Chris, Come Home

It was November 2023. I’d moved to Nhulunbuy in East Arnhem Land a few months earlier, in August, and I was loving it. I remember sitting at the ambulance station one afternoon when I had this subtle, intuitive feeling about my Yiayia. Like something was happening or about to. I felt it, but let it pass through me.

Not long after that maybe a week later, my mum called.

She told me Yiayia had rung her, saying she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t call 000 she called my mum first. Mum had called the ambulance immediately. The paramedics arrived quickly and, from what Mum said, they were incredibly kind and compassionate. Yiayia had been taken to hospital.

Mum said she was just letting me know but I knew what this really was.

I was on standby. I was being called home.

I accepted the situation and walked into my boss’s office. I said, “My grandmother’s gone into hospital. She’s 89. I just got off the phone with my mum, she’s not in a good way. I just wanted to let you know.”

She was kind, listened carefully, and said, “Thanks for letting me know.”

Two or three days later, Mum called again. This time, she was crying.

“Chris, come home.”

I rang my boss back straight away and told her what was happening. She understood completely and granted compassionate leave immediately.

I sat with my colleague J I was on shift with at the time and booked my flight back to Melbourne.

I was going home.

The next morning, I drove out with T, he was on the same flight, heading home to Tasmania for a month off. We were laughing about how he couldn’t shake me. Even when he was leaving to get a break from me, I still somehow ended up in his space.

I flew to Melbourne and my uncle picked me up. We chatted the whole way back to the southeast suburbs. He dropped me home, and not long after, I went to the hospital with my mum.

Things didn’t look great.

As soon as I walked in, I intuitively felt she had a week left, max.

The doctors sounded optimistic, but I could feel what was actually going on.

My mum and dad, my two brothers and their partners, my uncle, auntie, and cousin everyone was there. It was surreal. But I fully accepted it.

My family didn't have the foresight, but I knew this wasn’t the end.

There’s no such thing as death. Just a dropping of the body.

I had done the work over the years. I’d sat with this truth. But still it was deeply upsetting. One of the worst things in the world is seeing or hearing your parents cry. Your family cry. It’s completely fucked.

I sat with everything and kept my heart open.

Over the next week, I got up early each day and headed into the hospital. Yiayia was usually asleep, but sometimes she was awake. When I first got there, she was fairly conscious but in pain. She was 89, after all, and had mobility issues. Her eyesight wasn’t great either, only one eye had vision.

As the week went on, she deteriorated quickly. Mum kept telling me the doctors weren’t saying much, but they were offering chemotherapy.

I told her, “It’s a doctor’s job to keep people alive. But honestly… what good would that do?”

Nobody wants to lose their mum. Or anyone they love. It’s the worst feeling in the world. But I felt my Yiayia had lived a full life. She saw her grandchildren grow up. She had a decent quality of life. My grandfather had passed away many years before I think in 1996, when I was just a kid. His presence and energy still lingered around me. I knew that for sure.

One evening, we were all standing around her hospital bed, the whole family, talking shit and having a laugh. It was usually me stirring the pot, making stupid jokes, taking the piss out of my brothers, and them throwing it back at me.

Then we heard a voice from behind the curtain telling us to be quiet.

I fired up straight away. I walked over to the woman and said, “My grandmother is dying. We’re here saying goodbye. She doesn’t have much time left and this is happening regardless.”

She looked at me and softened. “Your grandmother’s very lucky,” she said. “To be supported in hospital with her whole family around her.”

I accepted what she said. And left it at that.

One morning I went in with the intention of telling my Yiayia I loved her. I don’t recall ever saying it before.

We had communication issues. She couldn’t speak English. I couldn’t speak Greek. We could hardly meet in the middle and it definitely impacted our relationship.

How do you truly know someone if you can’t speak their language?

Did I really know my Yiayia?

Did she really know me?

So many questions. No answers. Just acceptance.

I was ready to tell her. I was finally going to say it. But when I walked in, she was unconscious.

Fucking hell, I thought. What if she doesn’t wake up?

But after a while… she did.

I grabbed her hand.

“Yiayia,” I said, “I love you.”

She looked at me and said,

“I love you too.”

Those were the last words we ever spoke to each other.

There was no one else around just us.

I felt like I had done my bit.

My Yiayia passed away in hospital, surrounded by her whole family. There may have been a little bit of pain but she went peacefully.

My mother had tears streaming down her face and took her mum in her hand.

“You’re free now,” she said.

“Go back to Baba.”

She meant her dad.

And she was free.

Free of this illusion.

My mum and uncle both said to me afterward that they didn’t mind if I wasn’t at the funeral. They knew I had to go back to work.

I thought deeply about it. Work had been amazing. They were short-staffed. They’d supported me fully, without question. My boss told me clearly: come back when it feels right. No pressure.

I knew what I had to do.

My Yiayia was a hard worker. She would’ve told me to go back to work. I’d done the right thing by everyone I felt that. Still, I think about that decision sometimes. Was it the right call?

I honestly don’t know.

It just happened the way it did.

If I put myself in my mum or uncle’s shoes, if my son was living on the other side of the country, just starting a new job, being looked after well, what would I say to him?

I’d tell him to go back. I’d tell him to live the life that was unfolding for him.

So that was that.

I spent two weeks in Melbourne. Saw family. Saw friends. Spent time with Zeppelin. Drove my Mustang around. I got a new tattoo and my tattooist, bless him, refused to charge me for the session. Just good energy in the middle of something really hard.

Nhulunbuy was calling me back.

So I went home.