Couched in sadness...

 

By Richard McEncroe

 

 

In loving memory of Catherine McEncroe 12 July 71 – 29 July 2000

 

A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as or similar to another otherwise unrelated object.  Shakespeare dined out, as it were, on the world being a stage and all that, so maybe I can evoke sufficient metaphorical spirit to explain how in my mind at least, a relationship between a brother and a sister can be just like a couch.

 

I was never as kind to my sister as I should have been.  I really loved her, but I was really flat out mean to her lots of the time too.  I suspect anyone who has been or has been subjected to a big brother knows how mean they can be, and I was probably meaner than most at times.  Not nearly as mean as I was to the two sisters that separated Catherine and I mind you, but that’s another story. 

 

The base currency my family traded in those days was verbal put downs.  Physical fighting was ruled out of order, but this was extreme cage fighting, just with words.  Five kids spaced very Catholically over seven years all under the one roof, and fighting for rare air- time, fostered a fairly tough school.  Biting, brutal, cut-to-the-quick put downs were resorted to early and often when the heat was on – and that was a fair bit of time.  I was much harder than I should have been. 

 

My relationship with Catherine was mostly spent in a place that was anything but hard edged though.  It was in many ways the warmest and softest and most comforting relationship of my life.  She was so soft, I mean her skin was actually really soft, but her heart was even softer.  She never judged people. Never hurt people.  She liked people, and they liked her back.  Being with Catherine was, for me at least, a place where I didn’t have to pretend to be anything.  She had no expectations of me other than that I be nice to her, and that we laugh at ridiculous stuff.  She was a comfortable and relaxed place to be, long before John Howard sullied Australia with the phrase.  The plaque on her grave captures her very self “loved by all who knew her”.  I can’t think of another person I could honestly say that about – I know it would sure be out of place under my name when I’m gone.

 

Share-housed out the soft little energizer bunny set up on her own in 2000, moving into a ground floor one bedder in Carlton.  Shortly after, during one of her many and always happy Aunty visits to my little girls, her scavenging eye was taken by a tartan covered two-seater box couch taking up space in my carport.  You know the sort, cheap fabric stretched across a few bits of pine finished off with two square detachable cushions.   Straight from the Chinese shipping container (via The Fussy Furniture Fella) to you!

 

I put that couch in the carport after just one test sitting.  My girls were at the age when random jumping around on the couch was a core activity.  Resting my elbow on the side of the couch I knew instantly the absence of any padding or give whatsoever exposed this particular couch in trampoline’s clothing as an enemy, a potentially mortal one.  Very soft and comfortable and bouncy for the most part, but my inner parent knew those hard ends were trouble. 

 

As willing to forgive shortcomings in furniture as she was in people Catherine decided that she needed a couch, I had a couch, and that this tartan rectangle was solid and clean and comfortable enough. 

 

I delivered the couch to her and placed it in her living room.

 

Over the next few months I didn’t see much of her.  We talked a bit on the phone, and I went to a little housewarming birthday drinks thingy at her new pad, but not much.  I knew she was in trouble though.  I knew not because Dad had told me he had pricked himself with a needle emptying her rubbish.  I knew not because Mum was in a permanent state of anxiety about her. I knew because I knew she was dabbling in serious drugs, heroin included.  I knew how intensely sad she had been and I knew she was self medicating.  I knew because I remember I didn’t really know what to do.  I knew that trouble was coming though.

 

I tried talking to her.  Well, looking back I think I made the sort of token efforts a brother pre-occupied with his own life makes.  I called her, I told her to be careful.  But, I was judgmental.  I think I was angry at her for being depressed in the way people who don’t understand depression can get.  I wanted her to just get on with it and be happy. 

 

I didn’t do anything that helped her though. 

 

A couple of months later, on a bitter July night, a Monday, I saw that couch again.  Nobody in the family had seen or heard from Catherine since the preceding Friday.  She had not met up with my other sister Liz on the Sunday as planned, and had put in some other no shows.  More than usual.

 

Liz and her now husband were already at the flat when my eldest sister George and I arrived.  And so was Catherine, lying dead on the couch.   She had died of asphyxiation having consumed a very large amount of alcohol and injecting heroin. 

 

Amongst all the horrible memories of that time, the image that is seared into my brain is of my baby sister lying face up, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded across her lap, as though watching a movie.  Only the hard end of the couch is pressing the back of her head and neck forward, her waxy chin almost touching her breast bone.  Constricted, bunched. 

 

I understand much more about her now than I ever did when she was alive.  I feel her struggles now, I don’t just know of them. I feel her frustrations with herself, with her receipt of pain she never asked for and never deserved, pain so deep and relentless that it just must be alleviated, at any cost. 

 

I can’t go back and not give her the hard ended couch.  I can’t go back and be a nicer, kinder, less hard edged and judgmental older brother to her now.  All I can do is try and soften my edges, talk less and listen more, think less and feel more, have much more give in me.  That way, the next couch I give someone will be low risk, and comfortable all of the time, not just some of the time.