It was early on 3 August 2020 when my phone rang. It was my Mum. ‘I’m sorry love. I know you have an early lecture this morning but I think Dad has had a stroke’. By the time my bed-hair’d, half-pajama’d self made it to their house Dad was already being transferred from an ambulance to the mobile stroke unit parked outside. As I tried to get near to speak to him, I was held back by paramedics … because Covid. I still don’t know if he knew I was there.
It was the last time I saw him alive.
Dad had suffered a brain hemorrhage. We were told that he had stabilized and would be prepped for surgery. It ‘wasn’t worth us coming into the hospital’ until he was in recovery … because Covid. A few hours later the doctor rang. ‘Are you alone? Are you sitting down?’ - which is the equivalent to answering the door to two nervous looking police officers. Dad’s heart had stopped. ‘I’m so sorry’ said the doctor ‘It just … stopped. And we couldn’t get him back’.
My Mum prefacing her phone call with ‘I know you have an early lecture today’ sums up the absurdities that lurk within trauma. In the TV Series Six Feet Under a mother rings her adult son and says ‘Your father is dead and my pot roast is ruined’. My lecture was on a par with the pot roast.
My immediate reaction to the news was to ask a barrage of questions: What do we do now? Where is he? Is he alone? Who is looking after him? Does his room have a view?
‘Does his room have a view?’
What the hell was I thinking? Why would the view from his room matter? ‘Yes’ said the doctor, ‘the room has a lovely view’.
My sister’s question when I rang her in Perth was ‘What time did he die?’ I didn’t ask that. Why didn’t I ask that? I should have asked that.She couldn’t come to Melbourne to be with us … because Covid.
A friend drops everything to drive me into the hospital. As we pass pubs around North Melbourne we laugh about the times we spent at all of them when younger. We are in a car, masked, and laughing. When we finally navigate hospital security, we walk into the room to see Dad, and I say ‘Oh good, its a nice view’. What is it with me and the view?!
I’m saying and doing absurd things.
My friend rubs my back as I hold Dad’s hand and talk to him through tears. The heartbreak, unbearable. Her friendship, overwhelming. The day, its own special kind of hell.
We couldn’t have the funeral we wanted, or the one Dad so richly deserved … because Covid. When I went to collect his ashes, I was met at the door by a masked woman … again, because Covid. ‘Hi darling. Here’s Dad!’ she says to me (a little too cheerily) and hands over a bag with two cylinders in it. Ashes are heavy, and death is shockingly confronting stuff.
The sudden death of a loved one is traumatic at the best of times. Layers of Covid piled on top of everything means that your grieving process is twisted and skewed. Dad had always said to me ‘If I ever cannot move, or feed myself, or talk, I want you to smother me with a pillow’. Thanks Dad. Seems he decided to take that responsibility out of my hands. He would have done anything for those he loved. This may well have been the last of those things.
Dad was a quiet, gentle, eccentric man. We are all wondering how a man of so few words can leave such a gaping hole. Maybe we could learn a little from that. He tended to dispense with pleasantries as his engineering mind honed in on the task at hand. He loved food, and drinking coffee while reading ‘the paper’. He was extremely well dressed and loved a hat. My sister called him a ‘frustrated carpenter’ - our houses evidence of her claim.
But it is his silliness people keep talking about. He used to make up imaginary people like ‘Charlie Fn-ns’ and ‘Izzy Nikanoff’. He said ‘blimey teddy’, ‘strewth’ and ‘crikey Moses’ in a deliberately exaggerated ocker accent. When appalled or outraged he would say ‘for crying out loud!’ - which is something I feel I haven’t been doing enough of lately … until now.
Please resist the urge to tell me what stage in the grieving process I am up to, or how to grieve ‘properly’. All I need is one thing, and that’s for you to sit strong beside me; and make me laugh through all the tears. That’s what he would have done.
Make me laugh.
For crying out loud!
Image: Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash