Book: Redemption - Part VXI - Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“All roads lead to Rome”

1990 – 1996

When Che’s seventh grade teacher asked to see me towards the end of 1990, I was expecting to hear him to suggest Che repeat the year but he didn’t. He did say he had thought about it, but decided it would serve no purpose. He had called to suggest Che not attend Wavell State High as was his preference simply because the majority of his classmates were going there. Instead, he recommended the smaller and less challenging Aspley State High. During Kristen’s final year at primary school I chose Wavell High over Aspley High because it had a better reputation. The teacher explained that while that was true, a new principal and deputy-principal had been appointed to the school and had done a great job in “cleaning it up”. With a confidence borne of certainty, he assured me Aspley State High School was now a “school of excellence” and on par with Wavell, just smaller, a school where “a boy like Che won’t get lost in the system.”

He was right, but Che didn’t have to do it alone. Tamara, who had done Year 8 at Wavell, decided the school was not for her so when Che started at Aspley, she did too. They may have been two and a half years apart in age but in school years, they were only one year apart. Tamara and Kristen, being born at either ends of the calendar year, repeated Grade One, something Che never did in spite of his many issues. The sheer diversity of subjects offered to Grade Eight students ensured he coped well enough for us all to have hope for his future. He still struggled with mathematics as the professor foretold, and he still struggled with English and History because of his poor writing and literacy skills, but he excelled at manual arts, home economics and health and physical education. For Grades 9 and 10, he chose subjects he knew he could handle and do reasonably well in, but by the end of Year 10, he had had enough of school and was ready to move on to the next phase of his life. Unfortunately, the school didn’t agree so in 1994, he began Year Eleven with no desire to be there and no desire to learn.

Yet, when I approached the principal about his leaving to do something else I was told there was nothing else. The principal went on to say that he was not blind, he could see what was happening, but he had to believe Che would change his attitude. He didn’t. If anything it worsened and by the time he had to select his work experience placement he kept putting it off to the point that, during a battle of wills between him and me, he screamed in frustration: “Put down plumber, then!” It may have been the first thing that came into his head, but I now know it was just another cog in the wheel of destiny. In a fascinating side issue, the company he was placed with was previously owned by Glenda’s late husband. She assured me the chap in charge was a wonderful man and that Che couldn’t have done better.

She was right. After just one day on the job Che was a different lad. To hear him talk so enthusiastically about his day made me think of my brother and I couldn’t help but muse: If you turn out to be even half the man your Uncle Peter is I will be very happy. Like Che, Peter was very good with his hands, but was advised against taking on an apprenticeship as a Cabinet Maker in the 1960s because it was “a dying trade.” He fell into plumbing by chance and went on to bigger and better things. Unfortunately, the company was small and not in a position to take him on as an apprentice. Still, having tasted life outside school, I thought he may knuckle down and strive to do well but it had the opposite effect. Ultimately, his crushing disappointment with life led to a downward spiral of self-destructive behaviour.

A friend of Steve’s who had known Che since he was a toddler was deeply concerned about this and approached a plumber friend about possible work experience. The result was a dramatic turnaround. Che happily sacrificed his school holidays for the remainder of the year to work with this man. He even tried harder at school, probably because Andrew told him he would have to. By the end of the September holidays, Andrew was so pleased with Che he suggested he apply for a six-month pre-apprenticeship course at TAFE. Such a course, he said, would take a year off his apprenticeship and to assist his application he told Che he would write him a glowing reference. When the school year was over Che still had not received his reference because Andrew never seemed to get around to it.

On the evening of January 15^th 1995, I came home from work to find Che waiting for me with tear-stained eyes. He told me he wouldn’t be getting his reference and he wouldn’t be getting his apprenticeship. At 3am that morning, Andrew had been struck by a taxi as he staggered across the road after leaving a Valley nightclub. His brother had called to inform Che that Andrew was brain dead and that the family had made the heart-breaking decision to take him off life support. Andrew’s death affected Che deeply for in Andrew, he had found a kindred spirit.

A week later, at Che’s insistence, I rang North Point TAFE to enquire about his application’s progress. The girl I spoke to was sympathetic but said he was not even on the third list. Her meaning was painfully obvious. I told Che she had nothing to tell me and, fearing for his future, I could only hope for some kind of intervention. When it did come, it was totally unexpected. Just after eight-thirty on a Friday evening in late January 1995, a man called asking for Che. He was ringing to tell Che to present himself at the college on Monday morning for orientation. As Steve and Che discussed this dramatic development I mentally thanked Andrew for his posthumous assistance.

College life was very different to school and Che adjusted well until he learned he had to find a plumber to take him on for work experience. Unlike school work experience, he had to find someone who would be willing to take him on for one day per fortnight for the duration of the course. This was a big ask, especially as most plumbers we contacted were one-man operations. We got the same response from every plumber we approached until the night Andrew visited me. I had never seen him before, yet I knew it was him. No words were spoken, yet I telepathically understood what he was saying. I was to do something but he left before telling me what. Thinking I had to change my approach, I turned to the classifieds in the local paper. Of the two plumbers I short-listed, one never returned my call and another said he couldn’t help but knew of someone who could. Thus began a bizarre chain of events. The man in question reluctantly interviewed Che because he was unhappy about how I came to learn of him. Yet, in spite of this he agreed to take him on. After his first day, however, he was ‘sacked’ without cause which totally devastated him. Being blamed for something he did do was fair enough, but being blamed for something he didn’t do was completely unacceptable.

For my part, all I saw was the rug being ripped out from under my son yet again and I railed at the unfairness of life. In the morning, I went to work mentally telling Andrew he would have to do better. An hour later, I took some linen upstairs to the store room and when I returned there were two plumping trucks parked outside the window. I could scarcely believe it. I noted the phone numbers on each but got no answer from one and a strange answer from the other. “Yes, that’s my number” a man said. “But I’m not him. Do you have a pen?” After calling the number the man on the phone had given me I relaxed for I had found a plumber willing to take Che on. When I look back on this I realise this was what Andrew wanted me to do and when I went in the wrong direction he had to do something drastic to get me back on course. Andrew and this plumber must have known each other, or at least known of each other because they lived just one street apart!

Che passed his course with flying colours and it was a joy to see. Unfortunately, the plumber who had taken him on could not afford to offer him an apprenticeship so he put his name down for unemployment benefits. Because he had just completed a period of study, he was told he would have to wait thirteen weeks before receiving his first payment. For reasons known only to the system, when Steve became unemployed, he was automatically deemed eligible. A few days later, he received a letter from Andrew’s brother. When sorting through his brother’s personal effects, he found a rough draft of the reference Andrew had promised Che. It wasn’t signed or dated, but he sent it to Che regardless, hoping it would help in some way.

Shortly afterwards, Che received a letter from the Department of Social Security (now Centrelink). This was a letter normally issued only to those who had been unemployed for six months or more. The letter demanded he present himself to a certain woman on a certain date at a certain time. The woman was as perplexed as he was, but as he was there, she decided she may as well do what she could for him. As a result, he attended two job interviews, both at Brendale, an outer north Brisbane suburb. The first job was a three- month stint as a storeman and the other was for a labourer doing two days of “brain-dead factory work”. At the first interview, the man insisted on reading through everything Che could produce to validate his existence. He seemed harsh, but when he read Andrew’s reference and his brother’s cover note, he softened. With teary eyes, he told Che what a wonderful man Andrew was. The two had been friends for years. That was too much, even for Che, who claimed he didn’t believe in the supernatural. When he left, he was told he would be contacted in a day or two. From there, Steve took him to his second interview. This time the interviewer didn’t want to see any of Che’s credentials and he didn’t care if after the first day he didn’t want to return.

In spite of the obvious conclusions reached by all of us, Steve included, Che didn’t get the storeman’s job so he started work at the factory. Steve and I had raised our children to have a good work ethic so he went back after the first day and even stayed the whole week. In the second week someone got sick so he did that person’s job. Then someone else got sick. Then someone went on holidays. And so it was that by the time Che finished working at the factory nine months had elapsed and he came away with multiple skills and an excellent reference.

At the time, Steve was working at a Queensland Rail workshop for a labour hire company. The Banyo workshop was then staffed partly by permanent Queensland Rail employees and partly by contracted labour hire staff. The very nature of such a workforce meant that casuals trained to work on particular machinery often moved on when something better came along. In May 1996, when the contact period expired, the workshop manager began negotiations with another labour hire company who were willing to place casual staff long term. The manager didn’t want to lose Steve so arrangements were made for him to transfer to the other company. Steve then took a chance by asking if they would take his son on as well. So it was that Che started work as a labourer at Queensland Rail’s Banyo workshop. For the first three weeks, though, he had to be very careful because he was not yet eighteen and ought not to have been there. I couldn’t help but wonder if his great grandfather had had a hand in the matter because all the pieces seemed to be coming together to form a very specific picture. Just weeks later, my daughter was telling me my son was not my father. Everything I thought I knew. Everything I believed in was turned upside down. It was as if a giant hand had swept the pieces away as my world tipped upside down.

I was in charge of the laundry by then because Glenda had moved to Urangan at Hervey Bay. Jan was still sharing my ironing shifts so she became the new permanent “ironer”, as Glenda used to say. We always got along well, but until then, I never really knew her. The more I saw of her, the more I was glad I never played Sandra’s jealousy card. She was a beautiful soul and more importantly, she felt the same as I did about the residents. I will never forget the first day one of the “Three Musketeers” struggled downstairs just so she could to talk to us. She used a walking frame so not only did she have to open two heavy wooden doors, she had to navigate two flights of steps. Jan’s offering to go with me to see my first clairvoyant was indicative of the person she was. Little could either of us have known just how much my life was to change as a result. When we learned Ann Ann had radio segments on B105 we made sure we listened every Tuesday and Thursday morning at eleven o’clock. Sometimes, Ann would say something in her matter-of-fact way and Jan would remember something said to her and say: “That’s right, lady, and you make sure you listen well.”

We were both getting new jobs, Ann Ann had told us. For me, it would be in about two years and I would be offered something with more responsibility. On one occasion, Jan joked about how Sandra was going to leave and I would get her job to which I made a typical Sandra-like comment and we doubled over shrieking with laughter. We had such fun but we also had some heavy conversations on life after death when her father passed away.

Early one morning in September 1996, I was woken by someone calling my name and begging for my help. Much like the incident when Andrew came to visit I knew it was Thora, one of the elderly residents at work. My first thought was that she was dying and was afraid so I did what Ann Ann had told me to do to send my father to the light. Other than that, I really had no idea of what I was doing. Her advice seemed so simple, too simple for something so incredibly profound. Nevertheless, I mentally told Thelma not to be afraid; that dying was just like going into another room. I asked her to release all her fears about it, to let go of everything she had ever been taught about dying, and to just go into the light. It was one of the most amazing experiences I had had to that time.

When Jan came in for her shift I told her about it. She listened without interruption and when I had finished she said I should see Thora before leaving that day. Was there something I should know, I asked. The night before, Jan said Thora didn’t come in to the dining room so she went to get her. She found her sitting on her bed crying. When she asked what the matter was, Thora told her she was a failure, that she never achieved any of the things she set for herself in her youth, and that she would be a “disappointment to her parents”. Jan did what she could for the woman, and before going home, she called in to see if she was alright. She found her crying herself to sleep. 

I did go up to Thora’s room only to find it empty. One of the girls was vacuuming nearby so I asked her if she knew where Thora was. She said she didn’t and as I turned to leave I saw Thora walking down the corridor towards me. She looked radiant. I told her how beautiful she looked and she smiled, thanking me. She had just come from the hairdresser, she said. She told me she woke feeling like a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders and she let go of all her troubles, doubts and regrets. The first thought that went through my mind was: What just happened?

In November, Che approached me as I sat at the table sipping coffee while reading a magazine. His new job was the best thing that could have happened to him and he must have been dying to say: “What do you want for Christmas, Mum? Money is no object.” I nearly choked on my coffee and not knowing what to say, I looked up at him and then down at the magazine I was reading. The only thing I saw was a half page advertisement for Tarot cards – something I honestly cannot remember seeing or paying much attention to before. That magazine, The Silver Cord, was an earlier incarnation of Insight magazine. When the words “Tarot cards” left my lips, I didn’t know which one of us was more surprised. My son backed away from the table saying: “I’ll pay for ‘em, but I ain’t buyin’ ‘em.”

Kristen told me I couldn’t buy my own cards because it was bad luck. It isn’t. It’s a baseless myth. I didn’t know that at the time, though, so it was arranged that she would come with me to a store called The Aquarian Bookshop in Brisbane’s Myer Centre. Unlike today, I had a choice of only three decks: The Mythic Tarot, The Rider Waite, and one other whose name I can’t recall. Greek mythology had always fascinated me so the choice was easy. The deck came with a hardcover book and a cloth to lay the cards out on. If I had stuck with that book I may have not endured what followed.



The Fool from the Mythic Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene



Desperate to learn as much as I could about the Tarot, I went to the library the very next day and came home with several books, some of which so impressed me I later bought them to keep. All these books had one thing in common: the Rider Waite deck. The colours, symbols and imagery of my cards were at odds with those featured in the books, so just before Christmas, I returned to The Aquarian Bookshop alone. The Rider Waite deck, so named because of the publishing house that produced them, is just one of many Waite decks, although all are based on one original deck. Developed in 1910 by Arthur Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman-Smith, the Waite deck was ground-breaking for the simple reason that Pamela Colman-Smith created pictorial images for the pip (numbered) cards of the Minor Arcana. Prior to 1910, the pips were not unlike the standard deck of playing cards. But time has moved on, and despite Ms Colman-Smith's images being the basis of virtually every Tarot deck to follow, I find them, and the interpretations allocated to the cards by Arthur Waite, archaic and no longer relevant.

The Fool from the Rider Waite deck by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman-Smith