HOME is a beautiful, wonderful place, full of love and solace and comfort and peace. Helen's sister, Grace, has come to be with us, helping in all the ways only Grace can. She has come two days after my surgery, being there for Helen, keeping house while my wife makes the long and tiring trips to and from Royal North Shore. There’s always been a special connection with Grace, for me. Every time I come to KL, Grace prepares a big bottle of her homemade ginger beer and kefir mixture, both of which do wonders for me as I indulge in all the Malaysian hawker food I can find. She is the elder sister to everyone, and the sister-in-law whose hug can take away the most persistent of my troubles. Like my mother, she loves Kris Kristofferson, especially his composition, Jody and the Kid.
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| Errol met Kris Kristofferson in East Malaysia during a late-1980s film-shoot. |
But, the healing is an agony in itself. The new ecosystem I have in my abdomen leaves me exhausted. The new digestive system seems like only a seed, and it needs to grow before it can really begin to really help. It keeps hitting me so hard, how much I have literally lost, gallbladder, a hunk of my stomach, the duodenum, part of my pancreas. All these things are intricately linked and work, in normal, healthy people, to regulate digestion and waste disposal, absorb nutrients, convert fats, sugars, ultimately feed and give nutrition to the body. All the stomach complaints come to visit. I hate having to see Magar for this, that, the other, every new prescription, how medicine shelf in the pantry is looking so chock-full. I take one medicine for this condition, and it leads to side effects that need another medicine. It’s utter madness.
But I am alive. I have survived. The chemo has done wonders. I still have my pancreas. I can eat. Magar tells me that if I really feel like a scotch, I must have it. Feed the soul. Be happy, he says. One small one every few days, he cautions. Don’t tell William to deny himself, he says to Helen. He must be happy. That is part of the healing. I don’t drink. The anxiety on Helen’s face is too much. I can’t have it if I can’t have it guilt-free. So, I don’t have it. And it’s OK. I am alive.
I feel I am able to peruse the news again, find out what’s been happening back home, as Malaysia heads to its 14th general election, scheduled for 9 May 2018. For months now, I have hardly surfed for any news, because there is rarely any good news, and I am so past the bad stuff. There is no space in my life. I keep saying, when all this is over, I will become editor of The Good News Paper and it will light up the world. Yeah, right.
About this time, we have our second visitor. It is Sheila Natarajan-Rahman, who has actually made arrangements to "take over" from Grace, to help both Helen and I. Sheila Natarajan joined The New Straits Times the same time I signed up. We both kicked off our careers as cadet journalists with NST. Helen joined later. Sheila and I go back a long way. Friday nights, we almost always met for drinks at the A&Z Bar in Jalan Damansara, where we cheer Fifteen Shillings, later to grow into Blues Gang. Sheila was probably the first woman to become a very good friend of mine, as opposed to the teenage girls just passed. Soon after Helen joins NST, we all became good friends. Sheila was Helen’s bridesmaid. Then she married a wonderful Malay gent, Rahman. We are all best of friends to this day. Sheila is like a sister to both Helen and I. Sheila, who almost never travels overseas, has told Helen on the phone: "You want me to come, I'll come." Well, she comes, and stays five whole weeks.
I’ll never forget that night I heard our garage door open — Helen is returning from having picked up Sheila at the airport. It is weeks before GE14, which is heating up political tensions back home big time. I open the inner door of the garage to hear her big, loud voice and presence. No mistaking it. Here’s Sheila.
“Ay, I had to forego my vote for you ah,” she says. “Can you imagine that? But I had to come lah, darling.” Then the clincher, the thing that makes Sheila Sheila. “I came to see you because of everything you did with Global Bersih, lah. That’s why I’m here.” And she gives me a big hug.
When she’s had her shower, it’s almost 10pm. I’m on the armchair in the TV lounge, she’s on the sofa to my left and Helen, Sheila and I are watching something we don’t need to pay attention to. Sheila says, “Come, give me your foot,” and lifts my leg onto her thigh and proceeds to give me a foot and leg massage. “If you want, I’ll do this for you every day. OK?” I could go to sleep.
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| Sheila celebrates her birthday with us in Sydney, on 24 April 2019. |
Before three weeks are over, it’s the election in Malaysia. Helen and I cannot believe the news as it unfolds. The opposition is winning, 62 years of a horribly corrupt, contemptible, racist, bigoted government is on the verge of toppling. The most unlikely of pacts are forged by sworn enemies for the one cause — change. Helen and I are on the phone for more than two hours with her brother-in-law, Keat Peng, who knows a lot of what’s happening within the opposition coalition that will soon become government, barring a military takeover, martial law, annulment of the election results. We sleep about 4am, with victory for the opposition on the verge of becoming official, when the next business day begins in Malaysia. Downstairs, we don’t know it, but Sheila also cannot sleep because of the election win that nobody really expected.
The next morning, I have no choice but to commit to paper what has been brewing in my mind. I write a commentary on the win by Pakatan Harapan, the Coalition of Hope, for Malaysiakini. As soon as Helen and Sheila have given it the once-over — I simply cannot trust my still very much recovering mind — I send it off to Steven Gan, the Kini editor. In the days to come, I will hear from friends and family that the piece has gone viral, it’s been forwarded left, right and centre. A well known thespian in KL who has also made a career as a motivational speaker, refers to my piece and the video of her talk also goes round. Later, Sara tells me the piece has chalked up 35.3K shares. I’m not sure what it all means, and she explains it to me. It’s enough to make me feel I am really healing. Of course, I am as pleased with myself as anything. No one can take that away from me. I am sick as dog that’s been kicked and pummelled, and I feel I just have to write that piece. It was like turning on the tap to stream-of-consciousness and putting it all down on paper, touch-typing almost as fast as I think. Again, again, I see the hand of God guiding me, supporting me. I have written it as his instrument, his servant. You can see a screenshot of the story in Chapter One: Death is a Distant Peace.
Sheila stays about one month, and our few excursions are the first I tentatively take, meeting up with Jeff and Wah Lee for lunch, tripping down to Kingsford for some genuine Indonesia fare, and beef rendang, just getting out, showing Sheila a bit of Sydney and catching fresh air for myself.
My cousin from Hamilton, New Zealand, is next to knock on my door. Lynn has quietly made arrangements with Helen, and I am floored when she turns up one morning. Helen has told me she needs to go to the supermarket, and heads off to collect Lynn from the airport.
I have visited Lynn in Hamilton, to help her mark her 50th birthday, in 2016. As it happens, Lynn’s sister, Jane, has also come down for KL, and we have a merry week together. Lynn has lost the love of her life, her husband Anthony. She is still very delicate but she summons the love and strength to go out with us, show us around Hamilton, organise a big dinner-birthday party with her wonderful friends.
I am glad to have family, but am not strong enough to properly host the visitor and help do “tourist” things. Lynn, of course, is happy to stay in with me and just talk. When I go up to rest, she and Helen get on like a house on fire downstairs.
After I begin to feel reasonably at ease after each meal, I return to the walking routine, light weights, stretches before and after. Eventually, I sign up with the local gym, enlist a personal trainer. It’s very, very tiring, but the adrenalin buzz after a light workout is very welcome. I put on a bit of weight and we head to Uniqlo to buy a couple of 32in waist pants, so I don’t have to keep punching holes in my old leather belts, or belting up so much my pants look like loose pyjamas on a drawstring. One of the ladies I chat with at the gym is actually a nurse at Royal North Shore. She cannot believe I am out at the gym “so soon” after my operation. “I must tell my patients about you,” she says.
So, I’m telling you again: You can do it. Pick yourself up. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Find someone else to do it for. Don’t play the patient. Be the survivor. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have anyone tell me all these things. No one gave me this advice. I just did it. I thought about it, and it seemed like the sensible way to go. Simple as that. You-can-do-it. Nike. Just Do It.
*****
I get back into gardening and an old thought revisits: gardening, tending to plants, weeding, watering, feeding these growing things is the closest a man can come to the female experience of carrying a baby, giving birth, suckling. It must have been a man who first said, It’s a man’s world. Tell it often enough and the lie becomes the truth.
Chris, my personal trainer, is very encouraging. He knows what I need to hear, having heard from me chapter and verse of all I have gone through. He needs to know if he is to help. So he hears everything, including the politics, GE14, the piece I wrote, how it went viral, my time with Global Bersih, the pride I hold dearly because of my connection to GB.
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| Post-op in the Blue Mountains, NSW: Errol's wife, Alice, visits us. |
Errol's wife, Alice, visits. By this time, I am strong enough to go as far as the Blue Mountains, driving, to give my sis-in-law the tourist treatment. Alice, Al the Pal, is a great help. She cooks my favourite curries, milder than her usual style, mindful of the recuperating. I even take her to my favourite Sydney laksa, a stall at the Saturday-only Paddington Markets called Chin's Laksa. It is a very special day because I can take the laksa and keep it. Later, Alice and I sit on a hot takeaway coffee while Helen goes off to buy a little trinket for Sara. Alice spends her days spending a lot of money on presents for her kids, and I am very very happy to see how she has re-built her life since her husband's passing.
One mid-morning, Helen and I are both working in the front yard. The main door slams shut. We look at one another. Neither has a key to get back into the house. Calm as anything, I look at the aluminium side-gate. It’s about 7ft high. If the inner courtyard door is not locked, or the door to the back garden, I’ll be able to get in, and save my damsel. I’ll give it a go. Using the wooden cross-bar on the fence next to the gate, I hoist myself up, slowly get my legs over the top, and jump down. Both doors are open. I’m a hero. And I realise, with the cancer, the surgery, this recovery that I keep complaining about, I am still stronger than I was five years ago, when I wouldn’t have contemplated hoisting myself over that side gate. That’s another thing you can’t take away from me. But you can take this: You-can-do-it.
*****
I have known this lawyer in Malaysia for some years. Before we meet in late 2011, at Leslie's wedding in Penang, he has been regular drinking company with my brother. As Valen tells it, when Errol is in the business of sourcing hard-to-find music for people, my brother brings him Supertramp's Logical Song. After we meet, Valen's KL phone number is at the top of the “recent calls” list on my smartphone every time I return to KL to visit my by-then ailing Mum. I am Global Bersih president by then, and there is always the chance I will get detained, either when I arrive at KL International Airport, or when I leave. All GB press releases, and there are more than a few, are issued and published in my name, with my byline, and every single PR is emailed from my open-line PC in my Sydney home. In the months leading to the 13th GE, the government of Najib Abdul Razak is publicly threatening Malaysians living overseas who agitate for regime change. I ask him if he will help, in case I run into a roadblock at the airport, and he readily agrees. He is more than an activist himself and has prosecuted transnational corporations within the auspices of the Permanent People's Tribunal Session on Agrochemical TNCs. He has represented Malaysian activists pro bono.
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| Fung, Valen and Helen in our Sydney backyard, 2016. |
As it turns out, I never have to call Valen, beyond matters as serious as the latest single malt at duty free. It’s a strange thing to do, considering Valen is more than partial to Famous Grouse. Anyway, Valen visits Sydney with his partner, Fung, whose sister is resident here. They take us on a holiday to Kiama, booking a lovely two-storey Airbnb and giving Helen and I run of the self-contained apartment on the ground floor. It is the first out-of-towner for Helen and I. Also for the first time since my escape from hospital, I cook a pot of curry to take to Kiama, for when we stay in for meals. The pork vindaloo goes down well with everybody and I get my first post-op taste of gin, from the special Hendricks mix Fung concocts with her sister. Valen says I look so thin I could blow away in the wind. When we cross the road, he holds on to my arm, like he's my uncle, and his nephew is not ready for the holiday traffic. All through my diagnoses and treatment, Valen has offered a very special support, encouraging and supporting the manner in which I fight this illness, especially how I have opened up, rather than withdraw. He keeps talking about my attitude. Like I say before, to me there is no other recourse. I want to survive and I’m being sensible. Why anybody would think this is special is beyond me. Deep inside though, is the clarifying purpose, organic, that will drive me all the days to come.
*****
With the rise and fall of the sun, I find great solace in my Sydney family. Helen is always there, looking after me, 24-hour nurse, cook, loving friend, the most caring person, totally dedicated to making my life easier, happier, giving me hope. Time and time again, she hugs me and says, “We will get through this,” looking me straight in the eye, her lips pursed in a smile, infectious, overwhelming, comforting. Some days, I believe her, and I choke up in utter sadness and boundless joy. Helen is the guardian angel I never really knew I had been gifted with, until I had almost nothing else.
Then, there are the kids, Ben and Sara, who do all they can to be the children I need them to be. They enlist their partners, Sara’s Nick and Ben’s Ella. Nick and Ella slip into their special place with ease, and I am grateful because I can be entirely comfortable when they are around. Both have a very open, caring nature. David, the eldest, is of course still in London, teaching and supporting his fiancée, Natalie, who is pursuing a doctorate in a branch of psychology. He connects with us most evenings, on FaceTime, and sometimes it’s like I have my three children and Helen with me, because everyone gets in on the FT call. But I miss David dearly.
Another friend, whom we first meet as Peggy's solicitor, becomes a regular companion. He takes me out for meals, and brings his own pickle in a big bottle, made from green chillies he grows in his garden. He says they will help with my digestion, and he is absolutely right. He introduces Helen to a Thai cafe that's a short walk from St George Hospital. Zachariah Varghese Marrett, or "Zach", as Helen and I call him, knows the area well because he lives near the hospital. He also cooks excellent South Indian dishes, and we are introduced to a few of his specialities whenever we have dinner with him at our Oatley home. Zach helps me talk things through, and encourages me to give voice to all the things I am thinking, the uncertainty ahead, the sense that I am blessed, that I have been saved. Eventually, Zach becomes my solicitor, when I have to "settle my affairs".
One afternoon, when Helen and I have begun to brave going out, we are having a pre-movie meal, Helen receives a message from Zach's brother, Roy. He has got Helen's number from Zach's phone. It's the worst news. Zach has passed away. Apparently, he feels sick, and goes to his GP, who tells him to immediately check in at St George. Zach drives himself home, parks his car and, being Zach, decides to make the five-minute walk to hospital. He collapses on the way, and does not regain consciousness. On the days of my post-op chemo, I sometimes stop to buy a friand at a cafe on the street where he fell, to remember a dear friend.
I pray and pray and pray, and praying gives muscle to the comfort, it strengthens me. Prayer is peace. Refuge. A ready escape into living and existing at a different level to the everyday. I wish I could meditate, leave the world behind me under the Buddha’s Banyan. Helen and I take to praying together, speaking our prayer, leaving nothing unsaid. Our prayers are more about expressing gratitude for all we already have, than imploring on my behalf. First and foremost, it is always, “Thank you. For the healing hands you have placed on all of us, for all the blessings you have bestowed on our family, for protecting our children from harm.” Sometimes I am tired. I also tire of my own words, and it is a wonderful thing to close my eyes and hear my wife say the prayers I need to hear, in her own words.
Prayer helps me travel from destitution to empowerment. I know I am not alone. I do not fight this disease myself. Every day further forges the connection between the person I am and the spiritual strength within me. When I pray for strength, I feel as if I am willing that strength into being, within me. I come to see prayer as a form or auto-suggestion. I pray to God, He is within me, and the prayer is to myself, at the same time. I visualise a pancreas with a wound, at the tip, where Samra has told me my tumour was located, where he made the incision. And as I pray for healing, to live a long life, I picture the most gentle hand slowly caressing that wound, and each caress is a healing of the wound. I ask for the miracle. And I believe that prayer is a miracle in itself. I believe I will heal. Belief is blessed relief, and it is the first step towards willing something to happen, to come into being.
I conjure in my mind the sort of person I want to be, now that the surgery is passed. Do I want to be a despondent survivor, or a man who grasps in his fist every little bit that he has left? No prizes for guessing here. I picture a healed man. A strong man. An example. For the kids. A story they can tell their children.
Prayer becomes conversations with God. Long, long letters in my mind, up in the bedroom, where I have told Helen I will rest while she prepares lunch, or dinner. In truth, I just want to lie by myself, so I can let the fear out. Let it breathe. It’s real, so I let it out, so I can see it face-to-face, give it its name - fear - confront it. When I see it I know how to pray. And I have my conversations as I gaze at my Black Man’s Tree. I talk of all the things I will do, the person that I will become, the love I will try to share, this book, recording my songs, my favourite hymns, for the rest of my life.
I close my eyes and forgive the people who have brought hurt and pain to me and the people around me, in my extended family. I have been angry for a long, long time, it has been a self-righteous and empty anger, pointless, sapping me of strength, and forgiving is a lifting of an immense weight from my shoulders, my soul. I understand that when I forgive, I take from myself the ability to punish someone else, even if I punish them in the privacy of my own mind. I deny myself the need to judge someone else. It has nothing to do with not wanting to be judged in return. The casting away of the habit to sit in judgment is, of itself, a new freedom. I set myself the tasks of making contact with two people who have been the focus of my anger, shaking their hands and saying, “Let’s move on. Helen and I only wish for you peace and goodwill.” As soon as I am strong enough after surgery to drive out by myself and meet them somewhere we can talk freely, I will call them both. I will come to my own reconciliation with the past, and it will allow me to move unhindered into the future. I will forgive and I will lighten my own burden, I will be free of my anger.
Prayer becomes thoughts on a life of walking in the light of Jesus Christ, trying to live by his example. I want to emulate as much as possible a man so selfless that he would give his life to save others. I cannot deny anymore that the act of dying on the cross did not save us from the wrath of God, whatever form that may have taken. Jesus’s death on the cross was to save us from ourselves, by showing us what “we”, what people — Romans, the high priests of Judaism — had become. This is the lesson. This is why I will always be Christ-ian, more than Catholic.
And I know, of course I know, that it would be the most unlikely event in my life if I were to die to save someone else. But, there is a lot of good in doing very much less that that.
As I commune, pray, make plans and promises, from the recess of my mind comes a thought, and I connect more dots — “Your body is the temple of God,” they teach you in church… I am the host… “And God created man in his own image”… If God is in me, and I am created in his image, am I then not a bit of God myself? Don’t I have the same DNA? My children have mine. At first, I fear myself, for the thought that we are more than “in his image”. Is this about faith and understanding, am I face to face with omnipresence, or am I dabbling in blasphemy?
I sieve through these thoughts as if I am in a desert and the footprint of each step I take towards the answer is blown away behind me as soon as I move forward. I have not been here before. I don’t know where I am going, but I know I must continue the journey, wherever it may lead, if I am to arrive in some safe haven of the heart, mind and soul in which I can at last be comfortable. Because if I am not comfortable with the truth within me, I cannot save myself. Because, how can you save yourself if you don’t know yourself?
I don’t know if all these meanderings of the mind are the lingering delirium of chemotherapy. But the thought is inescapable. God has created me in his own image. I have a conscience. God gave me a conscience. I believe I know what being a moral human being involves. I can tell the difference between right and wrong, because I possess judgment. These facilities and faculties give me “agency”, the ability to act on my own behalf, at my behest. I know the thought of committing murder is more than abhorrent, vile. I am not driven by the Darwinian dogma of survival of the fittest. In the same way that it would be a most unlikely event were I to die for someone else, it is just as unlikely that I will kill someone to save myself.
I come to see I should not fear thinking these things through. Blasphemy is a human construct. Conscience and moral judgment are entirely different, and neither is always based on law, and what we consider legal, or illegal. I know I do not besmirch, deny or dismiss the idea of an omnipotence, an omnipresence beyond my all too human imagination. I do now that omnipotence of an omnipresence has endowed me with a power to help myself.
So, there is nothing wrong, in my mind, or sinful (another human construct) to believe that, when I pray, I talk to myself. Before I swallow each chemo tablet, before I stretch out on that extendable armchair for the intravenous dose, I say a prayer. And to help it along, I tell my body to accept the medicine. Embracing my chemotherapy is also about believing it will work, do its job.
How could this be wrong? I am defending the temple of God. Speaking to myself, directing myself, and believing I have some control over my body, the destiny of this body, actually strengthens me. I am lost, but I am found, at the same time. I am blind, yet I see. Do I truly need to understand this? Do I really need the answer? Isn’t this a destination on the road of human conceit? And so, I leave the questions behind. It is enough to know God is manifest in me, and I have my power, my will, to do the right thing, make the most of this one life. This is enough.
While the doctors, nurses, oncologists and endocrinologists treat the diseases, God is treating the human being, through me. He has given me agency to fight this, to understand that I can fight this. I may not win but I shall die fighting. I want to live because I love those who love me. All the love a man can hold, or hope for, more than he might imagine, I have found. Love is my arsenal. I believe I am already saved. That I will live whatever life I have left, however long or short it may be, as God’s instrument, God’s servant. The promise, the vow I make, is a “stand-alone”. It’s a promise without conditions. I am already an instrument, the servant. It is entirely a human proposition.
Staring my mortality in the face has led me to many strange places, and I have found myself contemplating the structures of faith, hope and belief that I have carried as a Christian and Catholic. I now see prayer is also a way of talking to myself, wishing something for myself so strongly that I can will myself to help myself, to fight. A wish is as good as a prayer and, whatever you may be if you are not a believer, you can wish that you may help yourself, the same way that I pray.
For me, it’s not about faith anymore. Faith is accepting something I don’t have to substantiate, publicly or privately, faith is buying into the intangible. Belief is something else entirely. Belief is knowing. And when it comes to me, it’s a sublime rapture. A half-century in the blind-faith system of being a Catholic transforms into an astonishing belief. I have lived decades in a few months. I am yet a child. I follow. I trust in the sense I know where I am going. It’s my ticket back to sanity. My prayer, our prayer, every night before we sleep, closes like this: “And may we be good people every day of our lives.” It’s that simple. If I only have weeks, I’ll be a good person in that time. I believe that’s how it should be. I believe in myself and that belief flares in me like the White Light of God.
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| Purple Reign: The jacaranda in our Oatley backyard. |
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