Musings on the death of my father

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Thursday 9 August 2012

Perth 1400

She rang the front doorbell for the third time and followed it by banging on the edge of the security door. Her client was deaf but usually, after the second ring, she would hear him shuffling to answer the door. The house was as secure as Fort Knox. There were deadlocks on both doors and all the windows. Security doors were also fitted front and back. Even the fly screens were protected with bars. She had heard that he had fought in the war.

She turned, went down the front porch steps and headed to her right across the lawn to the neighbour’s house. The aged care ‘at home’ service had noted on their instructions that, if the client did not answer the door, she was to see the neighbour. The neighbour had a key and together, neighbour and carer, they let themselves into his house. They found him on the floor of his bedroom, wedged between the end of his bed and the chair of his desk. There was no knowing how long he had been there.

They rang the ambulance.

The paramedics brought the trolley up the stairs, into the house and took note of the situation. They flung the single bed against the wall and tossed the chair against the chest of drawers which stood under window, in order to give them the space they needed. They ripped open his shirt and began to work on his fragile white chest. They pulled syringes from their plastic covers and left the litter on the carpet.

After some time he was lifted onto the trolley and taken out to the ambulance. He was desperately trying to make the paramedics understand that he only wanted to be taken to a private hospital. He cursed them for the entire drive to the closest public one.

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Despite never having heard of Dylan Thomas, he could have been channelling the poet’s thoughts.

The carer closed the door behind her on the mess as she watched them leave.

Melbourne 1730

My phone vibrated at least four times, snuggled into the depths of my handbag which lay pushed against the wall under the mirror. I had turned it to vibrate while the colour was soaking into my grey roots. If the phone rang I would be too tempted to answer it, which was how I had permanently coloured the cover of a previous phone.

I checked the phone just before the hairdresser was to call me to the basin. The calls and messages were from my father’s neighbour and an unknown Perth number. I excused myself and went to the bathroom to listen to them. The one from my father’s neighbour advised that he was in the ambulance with my father on the way to the hospital. The second message was from a doctor in the Emergency department.

And all I could think was that my father had picked an awkward time to die. Awkward for me. Once again he could point to me being the absent, negligent daughter. But what was I to do? At least my hair would look good for his funeral.

I rang the hospital.

I was put on hold. The hairdresser was motioning me to the basin. She did not know my father was dying. I felt warm tears drip from my nose.

The doctor came to the phone and advised me to come quickly to the hospital. My father had very little life left in him. I told him I lived in Melbourne. The doctor was silent.

I called my eldest son, who lived to the south of Perth. He immediately left and, with his girlfriend, began the hour long drive to the hospital. They were too late. I would never have made it on time.

If only my father could have warned me that he was about to die. Almost sixty two years ago my father had cautioned my mother about marrying him. He had proposed but had advised her that, as he did not have long to live, she probably should not accept. It was one of several times that she did not take his advice. He was to outlive her by seven years.

I messaged work and let them know I would not be in the next day.

The hairdresser washed the colour from my hair. She did not know what to say which was fine because I did not want conversation.

I went home and told my two other sons their grandfather had died.

Friday 10 August 2012

I had booked the first flight to Perth and had broken down in the airport. My father would have been disappointed in me. The airline upgraded me to Business class.

My son collected me from the airport and drove me directly to the Viewing Room at the hospital. I did not know that hospitals had rooms where one could view the dead.

The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was a box of tissues on the small table next to the body of my father. He must have felt right at home. There had always been boxes of tissues strategically placed in every room of his house.

There were multiples of everything in my parent’s house. Towers of toilet paper, boxes of laundry powder, numerous tubes of toothpaste, a forest of deodorant cans and old jars full of pens sitting on top of the piles of paper next to every telephone. Well meaning people told me it was a result of the war.

I moved closer to the body of my father which was tucked into crisp white hospital sheets. I touched his forehead. It was cold. My son mentioned that the nurses must have closed his eyes and mouth. Perhaps Rilke, one of his favourite poets, was right, “We know nothing of this going away, that shares nothing with us. We have no reason, whether astonishment and love or hate, to display Death, whom a fantastic mask of tragic lament astonishingly disfigures.”

My father had died of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. His abdominal aorta, the largest blood vessel our bodies have, had swollen and burst. It is a condition which is generally fatal. He had all the risk factors; high blood pressure, too much weight and a lack of exercise. The doctors estimated it had taken him twelve hours to die. He must have been lying on his bedroom floor, in pain, for a very long time.

My father had always carried a cordless phone in his shirt pocket just in case he fell. He had fallen several times before and had increasingly found it more difficult to get up by himself. Stubbornly he refused to wear an alarm bracelet. He did not want emergency services breaking down his front door. But with a phone handy he could call the neighbours. He had no intention of moving to a retirement village or nursing home.

On the day he died neither the paramedics nor the neighbour found his cordless phone anywhere on or near him.

Back in the house where I grew up I unlatched the windows and pushed them open as far as they could go. I unlocked the doors and let the breeze swing through them.

I picked up the toppled chair in my father’s room and sat in it. His favourite cardigan had been draped over the back of the chair. I pulled the sleeves around my arms and let them caress me in a way he never had.

My father had never wanted children. When I was born he was happy I was a girl. It meant that he was still the last of his family.

Tuesday 21 August 2012

It took nearly two weeks for both the church and the cemetery to be available to bury my father. I never knew that death was such a busy industry.

In those two weeks I had cleared out only a quarter of the house. I had thrown out countless garbage bags full of unusable things. I had given away mountains of clothing, shoes and toiletries. And everyone who visited was treated to one of twenty seven full bottles of vodka, or one of the many unopened bottles of whisky, rum, gin, sherry and wine which had been hidden in cupboards in the back room. My father had always been the perfect host. His generosity reflected his traditional European upbringing.

I was wearing a dress which matched my black rimmed eyes. My makeup was thicker than usual, a last rebellion against my father. The limousine had water bottles nestled in the back of the seats. I had hoped for champagne.

My friends and other strangers watched me as I stood with my three sons in the front of the church. From where I stood I could see my father’s closed eyelids and folded hands in the open coffin. When the time came to parade past him I whispered, “Goodbye Old Man.” I did not kiss him as I had kissed my mother.

The rain came just after my father’s coffin was put in the ground. Tiny drops at first sprinkled the petals of the yellow roses I had bought that morning. The lady from the funeral home gave me a box containing the sympathy cards they had collected at the church. Sorry for your loss, they said. I have lost my father – how negligent am I?

That night, sitting in my mother’s bed, watching the moon through the curtains which wafted in the breeze, I read the torn piece of paper I had found under my father’s heart medicine. With what seemed to be foresight, he had written his last words;

Cheerio and down went the Smirnoff! Gallows humour, there is not much else left. Life has become serious.

The old days, the ghosts of the past, the old home are all foreign now. There was a time others knew me well but that too is gone. Like many others I am in a strange world, but God is always with me. And so, the last page is written, when I am gone my family goes too.

By Alexandra de Fircks

From: Australia

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