The Power of Love

The walls of Ward 21 were painted a kind of puke yellow. I remember the smell of iodine and the rattle of heels down the hallway. They seem to reverberate forever. I also recall the crash of the dinner trolley - a kind of chrome steel thing always polished to a mirror.

Sometimes I'd play in the day room at the end of the ward. They had these art deco windows from ceiling to floor and a real potted palm. There I'd build machine guns with the Meccano set some charity donated.

I knew my Bren gun from my Vickers, and I'd tell the nurses how I knew it was a Bren because the magazine slots into the top, see? Sometimes they'd nod and smile, or caution me not to disturb the other patients.

Ward 21 was truly God's waiting room. Only the most serious 'cardio-pulminary' patients wound up there. In those days, there was no such thing as an ICU - they just screened off a room and wheeled in all the equipment.

I'd get to know someone, then suddenly they were gone. My dad sometimes gave me the body count - the nurses only telling me that, 'they've gone to another ward,' or, 'so and so's gone home.'

"But they never said goodbye!!"

That was usually worthy of a double helping of steamed chocolate dessert that night for dinner.

I remember a girl, about my age or a little older. I used to visit her a lot and we'd play snakes and ladders and ludo. My dad later told me she had a hole in her heart, that it was too severe to operate, and she'd died. I still see her blond curly hair and smile. I never knew how sick she was.

Ward 21 was my home for the first ten years of my life. At age 12 months, I'd contracted German measles and it had wrecked my left lung. I could never be far from the oxygen, and I needed my lung drained every second day or so.

I would also develop pneumonia if I so much as pass by an open window. I've lost count the number of times I've had it.

Home visits rarely lasted longer than a couple of weeks. I tried school a few times, but no sooner I'd start, I'd get hit with pneumonia. I recall having to spend lunch hours inside and watch the kids playing through the windows.

Even now, hospital has a kind of uneasiness for me. But, they're nothing like my childhood memory. Years of taking kids to the ER - and having four of my babies born in them - has cured most of my aversions.

I was the youngest of a large family. Most of my siblings had something wrong with them - like we'd all chosen a mystery card at birth. Mine was 'fucked lungs,' but even so, I considered myself fortunate.

A brother and sister were born deaf - another brother continues to have eye problems - still another sister is developmentally locked into 5 years old. Why our family should be cursed so, never bothered me much as a child. A kid accepts what's around them as normal.

Other anomalies concerning our relatives didn't resonate either. Why my parents chose to live in the Wellington area while the bulk of my extended family lived in Auckland? How come none of my aunties and uncles ever visited? Tensions and long standing bitterness evident? I could never figure out the plethora of relatives - they were like some jumbled up word game.

Then I was about 24, and due to marry. My fiance and I needed to know whether there were any genetic issues we should be aware of. My dad took me to the pub - he'd never in his life taken me there before. I felt privileged.

It was there he gave me the last piece of the puzzle - like some game of Vulcan kelto. Suddenly the puzzles resolved into a coherent shape and our family made sense, finally.

Shall we say, my mother and father were a lot more closely related than I ever imagined.

How do I feel? Well, it's plain to me that my life was substantially different as a consequence. But, I'm too tied up with the here and now to devote too much emotional energy to regrets and 'might have beens.'

My brothers and sisters and I were never close. There was quite a gap between them and me and I was mostly in hospital. When I was finally discharged after a lobectomy, age ten, my siblings had mostly moved on or were in care. My brother Emails me now and again - that's about it.

Suffice to say, there was no great a risk of passing on bad genes to my kids than anyone else. I have had advice that consanguinity was unlikely to have been a factor affecting by brothers and sisters. Apparently, there needs to be a little more intergenerational inbreeding. I don't know - but my dad believed it was.

One positive thing my parents passed on to me was their utter faith in the power of love. They remained completely devoted to each other their whole life. I can't think of a greater gift.

Don