Missives For the Beyond

 Six years on was a big leap from late eighties to mid nineties and leaving the visit a number of months added further lag. Now Teta Marija was dying. Overnight the decision was made to get out to see her. Teta M. was one of Bab’s closest friends in the new country. They had known each other from Maffra out in Gippsland, four hours by train from the city. In the morning a family gathering had put off the venture until early afternoon; then after the trek out she was found to have been transferred to the hospital in fact. When the daughter Jenny texted Palliative Care Room 5 in her confusion she had forgotten to add it was the Werribee Mercy and not the home. Poor darling rapidly slipping, presumably doped up and only thin consciousness remaining. She was in little need of the visit herself now. Through the night and in the mornings the memory clung of the famous Montenegrin keeners at the gravesides sending messages over to the earlier departed. If there was some place of gathering in the beyond the logic followed. Searching out the hospital after the ordeal of locating the home in the first place was impossible. No, the poor dear was is no need of a visit. It seemed pointless. Without a Melways or GPS, without data on the phone, half blind in the right eye­ – Joyce and Borges predecessors – the almost entirely vacant streets, the ordeal had overshadowed the larger ordeal of the waiting hospital bed. As Veko had reported, a better class of home it appeared, the view of the entertainment room from reception showed oldies in chairs watching television and others pushing their frames across the carpet. Two and a half years residence would cost a pretty penny. Ghastly suburban prospect en route let’s say and leave it at that. Australian ugliness big time, to the max. In large fields backhoes were continuing on their merry way. There was clearly much more scope in this terrain for more and more housing of the same sort. It took almost as long extricating oneself from the web as it did locating the home in the first place. Finally an obliging ute was followed to the freeway back to town. Maccas, IGA, KFC were the signposts, more prominent because of their colourful livery than the schools, churches and creeks. Skeleton Creek was one marker on the rough pencil sketch prepared beforehand. The fantasy street names were not always easy to read. Ibiza, Pasadena, Central Park Avenue. Botanic and other pleasures were another thread: Peppermint, Juniper, Elegante, Cabernet, Bliss, Manna. Traditional old painters, favourite writers and footballers in other sectors. Construction cladding advertised an upcoming large amusement development featuring a Major Water Slide, Major See-Saw, among a number of other features. The housing had been built in the past decade. For the first twenty or thirty years in this city an Indian had never been sighted. Now there was reportedly 200k in Melbourne alone. A news item earlier in the day that needed to be rebutted by the ABC suggested Sydney had become a majority Chinese city. The relatively clean air, blue skies, stable social order had certainly attracted numbers from less favoured places in the region particularly. A year or two ago the municipality of Wyndham had been the fastest growing area of the country; in more recent time a region on the outskirts of Perth had overtaken. Chemist Warehouse had been another of the Google Map markers. It was difficult to recall whether that chain had been in existence six years before. A chap at a coffee stall at a small mall near the home reported a second outlet not too far distant. This though was the one near the Manor, up Boardwalk Boulevard second on the left.