Short Stories
Peace Be Still
Deciding to retreat from life for a time was a spur of the moment thing. David would have found it ironic really. He had been the one who enjoyed his own company, while I always needed others around. He’d loved to sit and think but I had to be up and doing.
I’d had the support of friends and family after David died, and knowing me they’d made sure I wasn’t left alone for any length of time, but I’d suddenly found myself wanting to escape their concern, wanting to be alone with my grief. It had only been six weeks but already they were
urging me to “get on with life.” By their reckoning, grief had a time-line and I wasn’t sticking to it. It seemed that I should have moved past the anger and be in the acceptance stage. They didn’t understand. How could they understand? David had been my life, my reason for being. I was nothing without him.
Remembering a piece I’d seen on television about a retreat in the hills, I looked up their number and called. They had a vacancy so I booked and packed and was on my way within the hour. Not wanting my friends to put me on a missing persons list, I phoned and left a few
messages to say that I was going away for awhile and would be in touch when I returned.
Driving through the Chittering Valley, I remembered the last time I’d been this way. David had been with me. He’d seen an ad for a small farm and was keen to look at it. That had been in summer and the countryside had been parched and brown, the sheep a brilliant white. Now it was lush and green, the paddocks water-soaked and the sheep muddy brown.
Peace Be Still lived up to its name. Set on a hill, it was surrounded by citrus groves. As I drove up, the sun broke through the clouds and my spirits lifted a little. I stood and looked my fill of the view. A firebreak surrounded the citrus grove near the buildings, where a
last piece of orange blossom clung precariously to a branch. The sweet, sharp smell of oranges and mandarins filled the air. Down at the bottom of the hill the Brockman River flowed between paper bark trees, gurgling over rocks. A kookaburra cleared its throat, gargling before
breaking into its distinctive laugh. Over in a far paddock, blue smoke-tipped grasses bent and swayed, then were still before shivering in delight as a breeze passed over them. I caught myself memorizing the scene so I could describe it to David.
My heart twisted. How long would I do that, I wondered? When would I stop automatically thinking to tell him this or that?
I took my bag from the car and made my way to the small office. Within minutes I was shown to my room and told that no-one would disturb me.
Once I’d unpacked I sat in my room, wondering what I was doing here. Me, who hated being alone! I sorted through the brochures and noticed one that mapped out a few walking tracks. That’s what I’d do, I decided. Mindful of the clouds I could see from my window, and of
the sharp chill in the air, I changed into warm tights, jeans, fleecy shirt and jumper, and sensible shoes with thick socks. Snatching up my mackintosh, I set off.
Lavender and Boronia lined the path outside. I skirted the orange grove and headed down to the river. Ducks and hens quacked and cackled indignantly as I waded through their dining room. As I passed through the gate into the lower paddock, the sheep there came to meet me. Their coats were matted and a dirty brown. They followed me to the picnic area at the river’s edge, tasting the grass as they went, stretching their necks to reach that sweet succulent piece just out of reach.
A light shower of rain began to fall. Using my mackintosh as a seat, I tucked its yellow folds under my feet and smoothed my hair back into the dark cavern of my hood. Displacement activity, David would have called it. “You’re forever doing so you don’t have to think,” he tells me. Used to tell me, I remind myself, my breath catching. With nothing else to do, I rested my chin on my knees and contemplated the river. Swollen by recent rains, the water sang its pleasure as it reached and touched those places that were, until recently, denied them. Paper hung in long untidy strips from trees who seemed surprised to find their feet suddenly wet.
The rain stopped and the hills on the other side of Chittering Road reared up. I watched as ash coloured clouds rushed in to fill the gap sharp fingers of sun had probed. The small patch of blue disappeared. I leant back and the pattern of lacy branches filled my view. The rhythm of nature, of life, was all around me. Like the river, life changes, yet remains the same, can seem never changing, yet never ceases to change.
“Why David,” I asked the trees. “Why him?”
The river increased its rush and gurgle, seeming to answer, “Because it was his time.” Is that an answer, I wondered? If I believed that, then nothing we can do can alter what is to come.
The sun probed at the clouds again and was triumphant, dipping long fingers into the water, which splintered the light, captured it and carried it away. The wind joined in, running through the tree tops. My throat ached with the beauty of it, and with the need to share it.
Rising, I moved on, continuing my walk. I found a small creek running down into the river and began to track it uphill. The bleating sheep fell far behind and soon there was only the sigh of the wind in the trees and the tumbling of the water as it rushed headlong down to join
the river. At the top of the rise, I looked back. Over the hills the sky had cleared and planes from Pearce Air Force Base were playing mock dog fights. They sounded, from this distance, like angry bees.
I continued on, looking for the source of the creek. The noise greeted me first, water bubbling over rocks, and I found a series of falls. The slick black rocks increased in size and number and the noise grew, drowning the sound of rustling leaves and noisy insects. I sat on
the mossy rocks at the topmost set of falls and looked back through a fold in the hills to emerald green grass and orderly rows of citrus trees. The water rushed downhill, seeking the easiest route, filling cracks, dips and hollows, moving like a lover’s fingers through the hill’s cleavage. The wind began again and my nose, lips and earlobes stung with its cold kiss; time to move on.
I came to the ‘Harry Butler Trail’ and followed the hakea, marri, false boronia, orchids and native ferns that lined the track. Not long afterwards I found where a branch of the creek began, seeping over the track and into a gully where the water whispered secrets I’ve yet to learn.
The wind increased its volume and I left the track and moved down to where it was gentler. I wandered through the bush, marveling at it all. I was surrounded by marri and paper barks. Blackboys stood silently around, some with grassy headgear, others wearing skirts. I stopped under one large marri. It was old, twisted and misshapen, the bones of amputated limbs jutting at odd angles – beautifully grotesque. Lumps of blood-red sap oozed down its trunk. I touched it. Unlike the marri, my bleeding was not visible. Beneath my feet was a thick carpet of leaves, moss, lichen and rocks. Soft shoots of fine grass, unexpectedly brilliant green, found their way between the rocks. Things were growing while others were dying.
The wind reached its long fingers down into the gully and the branches of the trees on the ridge above me whipped back and forth, as if beckoning a long absent lover. An almost leafless Marri, its topmost branch a dark twisted limb, reached higher than its neighbours, seeming to tear at the soft underbelly of a cloud, releasing a sudden deluge. All other sound was buried beneath that of the rain. It drummed through the trees and against the ground. It pattered on leaves, dripped from rocks and thrummed against my cape. I stood, head down, while the water cascaded from the lip of my hood. Like a tap being turned off, it stopped, as suddenly as it had begun, and I turned and made my way back to the track, and back to the retreat. Along the way I saw my feet, heel toe, heel toe, flicking out from under my cape; my arms were swinging but I felt nothing. It was as if I were gliding along, skimming the ground with fairy touches; like life sometimes, it was all just out of reach.
Later that night, I sat in front of the fire. It made music for my ears, tickled my nose, and drew pictures for my eyes. I sank into the chair, pressing down, down, feeling life flowing through me. A tape was playing soft music somewhere and a clock ticked rhythmically on the
wall. Rain drummed on the tin roof, fading away suddenly, leaving another rhythmic drip in the courtyard.
Four days later, I was ready to face the world again. I rose early and walked up to sit by the waterfall, where I watched the valley come into view as night’s curtain was raised. The day was new, washed clean, as I had been by the peace of this place. The living tapestry that was the valley floor came into view as the sun climbed over the hills. A thin spiral of smoke drifted up from the valley floor, along with the farmyard smells, and the aroma of bacon frying. The world was filled with the sound of nature waking, being born. Underneath it all was the sound of the onward rush of the water, the unseen river, the arteries and life blood of our lands.
I looked around me as the bush came to life, as the land flushed with the warmth of the sun. Things had died during the night, and those things would feed the growing new life.
There was a movement to my left and I turned to see a wallaby pretending to be a tree stump. I moved my hand and he fled. A frog called, a lonely cry that received no answer. He didn’t give up but settled down to a continuous croak.
My time here had shown me that life does go on, that I could go on. I learnt to be instead of to do. I came home, came home to self. I realized that death is a form of renewal, a passage into another realm. Most of all, I came to understand that where there is hope there is
possibility and where there is possibility there is life. I would still grieve, and still remember; David would ever be a part of my life, just not a visible part.
I’d done a lot of reading while at Peace Be Still and one passage stayed with me; “You never discover new oceans until you have the courage to let go of the shore.”
There was a life waiting for me, and I was ready to let go of the shore.