Shards of Ice: Antarctica - Death Survival Grief

Shards of Ice

Antarctica – Death Survival Grief

Minnie Biggs

Contents

Copyright

Epigraph

Dedication

Shards of Ice

Shards of Ice: Antarctica – Death Survival Grief

ISBN 978 1 76041 062 9

Copyright © Minnie Biggs 2015

Cover photo: Minnie Biggs

All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

First published 2015 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

Those whom we love and lose

Are not where they were before

They are now wherever we are.

St John Chrysostom

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau urged us to ‘explore our inner selves, to be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within: is not our own interior white on the chart? Explore your own higher latitudes…’

For Stephen

and Joyce, without whom…

Shards of Ice

Letter to the deceased

Darling,

Guess what?

I am going to write about Antarctica! Why Antarctica? Why indeed! Because it came into my life after you left. It grabbed what was left of my heart and my imagination and captured me, setting me on a new, inconceivable path, into the unknown. Straight onto the ice. And it took you with me.

Stephen

Stephen died in August. He was eighty-four years old. We had been married forty-seven and a half years. He had been going downhill for four years. Death was expected, even hoped for, and the shock, when it came, was unimaginable. How can it be?

In November, my niece Edie said that a single cabin had become available on the National Geographic Explorer going to Antarctica in December. Was I interested? Could I join them?

Was I?

Could I?

Antarctica was a dream, hardly articulated, a vague snowy mass of unknown. Stephen was not particularly attracted by it. He had been to the IMAX movie about Antarctica with Hugh when we first moved to Australia; a boy thing, I thought. But he found it disorienting and disturbing, all that surrounding sound and three-dimensional ice. He was uncomfortable, didn’t like it at all.

Since it was a place with no personal connection or history, no shared stories, it was the ideal first journey for me. While he was worsening, it was impossible for me to travel far; Alice Springs was my outer limit, with frequent phone contact. Once a year. One of my spiritual homes.

Suddenly I was free and suddenly I didn’t want to go anywhere. I couldn’t. Europe was too raw. America too crowded with friends and family urging me back.

‘When are you coming home?’ they asked. To America? To Portugal?

Antarctica, however, was another story. A new story. A clean slate. Ice.

The ship

I forgot how much I loved being on board ship. And this was a real ship. She had a curved bow and the stern was lower on the water, the superstructure tight and centred, not one of those cruising high-rise hotels, floating Holiday Inns. Watching the sharp bow cut through the water filled me with joy as it had since I was a child on our Nova Scotia fishing boat. Tentatively at first, I explored the different unconnected decks, up and down stairs, in and out of heavy doors I could scarcely move; I would soon know why they were so heavy. The sea.

The Drake

The infamous Drake Passage, the Roaring Forties. Around the southernmost points of South America there are more than a hundred and fifty shipwrecks. From all the ages of travel, the earliest navigators who did not have a clue about what was ahead, right up to present-day ships with all the mod cons.

There are rocks and shoals and reefs. This is serious sea. It is wide open; there is no land mass to interrupt the driving wind. The wind that circles the globe on that latitude is unimpeded. There is a funnel effect. The wind is sucked through the narrow passage and around the world.

Everyone gets seasick. Helpfully, there are bowls of preventative patches for the taking, sick bags are draped over railings every few metres, people talk about their preferred remedies, plans of action. Many are sick or sleep long and deep with the patches on their necks. There is even a new injection that puts you to sleep and wakes you up all well. Except we all forgot ginger. So simple. Ginger eases seasickness.

When the ship ventures out of port, slowly the seas increase. The ship gradually begins to heave and move with the rhythm of the sea. Almost a musical rhythm. If we didn’t have to lurch and hang on, if we could only sway with the ship, dance, swim with its rhythm. But we aren’t made that way, we have to keep ourself upright, or stiffly brace ourselves in our bunks.

‘One hand for the ship,’ we are advised.

My rings clink clink clink against the metal railings on the stairs. I stagger along the corridors leaning on the walls, and they have helpfully laid rope lines along open passageways, so I can cling as I weave. Or sway as I wobble.

If a little affected by wine later on, such a good excuse and support, that helpful rope!

Meals and shipmates

Meals and the occasional Zodiac ride together with Edie and Sam were perfect. The three of us had so much life to catch up on, and death. My brother, who was her father, had died since we last saw each other. And Stephen. They had been great mates.

We were also ever mindful about where we were and what we were doing, every precious moment: that was our top priority, this wondrous trip to Antarctica. With the occasional giggle or gossip about one or another of our shipmates. I tried to avoid the noisiest cocktail party every night at six, but was drawn back to the daily recaps by the various expedition leaders.

There was the hilarious diver Dennis who showed films from his underwater robotic camera with raunchy commentary about the sex lives of the tiny slow-moving cold-water creatures. Lisa, our intrepid expedition leader, handing us ashore standing in the ice water by the hour, would be dressed in high heels and flowing skirt or wide pants – wow – going over plans and schedules for the next day. The naturalist Steve, a former university professor, was the most formal of the speakers; he was also passionate about climate change and spoke eloquently and with graphs and science I had not been aware of, for the enlightenment of us all. Naturalist and bird expert Ian quoted amusingly and extensively from perhaps the greatest literary book written about the area, and certainly the one with the most fetching title: The Worst Journey In the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. So the drinks flowed and hors d’oeuvres were served and we were edified as the noise level rose.

The only drawback

It came as a surprise. All those people! Over a hundred of them, all Americans. I am a Yank but have lived in Australia for nine years and in Europe for fifteen before that. The twanging accent came as a shock. I missed the Aussie drawl. They seemed to be talking to each other all the time. There was a lot of noise. Social interaction. Even if I did not interact, it was going on all around me and the energy depleted me.

Thank heaven for my single cabin; 311 became my refuge and retreat. I craved the silence, inside and outside. Every spare moment, I’d race back there. It was spacious by ship standards. On the ocean side, it had a large window – you could hardly call it a porthole – whose blinds I kept open all day and all the bright night. There was always something to see. The passing seas and flitting birds, and later…the ice. The world’s best picture window. One’s very own moving picture screen with ever changing, fascinating panoramas.

Perhaps I had not realised what a quiet life we led in recent years. What a quiet relationship we had. I was the chatterer but in recent years the chattering stories did not seem so important, became less, as Stephen became less interested, more withdrawn. Understandable. Why should I tease him with tales of my occasional trips to the opera in the city, what happened at yoga class, what bargain I discovered at the market?

Books

On the top deck, behind the bridge, was a large open lounge with tables and chairs by the windows, and an extremely well stocked library in low shelves down the central section. What a library! Loads of National Geographic publications, and atlases – every cabin had a glass-covered desk under which lay a National Geographic atlas opened to the pages on Antarctica. I love maps. I had no idea there was so much written about Antarctica. And the Arctic, as the ship goes there, and many other places as well. Galapagos. Baha California. Alaska. A comprehensive collection of bird books. Travel, history, natural science, and even shelves of novels, many left behind by previous passengers. A veritable treasure chest for a book lover. Where to start? Two books about Mawson just because I knew the least about him. And the great one by Lansing that had been highly recommended, that covered the Shackleton saga, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.

On the few occasions when the ship was moving through relatively ordinary seas, and during stolen moments in the early morning or late at night when there was not a mind-blowing panorama on my window screen, I read and read. And learned. It was good to feel myself riding the same waves, mercifully less tumultuous than those sailed by the original explorers. And later to step on the shore, or at least some part of that same continent. Treading – just close enough – in their footsteps. I saw people reading normal books – airport novels – and could not imagine not immersing myself in where I was and who had been there.

Titus Oates

We – or rather I (Stephen was, of course, not a member) – had a parish priest named Titus Oates: John Francis Titus Oates, called, of course, Titus. I do not know how many of them there were, over the years, but this one certainly dined out on his name, carrying an extra wisp of mystique with him about his rustling robes. He had come to us in Maine from the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth where he had been chaplain, which was enough to interest Stephen. He and Titus could talk ships, uniforms and history, and not have to pretend any interest in the church. Tenuous as his connection with the famous Titus Oates may have been, this priest kept it alive for us, providing an almost personal connection with that sad hero. Which stuck with me. All through the years. All the way to Antarctica.

Explorer

For all his lack of interest in Antarctica, Stephen would have made a fine explorer. He had many of those qualities of Frank Hurley, the great photographer: a zealous ability to create and adapt from bits and pieces the odds and ends which would be life-saving. Just before the Endurance sank, Hurley hauled away the steel ash chute and constructed a stove with assorted bits of empty cans and oil drums, making a portable blubber fed cooker for their future travels. Ironic that the Australian was far and away the most ingenious among many who were all able and clever.

Stephen also had that imperviousness to cold, or weather in general. I would urge him to take off his woolly as the day got warmer, or put on a jacket when the temperature dropped, but he would not be bothered. He simply did not feel it. Why, when I was shivering or sweating? A sort of inner discipline, long trained by strict upbringing, the Naval College and RAAF. He could cook, he could darn, sew and mend shoes with the best of them: strong skills of all explorers. He could go without food, and not worry, much as he loved food, as the explorers did. There were so many stories told by so many of them, sitting around during an endless storm, hungry to exhaustion, and talking about the food they missed the most, the meal each longed to have the first moment they could. They would list them carefully. And taste them. Innerly.

Food

In the weeks before he died, we used to have conversations about favourite remembered places visited and meals eaten. Especially the meals. Once again, yet again, I described George’s Restaurant in Rome where we went after we were married. It was fancy and expensive at the time, a real treat. George’s featured a seating plan in which all seats had a view, as it were; no one’s back was to anyone else. A series of groupings of seats. It was a first in international fusion cuisine although that concept was far from being coined. It was neither Italian nor anything else specifically. One of the pièces de resistance was abacchio: baby lamb, almost unborn. I shudder to think of it now but at the time it was beyond divine. I described the meal to Stephen, who had eaten nothing but bland liquid mush for some days: he smiled and rolled his eyes, and said, ‘Delicious.’ We could taste it anew.

Ice

Sculpture on the sea: floating sapphire on turquoise blue, cobalt, cerulean. It is said that what is above is half or less than what lies below. Here you can actually see this clearly. Not a shadow, but the continuation of the iceberg below the surface, yet another abstract shape of interesting dimensions. But the colour changes! Shades of blue, green, blending, merging, almost a kaleidoscope colour palate, against the smooth dark ground of the sea. The bergs float there – it’s called Iceberg Graveyard; the sea flows in such a way as to trap the bergs in a large cove. These gigantic shiny chunks of ice that have broken off from ancient glacial formations, into abstract sculptures, one more beautiful than the next, ride on the water. A floating exhibition. Mosaic of icy tesserae. Henry Moore living on into eternity, his rounded forms rolling and curving and oozing and sliding. The Zodiac takes us weaving through and around the bergy bits – that’s their name if they are less than twenty feet high. Close up we see the varying surfaces. What artist has had such fun with his pen? Some sides are drawn with thin parallel lines, some cross-hatched, some roughly scrubbed, some of whirly patterns, or gentle curves, some deeply scarred, scoured, striated in ever varying patterns. Infinite.

Tabular bergs

In Iceberg Alley, the enormous rectangular uniform bergs resemble downtown high-rises lying on their sides. White and smooth. Floating, and moving, imperceptibly to the eye. I asked if they were charted. No. If they could be charted. No. So these behemoths dance gently through and around their alley, in a pattern seen only by God. Each time the ship visits, they are in a different combination, a different arrangement of each other. They are like huge living things, but not living; like unknown gigantic prehistoric animals, but not animals. Like nothing really. Their regal, august, stately selves.

It is late in the evening, the light is pink and apricot. As the ship passes a startlingly massive berg, its shadow begins to creep across the side of the berg. There we are, in strong relief, clearer than the ship itself. People race back and forth madly to capture this image on their cameras. Our ship and the tabular berg are one.

Cliffs

Blue cubist paintings. Like the sides of the bergy bits, only on the gigantic massive cliffs of ice, the texture is as varied and complex as those of the smaller ones. An accomplished artist, discovering abstract expressionism. The painter constructing and deconstructing shapes, cubes, rectangles, triangles, all imaginable shapes and tossing them around, playing with the forms, and decorating each with different patterns, different designs. Chewed ice. Etching deeply, his palate knife swings wildly in another direction. An infinity of pattern, and the subtle colours of blue, grey and white, rising and falling, moving here and there. A jigsaw puzzle of bergs never to be reassembled.

At sea

The ship hovers on the short-distance runs; in slow motion, the bergs pass before us – what next will appear? Always a surprise, always a delight – I sit on the bed and write or read and look up and it is changed, and look up again, and changed: now domed, now vaguely misted.

3.15 a.m., another panorama, can’t close my eyes long enough to meditate so leave them open.

Do we still call it night when its still light? All night my shades are up. I am sleep deprived. I cannot bear to miss a moment if I wake, which often happens. Sun sets at 23.29, sun rises at 02.56. That is three hours of semi-darkness. No stars, no moon in Antarctic light these nights.

Later, the sun shines bright at 2 a.m. It is quite different further south, each day, as the season lengthens or shortens; still, this is my first magical experience of all night daylight. Disoriented to spend such active nights, alive to the changing world of ice surrounding me. Never have I been so captivated upon waking at 2 or 3 a.m., wanting to stay with the scene outside. Drawn to it, and yet content to lie in my snug bunk, observing. Perhaps a younger me would have rushed outside on deck to make it closer, but there was plenty of time out there earlier in the light of day.

Flat seas are more common than expected. Especially after the rigours of the Drake, the threat of the Southern Ocean. But they are calm. Until the weather changes. And the weather – the wind, the fog, the precipitation – can change in a heartbeat.

Grief

There it was on the shelf, Grief by Mal McKissock. Someone told me about it months ago but I had not pursued it, nor seen it in a shop. Until now in a shop. Seven months into grief, I could have written it. Word for word. He speaks about time, the surprising twists and turns of emotion, the healing power of writing. Yes! That it is impossible to compare experiences of grief – all are different. Mine from yours. That expressions of grief are often embarrassing to others. That it is nevertheless crucial to cry, shout, scream, express anger as fully as one can. That coping is not necessarily the correct mode of action. Stiff upper lip, not necessarily. The huge chasm that lies between the grief-stricken and the one who seeks to help.

He speaks about preparation for dying, for both the patient and the carer. I thought I invented that idea. Certainly I shocked a lot of people when I described our process.

Almost every word echoed in me. New was scientific information about how adrenalin works, produced in the moment we perceive ourselves as under threat, or shock. It protects – the fight or flight syndrome – and then is trapped in the body. While it does its job, we need to be aware and use it up, as it were. But how can I properly exercise in this muggy humid heat? All the physical energy is drained out of me. There is no way to dissipate that surging adrenalin.

Bereavement can be regarded as the most potent form of stress the body has to withstand and so we produce enormous amounts of adrenalin to help us.

And then he explains its effect on the muscles and on the heart.

So now adrenalin is protecting me from the snares of death or its effects, even as it has been life-saving through my long years with chronic asthma. The medical literature also says that during long drawn-out grief while that cortisone is flowing, the immune system can lag and one might be particularly susceptible to various disorders. Including asthma. I was really lucky. My asthma did not