of us helping it didn’t take long to get things unloaded and everything put away in her new place. I enjoyed being with the others from the band, it had been a few months since I had caught up with some of them. I was starting to miss the regular practice sessions with them; of course, we no longer had any suitable studio facilities where we could do that. That was one of the things that we hadn’t really resolved with me selling ‘Banksia Lodge’; my justification at the time was playing with the Roberttones brought back memories of being with Lisa, since she would often manage the mixer desk or the lighting with Mary Beth and Chris.

With Allison now living at Lilyfield, and working at Camperdown, I wouldn’t be having dinner with her up around Newport every second week. We would have to work out where a suitable place near her to meet would be, there were plenty of places around Leichardt, Balmain, Annandale, and Glebe where we could have dinner.

GriefShare

February 1999

Margaret had given me details of the next ‘GriefShare’ counselling session; it was at the “C3 Pentecostal Church” at Oxford Falls. While that would not have been my choice for a church to go to, it was the only session in this first half of the year in this part of Sydney. She gave me the names of the two coordinators, Jack Yocum and Susan West, I called Jack, told him about my background, how I had lost my wife when she had drowned in the Brisbane floods last year, and how my counsellor had recommended the group sessions. He suggested that I come over and speak with him and the other group leader before the first session, where I could get the workbook and he would explain how the course worked. The next afternoon I headed across to the Church, it was the first time I had driven down the Wakehurst Parkway for many years, but rather than take the Parkway from the ‘Blinking Light’ intersection at Frenches Forest, I came in from the side from Beacon Hill along Oxford Falls Road to Dreadnought Road to the church.

I met Jack, and he explained how the course worked; he asked me if I was a Christian, and if so, what church I attended. I told him I was going to a Church of England church close to where I lived. He said that non-believers wouldn’t get the full benefit of the course, since it relied on an understanding of the Gospel message to be truly effective. I paid the twenty dollars to get a copy of the workbook and told him I would be at the first session the next evening. At home that evening, I read through the workbook, the course looked interesting; there were thirteen weeks, starting with ‘Is Grief Normal’, working through how to handle the pain, relationships with other people, dealing with the question of ‘why?’, how to handle anger, nightmares, flashbacks, how not to get stuck in grief, finishing with Heaven, and what a person who has suffered great loss should live for.

Each session would have a video, where there would be interviews with grief recovery experts, and the real-life stories of people who have experienced the death of a loved one. There would be ‘homework’ – a series of questions, with associated bible readings, prayer suggestions - all designed to build on what was in that week’s session. Each session would start with a discussion based around the previous week’s homework, then the video for the week would be screened, and it would end with some general discussion.

I felt it would be a good course, it covered a lot of the unresolved issues that I still had and would be a good way to focus my mind into moving forward. My only fear was it seemed to have the rather simplistic and uncompromising religious perspective of many evangelicals. I knew – or at least I thought I knew – the reality about ‘God’ from my interactions with the Guardians. What I needed to do was talk with Margaret, and ideally some of the other, more senior, Guardians, about how things fitted into the traditional Christian view of God, heaven and so on. Still, as Margaret had told me, the real value of the course was not in the video presentations or the information in the workbook, but the interactions with the other people.

“You will learn a lot from talking with people who have experienced a similar loss to you,” she said. “Go in with an open mind, listen to other people, hear how they are dealing, or not dealing with their situation. You might have some information that you can share that will help them, too.”

The next night I was at the first session of GriefShare; there were ten others there, along with the two facilitators. Most were in their sixties, people who had lost a spouse to cancer, heart attack, or similar disease. There was one couple in their seventies who had lost their forty-year-old son, who had died suddenly – a stroke, apparently. We went around in the group, introducing ourselves, and giving details about our loss. Just as Margaret had said, the video was interesting, but I didn’t find it particularly relevant; but when the group discussion started, that was where I felt I was getting some major benefits. One of the older women – her husband had died a few months previously; they had been married for over forty years. She said that one of the challenges she faced was now being ‘a widow’. She complained that earlier that week, she had to fill out a form at the doctors, and she had to check the box marked ‘Widow’ for marital status.