Forged with Flames (14 page)

After much discussion over my body, so to speak, they decided to operate. When everyone had left my room, I lay there, paralysed. This was it then. If I had the operation I would die; if I did not have it, I would also die. I had always known, in theory, that I must die one day, but realising it would probably be within the next twenty-four hours came as a king hit. I had never felt so powerless in all my life.

Suddenly I had the realisation, clearly and absolutely, that I really,
really
wanted to live. At first, after the fires, I wanted to live because I was terrified of dying; but now I knew I had to stay alive for my children—no one could love my girls the way I could. How could they grow up without me? With nothing left to do, I turned to the God I felt I no longer knew and asked for the help I desperately needed. Immediately I had the sensation of being gathered up, and something said, ‘Ann, no matter whether you live or die, this is where you are'.

It was a moment of profound peace. No matter what happened, all would be well.

Terry and me on our wedding day outside St Wildfrid's Anglican Church in Ribchester, England, 1970.

Me with a koala on Phillip Island in the summer of 1971.

Our house in Upper Beaconsfield which was completely destroyed in the Ash Wednesday fires.

The Dormobile-on the way to the Snowy Mountains in 1972.

Renowned flautist, Sir James Galway, playing his ‘golden flute' for me in the Burns Unit of the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, May 1983.

My mother with Rachel (left) and Sarah in Melbourne, April 1983.

My 2 daughters and me: Sarah (left) and Rachel in 2006

Me with Tony, the CFA firefighter who rescued me
in 1983. Taken
at his property in north-east Victoria in 2010.

16

FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

I
t wasn't until the operation to counter the septicaemia on my shoulders loomed later in March, about six weeks after I was admitted, when the doctors told Terry that the operation could kill me, that my parents found out the full extent of my injuries. Before then it had been difficult for him to know what to tell them—burns can be unpredictable.

I'd been calling out for Mum in my delirious state, asking where she was and why she didn't come. In my semi-conscious state I had recollections of our home in Barrowford: of Mum in the kitchen in front of the fireplace and the smell of warm clothes. The kitchen had a huge old fireplace that took up most of one wall, with three small ovens around the grate. During the damp cold months of winter, we loved arranging our pyjamas and undies in them so they'd be toasty warm when we put them on. Mum would take them out and we'd hold them against our cheeks. So comforting. Or I'd picture Mum sitting reading on a grassy clearing by the small lake at Roughlee, our favourite picnic spot. We would wade in our shorts in the shallows and
Mum would look up from her book occasionally as she turned a page, or just watch us. How I adored those times.

After Jane and Liz heard me asking for my mother during one of their ‘shifts', they urged Terry to bring her out from England. He swung into action straight away, securing her a seat on a flight at short notice in late March, and getting Qantas staff to help fast-track her through Customs when she landed, like a VIP.

This would have been the most difficult journey for my mother. For a start, she had never travelled by herself before; few women travelled without their husbands at this time. In addition, she took that long flight from London thinking she was coming to see me die. At the same time, everyone here was afraid that I was just waiting to see her before I let go.

When she walked through the door of the ICU that day, the 28th of March, forty days after I was admitted, my blood pressure shot up to two hundred and fifty-eight—way beyond the usual one hundred and fifty. I realised with a sharp pang just how much I needed her. There's no one like your mother, no bond as fundamental, no one to catch you when you fall back, in the same way. Although I'd never let her see the deeply anxious part of me when I was younger, I had been able to be myself with her in so many other ways.

Liz took a week off work to be with Mum during her first few days to help get her through the initial shock of seeing me. Mum spent a lot of time with me in hospital, coming in every day, just sitting quietly next to me. Since she'd worked in a noisy mill when she was young, she was used to lip-reading and could read my lips when I couldn't get the sounds out. Later, as I began to improve, we'd talk about things we could do together once I was well—hopelessly simple things like having a cup of tea
when I could actually hold the teacup myself and dunk a ginger biscuit in it, or doing a crossword together when I was able to sit up in a chair. Later we could even laugh together again; we had always shared a particular sense of humour, laughing at the nuttiest things. Mum ended up staying nearly two months.

Within a couple of days of her arrival I rallied. I was being weaned off the ventilator and was alert, and could even sit propped up in bed for a while. It was about the same time that I received the note from Cliff Richard, which of course helped. But so often, it was one step forward, two steps back. Within minutes of being alert and motivated, I'd lurch back to being disoriented and distressed. The doctor's announcement that the surgery on my shoulders would be delayed sent tremors of distress through me.

‘I want to die—turn off the machines,' I moaned, over and over.

At this time, an extraordinary thing happened. A gift from my father arrived in the post which my mother brought into me one morning. It was a metal scroll he'd engraved himself and sent over. It read:

D
EAR
A
NN
,

F
IGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AND WIN
.

Y
OU WILL NOT BE DOING THIS ALONE
.

I
WILL BE ADDING MY STRENGTH TO YOURS
.

L
OVE
D
AD
.

I was flabbergasted and even through her mask, Mum looked gobsmacked too, as I unwrapped and read it. We looked at each other with tears in our eyes. It was one of the rare glimpses I had
into my father's love for me. Suddenly, I was transported back to one of these other moments in my life—and they were only moments—when I'd seen that love.