My family is tight-knit, an ecosystem of sorts. Interspecies, multigenerational. I live with my mother in the house of my childhood, submerged in a forest my parents planted. Both my adult sons dwell nearby. Grandbabies abound. There are pets and there are trees and there are waterways. We are – plant, earth, wood, water, animal – connected through an intricate kinship web. It might seem that this life was gifted to me by a long familial or communal tradition, but it was built, like many things, on the back of great loss.
In the late 1970s, my parents moved to this place and erected a house. They planted a garden that would become a forest. We had no close-by grandparents. All family was chosen. It was, as they say, a fresh slate. Communities sprang up in this time of new beginnings. All around us the flowers bloomed, the fruit trees bore fruit. Ten years in my adolescent sister took her life. Six years later my father followed. The life we had known derailed. My family tumbled, headlong, into the dark.
How does anyone build anything on the site of such wreckage? We were lucky; our house still stood. It held us when all else failed. But surrounding us – always – are the traces of what came before. Every day, I sit in the lounge room where I first learned my sister was dead. I walk past the garage where my mother found my father’s body. I clean my teeth at the bathroom sink where my father tried to slit his wrists. The blood is gone, but I still remember. Right here, this happened, and – also – time moves on.
In the forest, nothing is static. Change is mostly incremental, and then sometimes it is not. Floods, fires, floods again, gigantic fallen trees. We are kept on our toes. There are times, post-cataclysm, where we need to step in and offer support. Clean away debris, prop up saplings, plant new seeds. Even a forest needs tending.
When my parents built this house nearly50 years ago, they added a Japanese-style pavilion. An open-aired, raised square platform, with a sloping wooden-shingled roof. It’s highly decorative in an otherwise utilitarian homespace. In a subtropical forest, it’s also difficult to maintain. My mother calls it “our folly”. Last year, the central wooden pin that held the roof together rotted and fell out. This seemed metaphoric. Everything is collapsing! The centre cannot hold!
We called the man who erected it, to see what could be done. He came, hair now a shock of white, retired from building but curious. The structure was sound, the structure was strong. All the intricate pieces of the ceiling and the roof were wedged so close, so tight, they held each other in space.
We employed a young man to replace the central pin with a tight wooden square, and then I began the work of restoring our folly. Oiling the ageing wood, painting the banged-up furniture. Even houses need tending.
I was 18 when I lost my father, and by 22 I’d had two kids. What is the legacy of being born into such troubled waters? I think of my young, grieving body in so much distress, gestating those babies – back-to-back – birthing them into the aftermath. Sometimes I wonder if my sons might need help to process such a start. I broach the subject with my oldest. “I had you the year after my father died,” I say. “There were probably things I taught you that it might help to unpack.”
He’s an adult now, a young man, a father. He holds my gaze, soft but steady. I tell him I’ve noticed he seems drawn to people who need a lot of support. Perhaps it was our beginning?
He says, “Mum, I don’t think there’s a single person out there who doesn’t need support.”
My stomach drops, my knees feel weak. How does he know this bone deep truth? My dead sister, my dead father. This is the legacy. Some home truths are unspoken, intuited. “We need each other” is ours.
Interdependence is. You cannot opt out, so lean in. Tend the things you love. Everything turns on affection. If your world feels full of broken things, you are allowed to start small. Find a pot plant, put it on the windowsill. Water it, but not too much. Learn what it needs.
Everywhere, all around you, are beings who crave your tender care. Intricate kinship webs can be built from the rubble. We can hold each other in space. Plant, earth, wood, water, animal. You do not have to live as though you are alone.
Jessie Cole is the author of four books including the memoir Desire, A Reckoning
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
