Collins Loss Adjustment

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-981-14-2327-7
Verlag: Ethos Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 316 Seiten

—Victoria McLeod, Singapore, March 30, 2014
Loss Adjustment is a mother’s recount of her 17-year-old daughter’s suicide.
In the wake of Victoria McLeod’s passing, she left behind a remarkable journal in her laptop of the final four months of her life. Linda Collins, her mother, has woven these into her memoir, which is at once cohesive, yet fragmented, reflecting a survivor's state of mind after devastating loss.
involves the endless whys, the journey of Linda Collins and her husband in honouring Victoria, and the impossible question of what drove their daughter to this irretrievable act. A stunningly intimate portrait of loss and grief, is a breaking of silence—a book whose face society cannot turn away from.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Collins, Linda

Leseproben

6. Three days

In the West, a wake usually follows after the funeral. People gather for dainty sandwiches and cups of tea, and perhaps a tot of whisky. Condolences are offered to the bereaved. People hug, exchange brief memories, perhaps shed tears. And then they get into their cars and drive off. But we are in Singapore, and a Chinese-style wake—with Christian elements—has been organised for the duration of three days before the funeral. Malcolm and I are so bereft with grief that work colleagues, the majority of whom are Chinese, have kindly stepped in to help organise things.

Victoria is in an open coffin, as is the local custom, with photographs and memorabilia at the front of it. Mourners will keep her body company night and day until the funeral service and cremation. Malcolm’s friend, veteran photographer Francis Ong, begins discreetly orchestrating the running of the room in which Vic will lie for the duration. Francis has put his organisational faith in a young photographer, Mark Cheong, by placing him at the entrance for a demanding role requiring tact and a light but firm touch. The job is to man the visitors’ book and to ask for financial contributions for the bereaved. Every detail and amount will be meticulously recorded, all carried out in respectful good humour. (We had no idea of this at the time. To Westerners, the wrangling of money from visitors to the funeral home may seem a practical step too far. But later we are very grateful for this pragmatism; the wake and funeral service cost over fifteen thousand dollars.)

Mourners, for their part—and the Singaporeans are all old hands at this grief business—have already started arriving and sit in café-style chairs at circular tables. It could be a shophouse eatery, except the room is festooned with flowers and there is the matter of the coffin and its body. This does not deter the mourners from eating. Over the next three days they will eat and drink and crack melon seeds between their teeth, and cry with us and laugh with us at memories of sad and happy times. They see it as perfectly normal for me to sit beside Victoria’s body for hours on end, telling her how much I love her and all the things I meant to inform her of but never got around to. How her grandfather Jack was a conscientious objector in the Second World War, but did not want to be separated from his mates, and so became an ambulance officer. How Grandma Sheila recalls him waking from a frequent dream of the trenches, always crying out, “I can’t reach him, I can’t reach him.” That he was a brave man who did the best he could within his own principles. Of how he would have loved her and been so proud of her. Asking Vic to tell Jack we miss him.

Days pass. I sit, hair dishevelled, face bare of make-up but streaked with tears. I don’t care what I have got on, what shoes I’m wearing. Once or twice, when I am lifted gently by the arms to come and meet well-wishers, I see the look of shock at my raw, unmade-up appearance flash across their faces. One particularly visually conscious media colleague even sends a message that is relayed to me: “Tell Linda to at least do her hair for the funeral.” The more traditional Taoists among the Chinese might approve my dishevelment; their rituals include having the immediate family wear sackcloth. Then again, elders are not expected to show respect to younger ones—in ancient times a child would have been buried in silence, without the palaver we are going through.

So that is who I am now, I think: a woman made mad, frumpy and unfashionably middle-aged by trauma and grief. However, I am mostly glad that they can see my suffering. For I need to know through their eyes that I am suffering. I can’t see it, myself. I am too numb for that sort of awareness.

Who comes to say goodbye to my daughter, who has the courage or love or sense of decorum to participate in this rite of passage? Mostly it is colleagues, Singaporeans who rise to the occasion. They know Malcolm and me through work, and the occasional social gathering, yet their comfort at the wake is that of intimate fellowship. Their understanding of grief is profound and respectful. Reporter Serene Goh, mother of a young child, stands near the coffin as a hush falls on the room, and sings from her heart a hymn for the grieving, “It Is Well with My Soul”. Pat Daniel, then editor-in-chief of the English, Malay and Tamil media arm of my employer, Singapore Press Holdings, fills the little room with the bulk of his presence, then fills it again with a rendition of “Amazing Grace”. His gravelly tenor is surprising in its sweet strength. It unites us, giving voice to the emotion we want to express, helping us to release our tears.

Mourners of all religions come. Muslim colleagues—whose own rites would not include a viewing time before the funeral, as Islamic law decrees the body should be buried as soon as possible after death—come to this room with its Christian cross on a wall.

One of them, Malcolm’s friend, Ishak, tells him to be strong. Be strong—it is also a saying used by New Zealand Maori who will urge, kia kaha. My husband repeats to himself, Be strong, as if trying it on for size. Yet he is finding it impossible to be strong. He realises that Ishak’s advice is that of a believer, one who sees a point to all this suffering. A superior being has willed it, and there is life after death. Malcolm admires that certainty, that belief. But he does not share it.

Singaporean neighbours come, and others who know me slightly through a newspaper column I used to write, and who have read of our daughter’s passing in a large In Memoriam notice we have placed in The Straits Times. Finally, some Westerners come: neighbours I haven’t spoken to for years, mothers whose children played with Victoria when she was younger. They are shocked by the set-up, I can tell—the swirl of Asian mourners, the donations from mourners entered into a ledger book at the entrance, the small room crowded with round tables and chairs, the open coffin, the dominance of Victoria’s broken body as a focal point, the photos of her on prominent display; the sight of us alternately kissing Vic, then shaking visitors’ hands; and the faint cloying smell of dying flowers from another room and of joss sticks lit by who knows, a visiting Buddhist showing their respects? But these women have their own pragmatism, they put aside any Western misgivings to embrace me, cry with me, and even talk quietly to Victoria in her coffin.

No one from Victoria’s school visits, that we are aware of. No teacher, principal, nor even any of her friends. We are bewildered. We keep hoping someone will appear.

Days pass at our apartment, too. We go back and forth from the funeral home at various points of each day, to return home and draw breath. This lingering goodbye is perfect. The only way I am able to keep going, is to know that soon I will be back with Victoria, sitting with her in the funeral home, still having her physically in my life.

One day, although no one from Victoria’s school visits the wake that I know of, its student welfare officer and her boss come to our home. I vaguely recall the latter from Vic’s primary school years, and I don’t know the other at all. Why do these people in particular come from the school, which is a private one catering to international students? Why not a teacher Victoria especially liked, or the principal, or the deputy principal who led the choir our daughter sang in? But we do the decent thing, invite them in, and someone gets them a cup of tea. The student welfare officer, in particular, is exceedingly well-dressed and coiffured, and clearly nervous. They keep glancing at each other with apprehension as they ask how we are and tell us how shocked they are. There are awkward pauses. It seems as if they are expecting me to be angry with them, or to be asking them something. I don’t understand, and put away these doubts that keep surfacing. For now, all I can deal with is kindness. Afterwards Malcolm and I say to each other, “That was unpleasant. Who were they? Perhaps they really liked Victoria? But why were they so anxious, rather than sad?”

Neighbours come to our home, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Taoist, each with their own kindness. A pastor comes and says prayers. Even my confirmed unbeliever, Malcolm, joins in. But he draws the line at one group of strangers who knock, offering to come in and comfort us. Exhausted, he sends them away. We later find out that they are not a bunch of well-meaning, happy-clappy “God-botherers”, as Malcolm had thought, but a group from the Samaritans of Singapore who specialise in assisting those affected by suicide.

Flowers come, each knock at the front door revealing a scowling courier bearing a wreath or bouquet; they are fed up at having gotten lost yet again in the twists and turns of the large apartment complex.

Some people do not come. My parents in New Zealand are elderly and too frail to make the trip to Singapore. They send a huge bouquet of orchids in Victoria’s favourite colour of purple. From my only sibling, Peter, and his wife and two sons, there is only silence. No phone call, not even an email. I phone and ask my mother, who lives close by them in Auckland, and she says they do not want to contact me. Apparently, the youngest boy (a year older than Victoria, with whom she played as a toddler when we made the long trek to New Zealand) says he hardly knew her and why bother. My mother does not seem to think this an outrage. Parents have their own reasons for what they say and who they are, and I had always loved them even if they seemed dismissive, but that day I realise a horrible truth. Possibly they love me, but they really don’t like...