Christchurch

I'd been thinking about a particular group of people in Christchurch - those who have recently lost their partner and now suddenly have to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake on top of that.
           I was talking to an out-of-town friend today and mentioned this. "I know one", she said. Her Christchurch friend lost her husband three weeks ago.
           Then there are all the people who have just lost their partners in the quake itself, or even worse, don't know where they are or what's happened to them.
           Anything I try to write to express my sympathy comes out sounding trite and banal, but I am so very, very sad for you all and I hope you have loving people around you to help you through this.

There will be no new posts on Elsewoman for a couple of weeks. My lovely housesitter will be here taking care of Dorothy, who is going steadily downhill - well, she is 85 in human years. 

A mixed bag

Well, it's been a very mixed weekend. The previous few days, after Jonathan and Eric left on Wednesday morning, turned out to be very busy. I also found out that in her Tuesday afternoon web review Ele Ludeman, who had previously discussed my food blog and Harvey's blog on National Radio, had talked to Noelle McCarthy about his death, the Last Post I put up on his blog, and the new focus for Elsewoman. They said lovely things, so thank you both very much.
            A while ago, a friend who has lived on her own for a long time gave me one very useful piece of advice - she said to always make sure I had something booked in for the weekend. Otherwise it does seem to stretch out like an endless desert to be got through. I thought I'd done well this time - I was well aware that it was my first weekend on my own for some weeks.
           Saturday worked out fine - it was gorgeous still weather, so I replanted all my salad pots and reorganised my gardening stuff, then settled down to get some paid editorial work done before I needed to start cooking for the first of the guests I've asked to dinner this week (to find out how it went, see Something Else to Eat).
            
Sunday wasn't great. I'd planned to take myself into Te Papa, as they had two interesting free things on - a lecture about how Western artists reacted to "primitive" art from the start of the 19th century, related to some of the paintings in the "European Masters" exhibition; and a screening of short 1950s fairy-tale films by Lotte Reiniger. There's a good account of her life and work here. She created amazing animated films using intricate hand-cut black paper silhouettes.
          The lecture was good and the films were brilliant - I'd read about them years ago and had always wanted to see them. But there was hardly anyone else there. It was sad they hadn't been better advertised, especially to parents and children, because many children would have absolutely loved them.
           So then I came out, walked along the waterfront in the sun, caught the bus home - and realised that I hadn't spoken to anyone all day and was feeling very low indeed. I managed to stop myself going into a complete downward spiral by calling Lesley down the road and asking if I could come over for a pre-dinner drink (she'd been away and I hadn't seen her for a while). Five minutes later I was round there with a nice cold bottle of pinot gris. Her and Paul's warm company was exactly what I needed, and I was able to come home, eat my dinner quite happily accompanied by "Grand Designs", and go and do some work. I've learnt another useful lesson: it's not enough just to have things to do - a generous measure of human contact is essential. And at the moment, anyway, I need to make sure I have it on both Saturday and Sunday.

Valentine

Today is the 13th of February. The supposedly unlucky 13 was always lucky for Harvey and me. His birthday was the 13th and our beloved villa was No. 13. But the only special thing about today's date is that it precedes Valentine's Day tomorrow.
          We never made a big fuss about it, but we did always find each other a soppy or silly card (sometimes one of each). One of my favourites from Harvey said, "On a scale of 1 (lentil soup) to 10 (hot fudge sundae) - you are an 11." Or the one that asked wistfully, "Shall I tell you my most secret, fond and optimistic dream? Maybe one day you'll love me as much as chocolate."  Whereas I, when I wasn't being soppy, tended more to the bizarre, like the one with a ferocious looking woman calling out to her husband, "What's the matter, Harvey? Cat got your tongue?" while he hides round the corner clutching the cat lovingly to his face and saying, "Oh my God, she knows about us!" 
            This is of course all simply a feeble attempt to feel better by remembering how lucky I've been to be able to give, and get, Valentine's Day cards like these for thirty years, instead of feeling unutterably sorry for myself  because I won't be getting or giving any tomorrow.

Fine

As soon as I got up on Friday, I could see it was going to be a beautiful day, and that made everything so much easier.         
          In the morning we celebrated Harvey's life at Old St Paul's with over 200 people. We had planned it very carefully as "An Anthology of Harvey McQueen", with a dear friend as a superb master of ceremonies, and six other speakers covering his work as an educator, an anthologist, a memoir writer and a poet, followed by my son, and Harvey's closest friend, and me.

          Each of us read something from Harvey's own work, but the first piece I read was written by one of the students he taught in his first job at Morrinsville College in the early 1960s - a girl called Janet, who grew up to be the poet Jan Kemp.

'It is February 1962 and I’m sitting in the third form at Morrinsville College, the girls in our summer green and white check uniforms and the boys in grey shorts & shirts with sandals. We are all about thirteen. The door opens wide and in comes Mr McQueen, our new Social studies teacher carrying his teacher’s leather briefcase which he plonks lightly on the desk and looks round at us smiling. You wouldn’t say his smile is a wide open simple one; he’s got an enticing sort of smile, a smile that challenges you to find something out.

        And we do. We learn about the Romans in Britain and Hadrian’s Wall. We learn about the ancient Greeks and draw maps to locate places like Ephesus and Troy. We learn about Cretan Minoan culture and that you can dig up the past. Things not often talked about in Morrinsville, though someone might sometimes find a Maori adze in a paddock. At playtime I’m going to sit next to Jim Hopa, who’s so handsome and quiet and brown. My girlfriend Jill has arranged it all. I can’t wait, so when Mr McQueen asks me a question and I’m not listening, he says “I expected you’d be paying attention, Janet!” and I’m called to order in no uncertain way. He sees everything. He has wavy hair, a heart-shaped face and I think he looks as slender as an ironing board. He wears a greenish jacket and a tie, and brown trousers and shoes. His voice is interesting, deeper than you’d think it would be.

        Years later I meet him again in Wellington at a writers’ gathering. He’s hardly changed at all. “You know, you helped show us the world” I say, as a sort of thank-you, and he smiles his friendly, quizzical smile and nods. “Good!” he says. “I’m really glad if I did." '

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The last piece I read was from This Piece of Earth. Much of this book reminds me of things we did that I'd completely forgotten, but I remember this particular February evening perfectly.

'The last morning of the month starts off drizzly, but the sun soon burns off the mist and the day turns hot and humid. In the evening we walk round to help friends celebrate selling their house. When we get home it’s after ten, but the hall gauge shows 27 degrees. We open the doors and sit outside with one last drink. The nicotiana, alyssum and variegated flax glow in the reflected light. Overhead are stars, always part of my childhood but rarely noticed in the city.
        For about ten minutes the air remains absolutely still. Moths flutter silently around the lawn and flowers. Then with a gentle stirring of air, the mildest of breezes arrives, and the pittosporum leaves begin to move. It’s time to go in.'

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In the afternoon the six of us - Harvey's brother and sister-in-law, his friend, my son and his partner, and me - walk down to the Karori cemetery. The kind, dignified man from Lychgate carefully places the eight-sided wooden box in the ground beneath the deep red Ingrid Bergman roses, and we each say what we want to say, to and for Harvey, and we cry. Then we walk back home.

Four weeks...

...and two days. Incredibly busy for much of the time, with all the things that have to be done - the legalities, of course (more on this later), getting ready for my son and his friend arriving, and organising the public memorial service. In other words, not exactly normal life, whatever that means.
          But I'm now sleeping more or less normally, which is a huge help. I was racing to get as much as possible done before Jonathan and Eric arrived last Wednesday, and I'm really pleased I did that, it's given me time to enjoy having them here, though I won't really relax until after Friday is over. Then we'll have two weeks to go on picnics and explore Wellington properly.
           They fill the house with welcome human sounds, and it's lovely having cups of tea made for me and the dishes done - it's been close on three years since Harvey was able to do those things. I don't miss the work involved in looking after him, or the worry. I just miss him - especially his voice.
            Perhaps having the company of the "boys" - I can't help calling them that, though they're actually in their mid-forties (I was a child bride!) - will make it worse later when they've gone. But that's just too bad, I need them here now, not least because they give me something new to think about and respond to.
             Meanwhile the cat is showing signs of improvement - glossier fur, good appetite - so maybe she'll be around a while longer than I thought. The week before last, I saw a white tiger cub in the window of the toyshop over the road and had to go in and buy it, crying all over the counter. Harvey loved tigers. Now Dorothy likes to sit near it on the bed.

    

Since Harvey died

This is my first Elsewoman post since Harvey died in the early hours of Christmas Day. From now on I'm going to put my feminist posts mainly on The Hand Mirror and use Elsewoman to write about the experience of learning to live on my own for the first time in 65 years.
           The most difficult thing is exactly what I expected - not having anyone at home to talk to about what's going on in your life each day, and tell you about theirs. So I'm hoping that writing here will to some extent serve as a way of doing that. After all, what I'm now having to deal with is something that many people go through, as some of their comments on our blogs have already shown. Eating on my own is really hard too, but I'll write about that on my food blog.
             Given Harvey's situation, I'd already had to work out how to manage parts of my life without his company. He wasn't able to climb the stairs, so I had the two upper rooms and bathroom to myself. So that was a help - at least I was used to sleeping solo. He'd stopped going out, too, except to the doctor and the hospital, so I'd built up my own social life. It was really sad not even being able to go out together even just for coffee or to visit friends. Still, he'd become expert at managing his Fatso DVD list, and usually managed to get a movie we'd both enjoy for Saturday nights. I'd make a nice dinner and we'd settle down to watch.
                 Now I need to ask people round to watch with me, or go out. The weird thing is that the DVDs Harvey ordered have kept coming - he had three here when he died, so when I sent them back unwatched, three more appeared. (Soon I must cancel his subscription - I won't have time to do it justice, he used to get through about 15 a month.) He had obviously set out to get ones I'd like for the holidays - there were two movies related to France, and a documentary on modern art.
                  So this Saturday Pam and Geoff came round for fish and chips and we saw "Paris When It Sizzles", made in 1964, with William Holden and Audrey Hepburn (Harvey adored her). It turned out to be an astonishingly post-modern, satiric take on Hollywood conventions, with Holden as a blocked scriptwriter whose fragments of ideas came to life on the screen, only to get stuck and have to be reworked, sending up every movie cliche in the process. Noel Coward appeared (and helped write it), and Tony Curtis had a brilliant cameo as a dim "method actor". I enjoyed it, but Harvey would have loved it, and I would have been so pleased about that.
                    Then I spent today sorting out his room. My son and his friend arrive on Wednesday, and I'll need papers for the lawyer this week (the office has been closed until now), so it had to be done. It wasn't as bad as I'd imagined it might be, perhaps because it had a real purpose apart from just tidying everything away. But it still all feels quite surreal - how can I be doing this?

More on the "unfortunate experiment"

The second 2010 issue (Volume 24, Issue 2) of the Women's Studies Journal is now available. It's free online here. (Click on "Current Issue".)

This issue focuses on the "unfortunate experiment", the Cartwright Inquiry and cervical cancer.
Contents include:

• Anne Else, "The 'unfortunate experiment' and the Cartwright Inquiry, twenty years on: why getting it right matters"
• Phillida Bunkle, "Patient centred ethics, the Cartwright Inquiry and feminism: Identifying the central fallacy in Linda Bryder, A History of the ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ at National Women’s Hospital"
• Christy Parker, One for the girls?: Cervical cancer prevention and the introduction of the HPV vaccine in Aotearoa New Zealand"
• Rhonda Shaw and Christine Donovan, "Cultural safety: Nurses’ accounts of negotiating the order of things"

 There's also an editorial by Sue Jackson and Ann Weatherall, articles on autism and on older women managing their resources, and reviews of new books on sex work and on Amy Bock.

[Cross-posted to The Hand Mirror]

Human rights - how we're doing

Friday 10 December was International Human Rights Day. The Human Rights Commission chose it to launch their new report on how New Zealand is doing on human rights.  But so far the media have paid it scant attention - the Dom-Post had a small report on page 13 this morning. Which was odd, because at least half of the other items in the paper were related in some way to human rights issues.
               The summary report highlights thirty priority areas (from over a hundred identified by the research and public consultation process) where "further action is essential over the next five years to strengthen human rights protections and better ensure the dignity, equality and security of everyone in New Zealand".
                Three of these priorities are particularly relevant - and poignant - at this time of year: increasing the supply and diversity of social housing, reducing child poverty through a coordinated and integrated approach, and reviewing and addressing the adequacy of core benefit rates.
                The Welfare Working Group is right about one thing - life on a benefit is pretty grim. But that's mainly because benefit rates are so low. It's a neatly circular argument - drive benefits down to less than adequate leevls for even the most basic living costs, then stand back, point to the resulting misery, and say "See? Being on a benefit is bad for you."
                 Until the Human Rights Commission's report is heeded, Christmas will bring nothing but heartache for beneficiary parents and children, as well as a growing number of employed parents. Foodbanks all over the country are reporting a big surge in requests for help.
                  In Whangarei the Salvation Army gave out 3746 parcels in 2009. But by the end October 2010, 5961 parcels had been given out - and that doesn't cover the Christmas increase. The Auckland City Mission usually gives out 350 food parcels a month, but over the Christmas holidays it goes up to 2000. "It’s always busier at Christmas," says City Missioner Diane Robertson. "There’s no access to school food programmes and parents have to juggle work commitments with caring for children at home for the holidays. The pressure on families is enormous."
                   To donate food in Auckland, phone (09) 303 9200 or go to http://www.aucklandcitymission.org.nz/   In Wellington you can help through the Downtown Community Ministry, Compassion House, Lukes Lane, phone (04) 384 7699, or email office@dcm.org.nz  Many supermarkets collect food too.
                   And read the Commission's report - then ask the government what they're going to do about it.