Anna's Story, a Tribute to Love

By Robert Ennever

Anna didn't want to die. She wanted to live to see her grand-daughters' weddings. But it was not to be.

It is always tragic to lose a loved one, but it is sheer torture to watch one's partner deteriorate day by day, losing faculties one by one, the use of arms, legs and hands, and eventually the ability to speak. It is awful when a brain ceases t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publicious Book Publishing
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9780987166777

Robert Ennever

Rob Ennever was born in Sydney, Australia in 1933. He attended North Sydney Boys' High School and graduated as a pharmacist from Sydney University in 1954. After marrying his childhood sweetheart he opened a number of successful pharmacies on the North Shore and Northern Beaches of Sydney, inaugurating Chambers of Commerce and Merchants' Associations in the process. The birth of a son and daughter during this time added to his happy life. An inveterate seeker of new challenges, at forty-nine Rob sold his pharmacies, to become a property developer and student of Mid-Eastern History and the Italian language. Then came the call of the land, when he devoted his time and energy to farming a fifteen hundred acre cattle and wheat property in the Cowra region of New South Wales, down-sizing nine years later to start Australia's first 'Goosey Gander Geese' farm, along with a Tukidale carpet-wool sheep stud, on three hundred acres in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. In her mid-fifties Rob's wife developed a progressive degenerative neurological disorder and he became her full-time carer until finally she had to be admitted to a Nursing Home when he served as a Community Representative on the Division of General Practice. It was during this time Rob developed a love of writing. It provided him with a degree of escape from the reality of the shattering of their life together. Over this period he wrote five novels in total, including Anna's Story which speaks of his wife's tragic terminal illness and its impact on their lives. Fee-Jee, the Cannibal Islands, Sinclair's Retreat, The Chaos Vortex, Sardinia, the Brotherhood of Orso and Anna's Story were all penned in the early hours while his wife slept. In 2009 Rob remarried and continued to live on his mountain-top at Mittagong, New South Wales with his second wife Trish until 2015, when they moved into the township of Bowral. His passion for the land and large scale gardening has now been replaced with a passion for leisurely walks into the village for morning cappuccinos! He still teaches Italian, travels extensively and is involved more than ever with his writing. His latest works are 'Loveridge...and they call this Progress?', an attempt to express his concerns about some aspects of modern life, and 'Mending Michael' which deals with the ongoing traumas suffered by war veterans and the effect these can have on those who share their lives.

Book preview

PREFACE

Iwake up this morning determined to do better.

Last night, when the irritation and frustration had built to intolerable levels, I could make excuses. But in the cold light of morning I know I have let her down. And she believes in me!

My first waking impression is of her breath. Soft, warm, and moist in my ear. I turn my head to watch her, a voyeur spying on the private world of her slumber.

Tousled curls frame her familiar face and contrast with the alabaster of her shoulders. Her chest rises and falls rhythmically beneath the crinkled whiteness of the sheet, which only partially masks the soft curve of her breasts. She sleeps on her side, curled up tightly like a fearful child, her cheek cradled on one arm, the other wrapped protectively around her stomach.

Tiny furrows of anxiety suddenly mar the smoothness of her brow as unformed doubts darken her dreams. Inherently she knows something is dreadfully wrong. Her eyes twitch uneasily behind their closed lids, her lips purse, her breathing becomes agitated.

A sudden chill of sadness causes me to shiver as I wonder what it will be like to wake and not find her there.

I am determined today will not be like yesterday. Then the pungent odour of urine hits me and threatens my resolve.

*****

If only it could be quick I would cope better. A merciful release from her struggle and an end to the weariness and despair which overwhelms me. And yet I can’t bear the thought of it being over. My mind tells me it would be kinder, but my heart won’t let go. ‘Live each day as it comes,’ I tell myself. That’s not so easy when every day is worse than the one before.

Because it’s so gradual, it’s easy to ignore the deterioration, to fool myself that the inevitable only happens to other people. I’ve read the books, listened to the advice of well-meaning friends and caring health workers, but they don’t know! Only those who have been there can truly understand. Now I’m one of those. And even so I don’t fully comprehend the tragedy Anna is suffering. Perhaps I don’t want to. Perhaps I lack the strength to acknowledge what is occurring. But one can only pretend for so long.

When will it finish? How much time have we left?

*****

‘Is everything alright?’ Anna has woken in fright.

‘Yes.’

‘So there’s nothing wrong?’

‘You’re fine. Dr Kurrle says you’re doing very well.’ It’s not a lie, but it’s not telling the truth of it either.

‘When will it all be over?’

‘Doctor says you can do whatever you feel like.’

‘Oh, so I’m out?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can do whatever I like?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t like it.’

‘Why ever not? I’m delighted.’

‘I’m not the same girl I was. You’ll see. I can do anything. Like all my friends. I’ll spend your money.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘You won’t like it.’

I kiss her but don’t get through.

She shrugs free, defiant. ‘Any way I don’t have any money!’

‘Yes you do.’

‘You won’t let me have it! What did you do with my mother’s money?’

‘It’s all safe. In the bank.’

‘So I’ve nothing to worry about?’

‘No.’

‘And I can do whatever I like?’

‘Yes, whatever you feel like.’

Suddenly she wraps her arms around me. ‘Oh, I love you so much. You’re very good to me.’

‘I love you too.’ I try to sound convincing. I do love her, but I’m tired of the word games. They wear you down. Pretending, always pretending.

Then she says, ‘You wouldn’t leave me, would you?’

The wound inside me begins to bleed again. ‘I’ll never leave you, my darling. Not after we’ve been together fifty years.’

‘Have we? Have we really?’

‘Yes. It’s a long time. Not everyone has what we’ve had. We’ve been very lucky.’ I know that’s true, but it’s precious little consolation now.

‘So I’m alright then?’ She’s still hugging me. Maybe she finds security in my arms. Suddenly the involuntary straightening and bending begins. ‘I need to go to the toilet. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine.’ I take her hand and lead her to the bathroom. It’s a relief she has told me, so much better than having to clean up a mess afterwards. I help her sit on the seat but she is worried.

‘It’s dirty.’

‘No it’s not, my darling. I cleaned it.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Everything’s OK.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘So I’m alright?’

The game starts all over.

*****

‘My friends won’t want to see me.’

‘Yes they will.’

‘I don’t have any friends.’ Anna starts to cry softly. ‘They don’t like me.’

‘That’s not right. Everybody likes you.’ I list the phone calls she’s forgotten. Some people still make the effort. Others find it too hard. Embarrassing.

‘I’ve never done anything wrong. I’m not a naughty girl.’

‘No-one who knows you could ever think that.

‘I just want to be like all the other girls.’

‘You are.’

‘I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody.’

‘I know that, my darling. You’re the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever known.’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘It’s why I love you so much.’

‘Truly? So you do you like me?’

‘More than like you, I love you!’

She squeezes my hand. ‘That’s nice.’ We hold hands for a moment. It seems to comfort her. Then the worry returns. ‘When’s it all going to stop?’

‘Soon, my darling. Soon.’

‘How do you know when I don’t?’

‘Dr Kurrle says you’ve done well. Look at all the things you couldn’t do six months ago.’ I rack my brains for any little successes I can find. ‘You didn’t want to see anybody. Now you enjoy company.’

‘I only want to be with you.’

‘Would you like a Tim Tam?’

‘Oh, that would be lovely. You’re so kind!’

*****

‘It’s very hard being me.’ Her voice is plaintive, childlike.

‘I know it has been, but things are getting better.’

‘Are they really? You’re sure?’

I utter the lie, knowing it’s in a good cause. ‘Of course I’m sure.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I can tell,’ I fall back on the old joke, ‘I’m a chemist, remember!’

She chuckles. ‘Oh, I’m so lucky to have you.’

‘I’m lucky to have you too. You’re my best girl.’

‘Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.’

*****

What have I done? Lost my temper and scolded her like a bad child for things she can’t help. Shut my ears to her incessant pleas for reassurance when my own need became too great. Fooled myself my work was more important in the grand scheme of things than her shrinking world.

Sometimes I can convince myself I’ve done my best. All my family and friends believe that to be true. They tell me what a fine fellow I am, and I like to hear it. And sometimes I know I can’t do any more.

But I can never do enough.

CHAPTER 1

Iknow we’re all dying. It’s the way of things. Only sometimes it’s living which is hard. It’s very hard for Anna. Unfairly hard. An animal wouldn’t be allowed to suffer as she does.

She used to say ‘I wish I could be dead.’ That was before her logic went and she could express her pain. ‘I’ll kill myself. No-one should have to live like this.’ Her eyes are angry. ‘You don’t believe I’d do it, do you? But I will, and you won’t be able to stop me.’

Now she has no words for it, only the anguish in her eyes.

‘Why does everything have to happen to me? I’ve never done anything wrong!’

She has, of course, but nothing to merit the slow torture which punishes her daily. Does she realize, I wonder? Or has the subterfuge suggested by the specialist, and maintained so diligently by me, worked?

We decided to tell Anna she had suffered a tiny stroke and that it had slightly affected her memory. It seemed kinder than telling her there was no hope. But was it? Or does continually building up belief in a recovery only lead to more cruel disappointments for her and a greater need to resort to lies? How many times can she pick herself up and resume the struggle? She’s tough. She’s a fighter. I could sometimes wish she knew when to give in. But what else can I give her, save love and hope? To know the inevitable is to despair.

Superficially the fabrication might serve to mask the truth. Underneath, where some shadow of reality still lurks, she knows it to be a lie. But we both play along with it. It’s easier.

‘Will I ever get better?’

‘You’re getting better already.’ The untruth gets easier with every repetition. If I don’t think about it! And I don’t want to think about it, because the alternative to the lie is too awful.

*****

I first became aware something was wrong nine years ago, when Anna was fifty-four. My training made me suspect Alzheimer’s Disease, but surely it couldn’t be. Anna was too young.

She wasn’t!

In the beginning it was easy to put the slight lapses down to tiredness or not listening properly. The mislaid glasses, the occasional searching for a word and not finding it, the forgetting to flush the toilet. We all can be a little vague at times. But it is so unlike the girl I have lived with since we were children.

Anna has always been a perfectionist and her own toughest task-master. Everyone else comes first. Me, the children, her friends. She always finishes up last in the queue of people requiring her attention. This new preoccupation with self is totally out of character. My suspicions grow and I take her to our GP. There are many other possibilities. Thoughts of a tumor even pass through my mind.

*****

The lady doctor is kind but concerned. She suggests a visit to a psychiatrist and a series of cognitive function tests at the hospital.

Anna wants to know why all this is necessary. Is there something dreadfully wrong with her?

‘I love you too much to take any chances,’ I reassure her. ‘I’m sure it’s only that you worry too much about everything. That causes you to panic and when you panic, the wheels fall off. Let’s see if we can stop you panicking.’

‘I don’t panic,’ she says, bristling with hostility. Her palm in mine is sweaty.

Anna has never been entirely comfortable with doctors, especially if she feels they are putting her under test. As a very young child she snatched the vaccination needle from the nurse and threw it on the floor. Her mother had to hold her, screaming and protesting, for the doctor to be able to administer the injection.

The tests are a disaster. Anna is petrified and goes into a tailspin. She is unable to do anything. Eventually the neurologist gives up in disgust. ‘I can’t help you if you won’t let me,’ his irritation is obvious. ‘Perhaps we can make another appointment for a time when you’re calmer.’

‘I am calm and I won’t be coming back!’ Anna means it.

She doesn’t like the first psychiatrist any better. ‘He’s not a very nice man,’ she whispers to me as we are shown into the consulting room. The doctor hasn’t even said ‘hello’ before she has mentally dismissed him. The more he probes into her past, the more Anna clams up. It becomes a contest. We don’t bother making another appointment.

Eventually the GP finds a lady psychiatrist to whom Anna can relate.

At first!

CHAPTER 2

We were only fifteen when we met. At a Regatta party. It was the first time I had been truly in love, and I thought it could last forever. It was the first time for Anna also, and she thought so too.

We were both wrong. But at fifteen dying is not something to dwell on.

*****

1949

I know nothing about girls when I meet Anna. I have no sisters to initiate me into the female world, only a younger brother.

But school friends have sisters and go to mixed parties. So eventually, with considerable trepidation, I am cajoled into accepting an invitation to a Regatta night. The only snag is that I have to bring someone, and I don’t have a someone.

My mother says one of her bridge ladies has three daughters, nice girls. Jan, the eldest, is old enough to go out with boys. Why don’t I ask her?

I do. Perhaps influenced by our mothers’ friendship, to my amazed horror, she says ‘Yes’. I am petrified.

The night comes. Showered, shaved and dressed with a care which brings a smile to my parents’ faces, I go to pick Jan up. She opens the door herself, and I am struck dumb.

All the carefully rehearsed conversational gems are wiped from my brain. Jan is blonde, classically beautiful, poised, and could eat me for breakfast. We walk the half-mile to the party in silence. I don’t know what Jan is thinking, I only know I am too overawed to be capable of thinking.

To break the ice, the parents of the boy giving the evening make the opening dance a progressive barn dance. I am twirled and led through the routine by a succession of partners until, as the music ceases, I find myself arm in arm with a curly topped young lass who says shyly, ‘Hello, I’m Anna.’ She is the first girl who is openly as nervous as I am.

‘Would you care for something to drink?’ I manage to ask, somewhat comforted by finding a fellow sufferer.

‘I’d love something,’ she replies, too quickly.

We dance every dance together from then on, until her father comes to collect her. And we talk. Ask each other questions.

Obviously our mothers are of a like mind. ‘When you’re stuck for something to say, ask a question,’ my mother advised me as I left for the party. It hadn’t worked with Jan, but it does with Anna. Her mother must have told her the same thing.

We explore each other’s thoughts. For my part I am discovering a new world. There is an exhilaration in sharing confidences, in having an audience which hangs on every word. Under the spur of her interest, my tongue not only loosens up, it becomes positively loquacious.

At one stage she asks, ‘Who did you bring? Shouldn’t you be dancing with her?’

I glance across to where Jan’s looks have trapped a mesmerized group of admirers and my initial guilt vanishes. ‘I don’t think she’s missing me!’

But she must have been miffed because Jan doesn’t address a single word to me on the way home. I don’t care. I am smitten.

Anna has given me her phone number!

*****

Anna didn’t have a happy childhood. Her parents, both delightful individuals when apart, were totally incompatible. In today’s more enlightened society they would have divorced, possibly remarried more suitably, and lived happy, productive lives. But they didn’t. They stayed together for the children’s sake. And made Anna the battlefield upon which they waged their wars.

Their love was not unconditional, it was a bribe to be held out, given briefly and then taken away. Anna came to believe that nothing good ever lasted.

Torn by her love for each of them, used as a weapon by both to inflict pain on one another, blamed constantly for being the cause of the strife, Anna grew up devoid of confidence and burdened with guilt. Desperately eager to please, she instinctively assumed that, no matter what went wrong in life, it had to in some way be her fault. Then we met and I became the one ongoing security in her world.

I didn’t know any of this then, only that she liked me, and I was in love.

*****

Soon I want her to meet my parents. She comes to dinner and my mother has gone to trouble.

Anna is nervous and on her best behaviour. I am beside myself with pride and captivated by her every gesture. We sit at the table.

The fish is served with wedges of lemon and Anna begins to squeeze the juice over the fillets. At first the lemon is reluctant to relinquish its tart liquid. Anna squeezes harder. Suddenly the pressure of her fingers is too much and a jet of juice squirts into my father’s eye.

Anna is mortified. She doesn’t know where to look, and when my family burst out laughing she assumes we are laughing at her. It is only as my father dabs at his smarting eye with the serviette and chuckles, ‘Well, that’s one way to make an impression!’ that she relaxes and realizes nobody is angry with her.

It is the first of many visits to my home. A modest, middle-class home with little pretension but an abundance of warmth and love. Before any of us realize it, she has adopted us as her family. And that’s fine by me because Anna is the best thing in my life.

*****

1950

It is a disaster! Anna has been invited to a party without me and her mother insists she accept. I am consumed by jealousy. Anna tries to console me.

‘Don’t you trust me? You’re being silly. I love you. It’s only for a few hours.’

‘Can’t you get out of going? Say you’re sick or something?’

‘No. Mummy knows his parents. I have to go.’

‘Then I’ll ask Mum if I can borrow the car and I’ll drive you there. I’ll wait outside for you and take you home.’

‘There’s no need. Daddy will drive me and pick me up.’

‘I want to.’ I don’t tell her about the worms gnawing my inside.

It is the worst night of my life. I can’t bear the thought of other boys dancing with her, holding her. My eyes never leave the windows of the house. Suddenly the lights are dimmed and my imagination goes into overdrive. I have been to other ‘rorts’. I know what goes on.

Anna’s intuition is alive and well. She takes pity on me and leaves indecently early. My heart explodes with relief as I see the front door open and she walks to the car. We drive to a park and fill in the interval until she is due home hugging, exploring and reassuring each other. The nightmare’s over and I can live again.

*****

We share the awkward adolescent years. The experimental sexual fumblings, my final months of school, the choosing of my Uni course, her first job. We grow up together. We are best friends. Best friends with only one thought in mind.

We want to get married. Desperately. Until we do, we will refrain from full sex. Somehow it would be letting the side down, it would demean our love. So we want to get married. Desperately!

Eventually our parents wilt under our relentless barrage of requests and give us conditional consent. We announce our engagement on 3rd December, 1952. We are nineteen, deliriously happy and absurdly in love. Unfortunately the condition is that we must wait until we are twenty-one for matrimony!

The diamond we buy, hugely subsidized by her jeweller father, the head of Angus and Coote, is a novelty and seeing it on her ring finger gives me a secure, proprietary feeling. But it doesn’t overcome the problem. Two more celibate years stretch out before us like an eternity.

Anna’s mother is one of the founders of the Australian Opera. It is a time of dinner suits, Opera Opening Nights, Charity Balls, being shown off as Anna’s fiancé. It is an exciting time, full of new experiences. But still we can’t get married!

*****

1954

Twenty-seventh November. We marry. Our parents help us with a deposit and guarantee the bank mortgage and we buy our own home in Armana Parade, Roseville.

The young Queen, Elizabeth the Second, visits Australia. Mark, Anna’s father, together with Asher Joel, is on the organizing committee and we have official seats at her landing from the Royal Barge. Anna receives an invitation to attend the Garden Party at Government House and is introduced to Her Majesty. Afterwards, when I ask her what the Queen said to her, she can remember nothing. ‘I was too nervous to hear. She must think me dumb, or stupid. But I remembered how to curtsey!’

Anna works with me in the small chemist shop we have bought, aided again by our parents. It is miniscule, a cluttered warren of cupboards and untidy shelves, but affordable. The owner stays on for a week to introduce me to his clients. He is as untidy about his person as he is with his business. Perhaps it is his underlying nervousness rather than carelessness which causes him to nick himself when shaving.

Whatever the reason he arrives each morning, hurried and dishevelled, with small flecks of bloodied paper adhering to the injuries. Nevertheless, despite his appearance, he engenders considerably more respect than I do when I am presented. I look far too young to know much. Certainly too young to be entrusted with details of people’s constipation and haemorrhoids.

Anna saves the day. She is popular with the customers, her genuine interest quickly endears her to the regulars. And