Just the facts - the COVID Chronicles

Here are the facts. My mother is aged 94. She lives in a nursing home in northern Tasmania. She is legally blind, and has suffered from macular degeneration for almost 30 years. She has chronic blood pressure problems. In August, 2018 she fell in her room and broke her hip. It needed surgery, an operation that in retrospect didn’t fix the injury and instead left an ongoing problem in the shape of a loose screw. My mother has not walked without the aid of a large walking frame for two years. She will never be able to walk on her own again.

There are some other relevant facts: I am the youngest of her three sons. I live in Melbourne. So does my eldest brother. The middle of the three sons lives in Hobart, a two-hour drive away from our mother. He has shouldered a difficult burden, without murmur or fuss, making the round trip in a day every weekend.

And here is what pretty much everyone else knows. The Coronavirus pandemic has closed state borders and Tasmania has been particularly vigorous about policing it. The approach has worked. The state went two months without recording a case, and then there was only one – apparently, from Victoria. As Australia used its island isolation as a powerful repellent to overseas infections, so too did Tasmania to the rest of the country.

This has meant that I haven’t seen my mother since the end of January. My other brother hasn’t seen her since Christmas.

In the intervening months, my mother has had several episodes of poor health: most recently, she has been confined to bed because of fluid issues. Her lungs are problems now, and she needs oxygen. Her heart is, not surprisingly, struggling. Her voice on the ‘phone sounds ragged. It fades in and out. Her hearing, a problem for years, compounds her isolation.

During the first lockdown, my mother’s nursing home took the diligent approach and ended visits from family and friends. As responsible as that was, it was a particularly difficult imposition on my mother, who basically has so little to distract her in any day that visitors are vital to her engagement. And of course, they are good for her health. That imposition was slowly relaxed, which enabled my brother in Hobart to resume weekly in-person contact. And then other visitors were allowed to come, which was a significant fillip to my mother: you could hear it in her voice.

That voice was one thing but seeing her was another. My mother has a strong relationship with all of her sons – but it’s also different, according to each of us. She and I have always had what always seemed to me were sparky, engaging, candid and often reflective conversations. She, of course, could characterise them differently – yet, I always sensed she enjoyed the back and forth, the frankness and the spirit of them, which was uniquely her – wise, insightful, decent, and often optimistic. During a spell of a few good days, and in a light hearted exchange, my mother called me “a smartypants’’, chuckling with the accuracy of the observation and the liberation of being able to say what she had probably thought for many years.

I can’t say when these conversations started but I remember there were always big discussions on the long walk home from church on Sundays, when I was going through the boring adolescent phase of opposing pretty much everything my parents held dear. But they were always respectful exchanges, and now, in this chasm of absence created by the pandemic, I felt the fewer opportunities to even glimpse those kind of conversations. Each day, they seem to be pulled away from me, bit by bit, dismantling the years of rich exchanges, like a building being demolished, piece by piece.

I decided to apply to the Tasmanian government for an exemption to visit my mother on compassionate grounds. A friend of my wife’s had tried three times, she told me, with no success. The friend’s mother was living alone in Hobart, and her father had recently gone in to a nursing home. The daughter was concerned about her mother’s capacity to cope: the early signs were not promising. She needed to be there to support her mum. But to no avail. She asked me to tell her if I was successful.

I contacted my mother’s GP, who willingly gave me a letter supporting my claim. I rang the 1800 number in Tasmania to talk through any other requirements, or any other information that I needed to consider. They were helpful and encouraging. The paperwork was straightforward – a small box required an explanation for the exemption, and there was room to attach supporting documentation. I did what I needed to do, and received an acknowledgement email. Shortly afterwards, I received an email that requested supporting documentation from my mother’s nursing home. That had not been mentioned in either the conversation I had with the advisor or the website but I went about complying anyway.

The nursing home was happy to help and asked for a copy of the GP’s letter too. They promised to respond as soon as they could. I sent an email back to the Tasmanian government that I was working on the nursing home paperwork as requested.

But before I received the nursing home letter, I was sent an email from Tasmania telling my application to see my mother was unsuccessful. There was no reason, because it seems, there doesn’t need to be a reason other than it’s a pandemic. I could apply again. But what would be different? Well, I would have nursing home letter, which arrived 24 hours after my refusal. Then we started on the second wave, and Tasmanian premier Peter Gutwein made it clear that he was never going to let Victorians across the border until the state was free of the virus.

So I wait. And so does my older brother. And my wife and our son. We wait for what we know will come. My mother is aged 94. And we are living – in so many different ways - through a pandemic. And I miss the conversations.