Kelly stood in her husband's study. She wasn't sure what it was that she was looking for. She didn't even know what was going on with David, other than the fact that he wasn't coming home that night. He had stated that simply and bluntly in his phone call two hours earlier. She also had the feeling that he was hiding something important from her.
During the previous few months, David had become increasingly distant and secretive. While Kelly had been frantically busy: working full-time in her paediatric job at the hospital; looking after their two sons, Edward, six, and Liam, three; and running the household, she had been only vaguely aware of the change in her husband. She had been too busy, however, to think very much about David and the problems in their marriage. She had relegated those issues to a time when her life was less hectic. That time had never come. Until now.
It was during the first two weeks, of her her six weeks leave from her job, that Kelly had become aware of the degree to which her husband had changed. She had arranged time off work in order to begin renovations on the bungalow, and to reconnect with her children and David and even herself. However, during this time she had been shocked to see how cold and irritable and horribly quick to anger he had become. He hardly spoke to her these days, except to say something sarcastic or to tell her that he was leaving again. And it seemed to Kelly that he was constantly trying to avoid being near her. He would even leave a room once she entered it.
To Kelly, David had become more like an unpleasant stranger than the loving, funny and kind man she had married fourteen years earlier. She had also noticed, recently, that she felt happier when he was out of the house at work, or wherever it was that he went to so frequently these days.
Kelly looked around her husband's dark and messy study. She sighed and ran her hand across her forehead, sweeping back loose strands of her long brown hair. She had tied the rest back into a messy ponytail. She wore jeans and a loose crop-jumper. Her tall and slim figure was attired for work. There was much to do.
Papers and books and old medical magazines and unwashed coffee-mugs and old food wrappers were strewn over every surface: the study-desk, the carpet, the bookshelves, the grey metal filing-cabinet in the corner. The navy curtains were almost completely drawn, allowing only a sliver of the late afternoon sunlight to enter. The air was musty and stale adding further to the depressing ambience.
She crossed the room and pulled open the curtains. More light was a good way to start. Next she opened the four small drawers in the polished-oak desk. They were crammed with medical papers, related to David's work in general practice, and receipts for household utilities and routine purchases. Nothing useful to explain the changes in her husband. Kelly scanned the floor: medical magazines, old newspapers, litter. She cleared away a few of the papers in order to walk over to the filing cabinet. The top two drawers contained nothing unusual. The bottom drawer was locked.
OK, she thought. This might be important. Where would he put the key? She looked around the room and noticed that the solitary framed-print in the room was hanging from the wall at an obvious angle - as if it had been moved and replaced roughly. Kelly remembered that David kept a wall-safe behind the print. She marched over to the print and removed it from the wall. The silver metal safe with it's combination lock was revealed. Kelly knew the combinations David always chose: birth-dates of family members. In this regard he had always been quite predictable. She tried a few number combinations. No luck. Maybe, she thought, he had used a combination of different dates; mixing months and years possibly.
She tried the children's birth months put together. Click. Success. The safe opened. She sighed with relief and looked into the dark space beyond the heavy door. There were packets of tablets! She pulled out a couple of boxes: Citalopram: an SSRI - an antidepressant. Temazepam: an anxiolytic - a sleeping tablet. Kelly looked again into the safe and pulled out the only other objects within it: a small bundle of papers and a key. She took the papers with the key and returned to David's desk. She cleared a space amongst the cluttered on the table, to put the collection down, and then she sat in the adjacent leather chair.
She read through the paperwork. Firstly, she could see that David had been writing his own scripts for the tablets. He'd been self-medicating to treat his depression; typical of many doctors - treating themselves and keeping their problems a secret from their colleagues. He'd also been seeing a Psychologist - Dr Andrew Steele. His councelling appointments had been weekly during the last few months.
Kelly sat back in her chair. A cold shiver ran through her. She could feel her heart racing. How could she have not noticed what David was going through? She felt a flood of guilt as she realised that she'd not bothered to ever ask him how he was. Over all these months - she'd ignored the changes. Maybe, she thought sadly, he'd tried to tell her … but she hadn't listened. She'd been too busy. She paused and looked out through the window into the cold light of the fading day. She realised that she hadn't been much of a wife or a friend to him.
The key! She remembered the key. She grabbed it from the desk and walked briskly to the filing cabinet. She put the small metal object into the lock. It opened. Again she felt a rush of relief. She pulled the heavy metal drawer open. Surprisingly, the large chamber was almost empty. Just a small bundle of papers lay on the floor of the large metal cavity. Kelly pulled them out and knelt on the carpet next to the cabinet. She looked through the papers.
On the top of the pile was a life-insurance policy. The policy insured David's life for over a million dollars! It had been made only a few months earlier. Oh my God, she thought! What was he planning?
Within the small pile of papers there were also a number of creased and worn old photos of the children … and of herself. The condition of the photos made it appear that the photos had been handled and looked at many times. Possibly even carried about in a pocket or wallet. The photos were of Edward and Liam when they were babies and toddlers. There were also old photos of herself and David. When they were young … and so much in love. They had been best-friends then. All those years ago. Many of the photos were taken during their many trips to a favourite caravan park at Willunga beach - an hours drive south of Adelaide.
Tears blurred Kelly's vision and flowed down over her cheeks as she peered down at the young faces of herself and David: carefree, relaxed, smiling, laughing … together. It all seemed so long ago. Another lifetime. In some of the photos David was pulling funny faces; in others the wind was blowing their hair about as they held kayak-paddles on the beach next to a tent ; other photos showed them both waving at the camera as they stood in front of a shiny white caravan at the Willunga Caravan Park.
Kelly wiped away her tears. Her concerns about David were growing. She needed to find him soon. It appeared, from the items she'd seen, that his life was in chaos and he had been struggling to cope with his depression for many months. It didn't appear that he was winning his battle.
Kelly looked down at the remaining crumpled pieces of paper on her lap. They were a pile of receipts for the hire of cabins at the Willunga caravan park. David had apparently been going down there quite regularly over the last few months. Every week in fact. Even during the week, it appeared, when he should have been at work. Maybe, she thought, that was where he was now …
Kelly got up off the floor and walked back towards David's desk. She sat down in his chair again and pulled her mobile-phone from her pocket. A phone call to the Willunga caravan park soon confirmed her suspicions. David had booked a cabin at the park and he was staying there overnight. The manager told her that David was a regular visitor to the park and he knew him well. He reassured her that he'd spoken to David only a couple of hours earlier and he had seemed quite happy. He also let her know that only a few minutes before she called he had seen David returning to his cabin from a walk on the beach.
Kelly felt relieved. At least she knew what was going on and she could now help her husband. She was also relieved that she knew where he was and, for now, he was safe. She looked at her watch. It was almost 6.00pm. She decided that she wouldn't drive down to the caravan park that night. She would drive down first thing in the morning. She had no family in Adelaide to mind the boys. And she knew none of the neighbours in the street very well. Quite different, she thought, from the time when Hilda had lived in the house. Neighbours truly were neighbours back then. They looked out for each other and helped each other and they knew each other. They were often even friends.
However, it wouldn't matter for now, Kelly reassured herself. David had seemed happy to the park manager. He'd made this trip to the caravan park many times before. This was likely just another trip - albeit overnight - which was a first. Other than that - it was the same as his many previous trips. He would be OK, she thought, until she got down to the park in the morning.
With her plans now clear in her mind, Kelly decided to have a short rest from her many worries. At least for the remainder of the evening. She could start to deal with all the problems in the morning, she thought, when the boys were at school and child-care, and when she was less tired. For now, however, she would get herself a cup of tea and organise the evening meal.
Kelly could hear her boys, Edward and Liam, still playing happily in the lounge-room, where she had left them an hour earlier. She walked into the lounge and gave each of them a cuddle and a kiss on the cheek. She then continued on to the kitchen where she put the kettle on, and threw a packet of something frozen into the oven for dinner. As she sat down she remembered the journals, which she had found hidden under the floorboards two weeks earlier, while renovating. She felt in need of some escape from her messy life, and a read of the journals would be a welcome distraction, she thought. She got up and retrieved the plastic packet, containing the note-books, from a cupboard in the kitchen and, with her cup of tea now ready, she allowed herself a short respite.
Kelly rested her hot cup on the white laminate kitchen table and opened the third and last journal. She had read only parts of the first two journals, over the last two weeks, but she was curious about the third one - 20 years after the last. She opened the soft grey cardboard cover. She felt a thrill seeing the familiar swirls and loops of the beautiful ink penmanship on the aged yellowed-pages. She read the front page: Hilda Miller Journal 1965. Taking a sip of her tea she turned the first page and read on:
Wednesday 16th June 1965
Well, here I am writing in my journal about another year in my life. I'm an old woman now. I'm 69! My, how the years race by! However, in my heart I still feel young. I feel much the same as I always have in my 'self'. It is just my aching joints and my weary body that has grown old.
I tend to lose or forget about these little journal notebooks for long stretches of time - often many years. But then I find them again. When I've almost completely forgotten that they exist. I'll be cleaning the house or sorting through my cupboards - and there they'll be - in a rarely used drawer or under my bed. Unfortunately that says something about my housekeeping - or 'lack' of it!
When I find my journals, I usually stop what I'm doing, sometimes for an entire morning, and I sit down with a nice hot cup of tea, in my sunny little kitchen or under my walnut tree in the backyard, and I read them through again. As I read about times long past - I can hear my chooks again in the backyard. I can see my old neighbours. My old friends. They have all mostly gone now. I also see my boys, Edward and Tom, when they were little. Always together. I see them march off to the train-station to go to war. Still together. I see only Edward returning. Although, in my heart, Tom has never left me. I feel him around me still. I remember his funny jokes and his kindness and his sweet little ways. I think about him everyday.
I remember when Tom was little he would often pick me flowers, or what he thought were flowers. More often they were weeds . But with the love with which he gave them to me - they were the most beautiful 'flowers' to me in the world. He would tell me he loved me as he handed me his little bouquets - always without any stems. Just handfuls of flower-heads. And I would put his little handfuls of flowers into saucers of water on my mantle-places or on the top of my kitchen cupboards. The little flower-heads would have sunk like stones to the bottom of any vase. Tom's face would always light up whenever he thought that he had made me happy or helped me.
I planted a little memorial-garden for Tom in the back corner of my yard. I filled it with the all of the flowers that he would give to me - without the weeds. Daisies and irises and the geraniums. I sit in our garden on most days amongst the butterflies and the humming bees and the beautiful scent of the blooms - and I husk the almonds from our trees or I just sit and talk with Tom and tell him my news. I feel him with me in our little garden. I feel him sitting with me. Listening. I feel his love with me everyday …
l still laugh when I remember that when he was little he didn't understand death very well. When I told him once that when people die we bury them in the 'cemetary' and they go to heaven - he got it all mixed up - and he would from then on call the cemetary 'heaven.' If we walked past a cemetary he would say that he just looked into 'a heaven' and saw a lovely tree or a lovely flower. I laughed when I first understood what he meant by 'a heaven'. My dear little boy. I hope he sees lovely trees and flowers in heaven now.
Edward is a practicing paediatric doctor at the Adelaide Children's hospital in North Adelaide now. He worked with his father, John, on the trams for a few years after the war. He wanted to support his father through his depression after Tom's death. He wanted to protect him and look out for him and cheer him up. He felt so much guilt about not being able to protect his younger brother during the war.
Finally, after a few years, John and I told Edward that Tom would have wanted him to finish his medical training. Their ambition, before the war, had been to practice medicine together in a clinic of their own. John reassured Edward that he felt much better. He told Edward that he should follow his heart and live his life for himself . He would help more people, if that is what he wanted to do, as a doctor.
John also reminded him that he had never finished his university studies after he returned from the Great war. He would feel so happy if Edward got to finish his degree.
Edward is now 45 years old. He has a lovely wife, Helen, who he met as a nurse in the hospital. They have two lovely little boys. Two lovely grandchildren for me! I love to spoil my darling little grandchildren. Isn't that what grandma's do?!
The boys are a delight. Tom is eight now, and Michael is six.
John is happy in retirement. He loves to fish on the Brighton beach. He brings his old tin eskie down and he sits on it at the beach. He fishes for a few hours most days. Often he has a friendly pelican sit next to him - and no wonder! John usually gives the bird half his catch! Well half is usually only one fish. Sometimes John catches nothing and on those days he wanders home past the fish and chip shop. We eat fish and chips a lot for tea these days. But I'm happy that John is happy.
I work as a volunteer in the Adelaide Childrens Hospital tea-shop two days a week now. I tease John that I'm the one going out to work now. Although I don't earn any money. But, still I do go out to work. I can call him a 'lazy-loaf' as I dash out to the car to go to 'work'.
I have my driving liscence now too. Fancy that! Me - driving a motor-car! We have a Holden car. We've had a car for about ten years now. Most families in our neighbourhood have cars now. There are so many cars on the street these days. It is all so different from the past when motor-cars were much less common to see. Our car has a radio in it. Sometimes I listen to the modern music: Elvis Presley; The Beatles.
Sadly, Australia is in another war. It is now in Vietnam. Prime minister Menzies introduced conscription to National Service last year - like we had during world war II. They have a lottery-type thing, twice a year, where birth-dates, which are printed on little balls, are pulled out of a barrel. Like a lottery drawer. If a young man over 20 years of age has his birthday on that date then the Department of Labor and National Service will decide if they must do two years compulsory military service. They have a few health checks and security checks and interviews - but then if they pass those then within a month the young person could be enlisted. And since May of this year that could mean being sent overseas to Vietnam.
For now Edward seems safe from conscription - as he is an older married man with children. But rules can change. So my fear is that he will be conscripted and he may be sent to Vietnam to fight. I also worry that he may decide to volunteer as a medic over there. He says that he has no intention of going to Vietnam as a medic or as a soldier. He says that he feels he has done his military service for Australia in WWII. I just worry that he may change his mind or be forced to go. I don't think that I could survive Edward being killed in Vietnam. I try not to think about it. I try to take each day as it comes. I find that a good way to cope in difficult times.
In my life I have seen too many wars. No-one ever 'wins' a war. We all simply try to survive them … and maybe 'learn' something once they are over. Hopefully we all gain some wisdom - so that more wars are less likely going to happen.
Well, I'd better go. I have a couple of television shows I like to watch after the news each night. John has his pipe still and we sit in our front room by the kerosine-heater.
I might even have an early night tonight. I can't seem to shake my cold. The doctor has given me two courses of antibiotics - but I'm still coughing and I still have a bit of a temperature. Edward wants me to see a respiratory physician. He says that I should have got better by now - after the two courses of antibiotic. I think that my dear son worries too much. I haven't told him how tired I've been or about the lump in my breast. I can just imagine all the fuss from him about that!
Good bye for now.
I do like the words 'good bye'. They derive from the lovely expression: 'God be with ye.' A contraction of that beautiful phrase.
Kelly stopped reading. She had been a doctor for fifteen years. Tears filled her eyes as she thought about Hilda. It felt so sad reading about a woman who very likely had breast cancer with possible metastases to the lungs causing persistent pneumonia secondary to mediastinal lymphadenopathy.
Sometimes being a doctor was hard for Kelly. Especially at times like this - when a probable fatal-diagnosis was obvious to her - simply by listening to a patient describe their symptoms, or clinically observing different signs as the patient walked into a room or sat down - but the patient was still oblivious to the seriousness of their condition and the likely 'sad' outcome that would be their fate. In this case, Hilda seemed to have no idea how little time she had left. Especially given the relatively primitive medicine available back in 1965. She seemed blissfully ignorant about how terribly sick she probably was.
The fire alarm blarred and Kelly remembered that she had tossed a pizza into the oven for dinner some time ago. Smoke wafted through the kitchen. It was a situation which she had experienced so many times before in her rushed life. She jumped up and ran to the oven to turn it off. Grey smoke billowed out into her face as she opened the oven-door. She waved it away with a tea-towel and pulled out the slightly charred remained of the pizza. Cutting off the completely burned bits and scaping away the slightly charred bits, she cut what was left into slices and threw them onto three plates. She carried the plates into the lounge-room and ate dinner with her boys in front of the television.
Later in the evening, Kelly poured a glass of cola and sat down to read more of Hilda's 1965 journal. As she had anticipated, the remainder of the journal was brief. In fact there was only one last entry - four months after the first one. Sadly that was no surprise to Kelly.
Tuesday 26th October 1965
I have written in this journal only once this year. And, unfortunately, this will be my last journal entry. Maybe I should have written more over the years. But I like to 'say' the things that I need to say to people - rather than write them. I like to 'show' my love for people - rather than write about it as well. So, on that score I have made many, many entries - into my life - with what I have said and how I have shown my love for the wonderful and beautiful people with whom I have been so fortunate to share my life.
I saw my doctor again soon after I wrote in this journal back in June. Unfortunately, the lump in my breast was cancer. My doctor told me it was a fast growing, aggressive form of breast cancer. Even when I first went to the doctor it had already spread to my bones and my lungs. I was offered treatment with chemotherapy and surgery. Although, that was mostly to give me a little more time, not to cure me. I would rather have avoided the treatments - but I had them for John's sake. He found it so hard to accept that I would die. Edward understood and so did I. But John needed to know that we had tried everything first. Before he could let me go.
I am now confined to my bed. There is now not much longer for me here in my lovely bungalow house. I remember when we first moved here forty years ago and I wrote my first journal entry. Edward and Tommy were little then. I loved my new house. It all felt so modern. That seems funny now. We didn't even have a wireless radio. The young people have little transistor radios now and televisions and motor-cars for most households.
My back hurts so much now. Also I have pains in my legs. I am ready for death. I have become so tired in the last week. I feel that my fight is nearly over. I managed to teach John to cook himself a simple meal. I've taught him to iron his shirts and even to sew a button on. I had to be very careful not to let him know why I was doing these things. I told him that I needed his help with those tasks. So he learned them - to help me. If I told him it was so that he could take care of himself when I was no longer here - then he wouldn't have learned. He would have told me not to talk like that. He would have refused to learn - as if it was 'bad luck' to prepare for my death. For so long he did not want to accept the reality of my cancer.
Edward and Helen have promised to look out for John. They'll visit him at least weekly they have said. They promised me.
I got to spend some lovely times with my grandchildren, Tom and Michael, in the last few months. While I could, I read them my favourite stories and poems. I taught them to cook my Jubilee cake and my pancakes - which they love. I told them how much I love them and how proud I was of them.
Tonight John wheeled me to the beach in my wheel chair and I saw the most lovely sunset. If it is the last sunset I get to see - I will feel blessed because it was truly breathtaking. The sky lit up in the most beautiful fiery colours: raspberry-pink and apricot-orange and, as the sun disappeared below the horizon, the clouds above us dissolved into the darkening night-sky in dark grey-mauve streaks like grand brush strokes on an endless blue canvass. The sea-gulls and the Norfolk pines along the Esplanade were black silhoettes in the warm Spring evening. Lovely. I have that beautiful image printed on my soul. And I got to share it with my John. I grew to love him so much during my life.
Good bye
Hilda
The journal ended there. Kelly knew that Hilda was right in assuming that her life was almost over when she wrote her last entry. The writing was less easy to read on the last day that she wrote. It was scrawled and messy and Kelly knew that it was likely difficult for Hilda to write with the pain and the tiredness she would have experienced by that stage of her illness.
Kelly felt emotionally-drained after finishing the journal. Hilda had experienced a difficult life, so many decades earlier, just as she was experiencing a difficult life now. And in the same house. Although, she also acknowleded, they had both experienced many wonderful times during their lives, as well, with people they both loved very much.
Kelly left the kitchen and the journals and the dishes and she sat with her sons in the lounge-room. She and the boys watched television for an hour or so, and then they all retired to their beds for an early night. Kelly would need to leave early in the morning to take care of David - after she had dropped the boys off at school and child-care.
Kelly fell asleep almost immediately when her head touched the pillow. It had been an exhausting day. However, she had not been sleeping very long when she experienced a strange dream. It was not like any dream that she had ever had before. It seemed more real than most dreams. The colours in the dream were incredibly vibrant and the images were bright and clear - not misty and shadowy like her usual dreams.
In the dream she found herself sitting on a pretty garden seat in a lovely garden filled with daisies and irises and geraniums and butterflies. A young woman came into the garden and sat on another garden bench near to her. The woman was pretty with dark hair cut in a style from the 1920's era - a short bob to the length of the angle of her jaw. She wore a drop waist white cotton frock, flat white shoes, short white gloves and a broad-rimmed white hat. She smiled at Kelly and sat down. Kelly felt warmth and love from her. She spoke in a gentle and soft voice - although there was a firmness in her tone: ' Kelly' she said,' you need to drive down to help David now! He's in danger! He needs you! You must get the boys up and take them with you. Wake up now, Kelly! You must hurry!'
Kelly woke with a start. She sat up in bed. Her heart was racing. She felt clammy and anxious. The room was still dark. It was the middle of the night. She looked to David's side of the bed. He hadn't come home. Just like he had told her that he probably wouldn't. She looked across at the clock on his bed-side table. It was 1.00am.
She could still recall her dream. It had felt so real. Unlike her usual dreams which evaporated and disappeared on waking, this dream remained crystal clear in her mind. The words in the dream had been so clear and urgent. She must get her boys out of bed and go to David. He needed her. Now!
Kelly felt her heart pounding in her chest. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. A tight band was pushing in around her head. Oh my God, she thought. David may be in trouble, right now! She picked up her phone and called the caravan park manager. The answering machine was on. Not surprising, given that it was the middle of the night. Kelly called David's mobile phone. There was no response. He had switched it off. She wondered if she should call the police. But what could she say? Tell them that she had a dream about David needing help?!
Kelly jumped out of bed. She quickly got dressed. Her jeans and a jumper had been dumped on the end of her bed the night before. She wore them. She pulled on her canvas shoes and ran into the boys rooms and woke them both. She got them out of their beds and put their dressing gowns over their pajamas.
'Are we going to the shops?' Liam asked confused and blinking in the light, as she bundled him into the car.
'Not right now dear,' Kelly soothed her son. 'You just go back to sleep in the car, darling.'
And with that she drove the one hour journey to the caravan Park - in just under forty minutes. The manager had told her that David was in cabin number 10. She knew the park well and she knew where that was. She had stayed in the cabin on a number of occasions. She saw David's car parked outside the small white building. She drove to the site and jumped out of her car, leaving the boys sleeping in the back.
The lights of the cabin were off. Kelly banged on the cabin-door. 'David!' she screamed out. 'David! Open the door! Open the door, David!' There was no answer. Lights in the surrounding cabins turned on and other residents came out to see what was going on. The manager also strode over towards her. He was wearing his dressing gown and looked annoyed.
'I think my husband is ill!' Kelly's voice was shrill as she explained the situation. Her face was pale, her eyes staring and her body tense. 'I can't wake him. He's not coming to the door. I'm a doctor and my husband has been ill recently.'
The park manager nodded to her. He appeared to understand her concern and the urgency of the situation. She had called him earlier in the day worried about her husband. He also knew her as a sensible person, not prone to being overly anxious or overly dramatic, as he had met her during earlier trips to the park with her husband.
He pulled a pile of keys from the deep pocket of his dressing-gown and sorting through the large ring filled with keys - he found the right one and quickly opened the door. Kelly rushed into the cabin and switched on the light. David was seated directly in front of her in the small kitchen dinette. He was slumped over the kitchen-table. An assortment of tablets were scattered around him, on the table as well as on the floor near his feet. A half empty bottle of whisky also sat on the table next to an empty glass.
Kelly rushed to his side. His breathing was slow and laboured. But at least he was still breathing, she thought, slightly relieved. She shook him roughly by the shoulders.
'David!' she yelled into his ear. 'David, wake up!' He didn't respond. Kelly took her mobile phone from her pocket and called for an ambulance.
'David!' she yelled into his ear. 'David, wake up!' He didn't respond. Kelly took her mobile phone from her pocket and called for an ambulance.
*
Kelly sat in the modern kitchen of her newly built house. She and David and the boys, Edward, now 15, and Liam, now 12 , had moved into their lovely new home only four weeks earlier. Kelly and David had felt guilty bulldozing the old bungalow on their beachside block - but as the boys had grown older they had needed more space. There was, unfortunately, no space in the back-yard to extend the house.
Kelly sat at her white breakfast bar and she looked out to the alfresco area. She smiled as she watched her husband with the boys cooking lunch on the bar-b-que. They were laughing and talking as they all sat around the grill. David had recovered from his depression many years earlier; and Kelly had been there for him every step of the way. She had also decided not to returned to her paediatric job in the hospital after her 'six weeks' of leave, nine years earlier.
Kelly had learned a lot about priorities during her time off work all those years earlier in 2005. She had learned to appreciate and prioritise the things most important in her life: her family and the time that she had with them.
She and David had started a 'Wellness medical clinic' specialising in counselling and meditation and also preventive-type medicine. They both enjoyed working together 3-4 days per week and taking regular holidays. They now had a wonderful work-life balance.
Kelly had decided to write her own journal, just as Hilda had done almost 90 years earlier when she had moved into her newly built house. Kelly had replaced Hilda's journals into their plastic bags and she had put them back under floor-boards of the new house. She hoped that eventually she too might add her journals, also protected by a plastic bag, under the floor boards of the house next to Hilda's. Maybe, she thought, some future-mother might even find both sets of journals, and be interested in the women who lived at the same address many years earlier. Or not. It didn't really matter.
Kelly opened the shiny red cover of her brand-new journal. She wrote neatly in black pen on the first page:
Kelly Thompson Journal 2014
The End
* * *
I hope that my little story, in three parts, was interesting or amusing to readers.
I am sitting now in my new rental property while we wait to demolish our beach-side bungalow - so that we can build our new house. I am sad about the loss of the bungalow, but I don't think that the memories and stories of the generations who have lived there, over the last 90 years, will disappear with the house.
I think that those stories and experiences are kept not in the walls of a house - but in the hearts and the minds of the people who have lived there. And, as such, those memories are safe and will live on. Forever.
Also, the issue of 'depression' came up in my story. I would say to any readers who feel depressed - remember that there will always be someone who can help you. Your general practitioner or a counselling service on the telephone or friend.
My experience is that bad times happen to all of us and they don't last forever. Things get better - eventually. Also, sometimes many years later, we can realise that we learned our best life-lessons during those hard times.
*
A charity I like to give money to is one called:
'R U OK?' An important question to ask someone who appears to be depressed or may need help.
Also, the issue of 'depression' came up in my story. I would say to any readers who feel depressed - remember that there will always be someone who can help you. Your general practitioner or a counselling service on the telephone or friend.
My experience is that bad times happen to all of us and they don't last forever. Things get better - eventually. Also, sometimes many years later, we can realise that we learned our best life-lessons during those hard times.
*
A charity I like to give money to is one called:
'R U OK?' An important question to ask someone who appears to be depressed or may need help.
*
I hope everyone has a lovely week and some great coffee (or tea) opportunities. Maybe a lovely sun-set or sun-rise thrown into the deal as well.
*
