I left dad at around midnight. Actually, it could have been an hour
either side of midnight. I wasn’t really very aware.
We’d spent the whole evening there with dad – Andy and Rob and me –
in his little hospital room. We’d been laughing and joking - remembering
old times.
He didn’t seem very ill. The oxygen mask on his face was a bit of a
give-away I suppose, but apart from that he seemed pretty much his
normal self. The hair was gone, of course – brushed away by the first
bout of chemotherapy – but we’d become used to that.
I’d been through much of this before of course, with my mother, over
twenty years earlier, but you forget the signs.
Mum died a death by inches as I remember it, and I do remember that.
She was only young - still in her thirties I think. I was younger again
of course, still a teenager – a terrible age to watch your mother
die.
There was so much pain then. The pain of the illness was terrible.
The pain of her divorce from dad, all the lost friendships, the
unsuccessful love affairs, having her name dragged through the mud,
watching her children (and me especially) go off the rails – these
things must have been the greater hurt. And there was so much left
unsaid!
I guess that there was much to be thankful for in dad’s case. I think
we had time to say just about everything there was to say. I can’t think
of anything I really regret doing or not doing with dad. And it wasn’t
an agonizing death by any means. So why does it hurt so much?
I told dad a risque joke that night – the one about the guy who
pisses all over the bar after a bet with the publican. It was an odd
thing to be doing on my last night with dad. That sort of thing had
never been a part of our relationship, though dad had loosened up
considerably over his later years.
He wasn’t old! Sixty-eight years old. That doesn’t seem very old to
me. He didn’t look very old – well, not to me. And it’s not as if he’d
slowed down much. He was flat out lecturing, preaching and teaching only
a few months ago – at the height of his career it seemed. I had
optimistically rostered him on to do the preaching at Dulwich Hill this
week. We’d kept pushing the appointment back week by week as the release
from hospital kept being delayed, but that’s all we had ever been
thinking in terms of – delays. Well, perhaps that’s all I would let
myself think in terms of.
I couldn’t accept that he was dying. He was still moving about under
his own steam. He could still get to the toilet without aid and do all
those things that help a man to maintain his dignity under the stress of
hospitalisation. His mind was still as sharp as a tack. His wit was
undiminished. He was not living and speaking like a man who had only a
few hours left to live.
I held his hand. I clung to it. In my mind were all the images of the
man who had towered over me like a mighty colossus in my youth.
I remember that time, I must have been only five or six years old,
when the garage shutter at St Barnabus’ Broadway dropped on my dad’s
head and almost knocked him unconscious. He let out some expletive –
‘Gorn’ I think it was (expletive enough for dad) – and he stumbled
about. I remember the horror I felt at seeing this invincible and
unflappable figure, my hero and my defender, staggering about and
loosing control. I never forgot that terrible image.
I remember the time when dad lost his cool with us. I only remember
it happening the once. He was taking us back to mum’s place, only
shortly after she had taken us from him. I must have been twelve or
thirteen. The three boys – we were all sick as usual. We would contract
colds, upset tummies, and allergies by the bucket-load. It was our
normal state. Dad made some comment about us being a ‘bunch of
cripples’. I remember the pain of feeling that I had let dad down, and a
deeper pain, that perhaps dad had let us down. He never said anything
like that again.
I remember the climactic day when I beat dad in an arm wrestle. Week
by week we would go over to dad’s place, and week by week each of us
would take him on in an arm wrestle. I must have been fifteen or sixteen
on that mighty day, when finally the tables were finally turned.
I was the oldest of course, so the other boys, while they did their
best, didn’t really stand a chance against the big guy. Even so, they
took their turns. There must have been a sense of apprehension though
when I finally took my position. Week by week it had been getting harder
to dad to floor me. Week by week I’d felt him straining ever more
greatly to hold me back. Yet I could not have known that this would be
the week, the day, the moment! We gripped. We struggled. We sweated. My
dad started to turn red. Suddenly he stood up and pulled away in pain.
He could take it no longer. It was over – the ritual never to be
repeated again.
Rob was always the realist. Before he left the hospital he said to
dad ‘I’ll see you in the morning, but if you have to go before then,
then that’s OK. It’s been a privilege being your son.” It was a great
thing to say. Andy and I were less realistic: “We’ll see you in the
morning.”
I decided to stay on at the hospital for a time, while dad went to
sleep. Despite the fact that he had explicitly told us to go home and
get some sleep, it just seemed like the right thing to do. That was
where I wanted to be.
I watched dad go to sleep, and got increasingly comfortable myself.
The hospital seemed comfortable. The silence seemed comfortable. Most
comfortable of all was the sense I had of being in the right place,
doing the right thing - a dutiful son, sitting by his father’s bedside,
ready to spring into action if he needed me.
Then he woke up. “What are you doing here? Go home and get some
sleep!” “I’ll sleep better if I know that you are sleeping well, dad,” I
said rather feebly. Within fifteen minutes I was back in my car, trying
to remember my way home.
He should have let us stay. He should have at least let the nurse get
us in the morning, when she could see that he was fading fast. “No, no,
let them sleep,” he’d said. “They’ll get here later in the morning.” We
did get there later in the morning, but the struggle was over before we
arrived.
It’s not as if any of us would have been at home sleeping soundly. I
stayed up until nearly 4am, sitting at my desk, painting my set of
American Civil War action figures. I was up and about again at 6.30am,
wondering what I should do. I decided to go back to work on the toy
soldiers, though I really wanted to be somewhere else.
I was pouring my time into one figure – a rather dignified looking
general with a receding hairline. As I worked on him, I had his hairline
recede further and further. I realised I was modelling this figure on my
dad.
Perhaps I could take this colourful figurine into the hospital. Dad
would probably be amused to see it. I’m sure he’d see the resemblance!
I’m sure he would be pleased. Then I remembered my three-year-old coming
up to me only the day before: ‘look dad, I painted a picture of you’. I
shuddered a little. Then the phone rang, to tell me where I should have
been all along.
It was a mighty funeral. It was held in one of the biggest churches
in Sydney, and the church was full. There were more bishops floating
around than you’d find in half a dozen chess sets, and men and women of
note were abounding. The speeches were beautiful. The choir sang.
Tributes were given. The rituals were performed. And then we all went
home, except for dad.
It was very public. He was a public person of course. Even so, I had
to keep reminding myself – this is my dad that I am burying.
And now the public have gone, and we, who knew and loved him best,
must go on and do the work of grieving alone. This is always the way of
course. I’ve taken over a hundred funerals myself. I know the score. Yet
it doesn’t make it any easier.
Why did you have to go dad? Why couldn’t we have spent just a bit
more time together? How am I supposed to go on living, dad, now that you
are gone?
