Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Peter is my uncle… or was my uncle. I can’t really tell you if he was or is… that’s the hard thing. He went missing before I was born and before my sisters were born. In fact, he went missing when my mother was pregnant with her first child 30 years ago; my eldest sister. Mum has never ever told or showed me truly how this has affected her. She has always kept my sisters and I at arms-length by telling us that she believed Peter was dead. Maybe this was her way of shutting down any questions we may have had, or even questions that she herself had about his disappearance. Maybe in her mind, she needed to block out the “what if’s” and the perpetual cycle of scenarios playing over and over again. I haven’t yet fathomed just how difficult that must have been for her… to have one little life growing inside of her and the juxtaposition of another taken away from her.There was darkness in Peter’s life. He suffered from mental illness, just like myself. Nobody knows exactly what form of mental illness he suffered from, as there was no actual diagnosis that was made. He could have been suffering from depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety or schizophrenia… we just don’t know. We don’t know if he wanted to commit suicide or how much he was suffering internally with his thoughts and feelings. Maybe he left to start a new life, away from the boundaries he faced in his home life and in society. Maybe there were pressures coming from his parents on how he, as their Greek son and first child, should be living his life. Did he struggle the same way that I do? Trying to meet parents’ expectations only to feel as though you are failing dismally?
Around the time that Peter went missing, he wasn’t doing so great. He was unwell; so much so, that he was hospitalized. It was when he returned home from hospital to live in the bungalow of his parent’s house that he started becoming reclusive and slipped away from family and friends. Mum says that it was a good six months in which he didn’t come out to see her or my Dad when they visited. She recalls leaving a John Lennon book out the front of his bedroom door for him to read.
Mum only recently told me that the last time she saw Peter was when she and my Dad were at her parent’s house. Peter had told his parents that he was going away for a few days and was in his car to leave. Mum just missed him because as she looked out the window from inside their home she saw Peter drive away in his Volkswagen. That was the last time that she saw him. His car was later found abandoned. A friend of Peter’s saw him on a train and spoke with him some time after he became a missing person. I don’t know exactly how much time had lapsed, but this girl friend had a general chat with him, completely oblivious to the fact he was deemed officially missing. We know of no other sightings past this time.
I recently started making some connections between Peter and I; Peter studied to be a teacher, and funnily enough, I fell into teaching too. We both studied Education at La Trobe University and it seems we both have the same love for literature. His vast collection can be found in the back room of my grandma’s house and I always feel drawn to him when I am there. The first time that I felt drawn was when I saw that he had a collection of Chekhov plays- my favourite playwright! The second, was just a few months ago when I had just discovered a love for D.H. Lawrence. I found myself looking through Peter’s collection again and learnt that he too had some of Lawrence’s work. I felt a rush of tightness in my gut, for I was realising a very deep sadness that was being brought to the surface.
I can finally identify this now as grief. It was the grief of never knowing my uncle. It was the grief of losing a piece of my history; my uncle who I would desperately love to have known. The family member who I was strangely feeling very connected to and wondered if he was the one I had longed for all along… the one who would understand my challenges as an artist, a writer, a sensitive soul…the one who would relate to my inner demons and struggles and who would share with me his wisdom of living through it. I wish I knew if he did make it through.