On Tuesday night I drove to Elwood with an excited Rigby next to me. We met with Cheeseboy in a beach side car park and went for a walk. We walked through the dark beside the wintry sea to Acland Street. We paused for a hot chocolate at San Churro, the Spanish chocolate place, and sat while passers-by stopped to give Rigby a pat and coo at his beauty. Then we walked back. It was all good.
Yesterday morning the phone rang at 8am. I saw it was my Dad's number and instinctively knew why he was calling. Sue had passed away during the night he told me. Though I had known this was why he was calling, and had known this call was coming at some point I still felt shocked. It seemed so sudden. Only a couple of weeks ago the worst prognosis had been confirmed, but there was hope - expectation - that she would gone on for a few months yet. I didn't know what to say. What do you say? I expressed my sorrow as his voice became ragged and he rang off.
I frantically organised myself yesterday morning. I booked a flight to Sydney to be with Dad. I rang around trying to organise a house-sitter to mind Rigby while I was away. Then I packed a bag and attended to a few bits and pieces, and finally took a cab to the airport. All the way I looked out the window barely seeing anything.
I'd been so busy that I hadn't stopped to eat anything so I checked into the Qantas club and hurriedly scoffed some cheese and biscuits and a glass of juice standing up. Then I boarded the plane.
Earlier I had discovered that most flights were fully booked and I'd had to settle for a more expensive fare. The plane was full of businessmen heading home or travelling up for a meeting. Once more I sat in the exit row squeezed between two men, an insolvency accountant from EY and an affable manager from the transport industry. As he said, we made up a fair front row, all of us tall men with burly builds. We exchanged desultory chatter before settling into the flight.
At Mascot I collected my bags and walked out to be picked up by dad. While I waited I spied an attractive woman about my age who appealed to me. She was slender and blonde. We exchanged a look and then dad drove up to me in his new car, flashed his lights and opened the boot for me.
I make note of all this because its times like these that you feel the texture of life more than most. Everything happens in a whirr, but at the same time you become conscious of everything happening against the context of the 'event' just passed. It is the marker around which everything else revolves, and brings things into sharp relief, which is why I think people always remember what they were doing when Kennedy was shot or the twin towers hit. For me it's important to record these little things and to be cognisant of them because they are part of the simple texture of my life. Mostly you overlook, or look by these things, and mostly you shouldn't.
As we drove away from the airport and exchanged small talk about the flight I looked ahead at a large, flat bottomed cloud that spread across the sky. It's underside was vividly lit by the pink light of the setting sun. It was spectacular to look at, and something about the sight reminded me of other times in Sydney. We continued to talk as I pondered that and I found myself a witness to the scene.
This is part of what I described before. These momentous events knock us out of our skin a little. The one self that goes about its ordinary daily business becomes fractured at these times, becoming multiple selves. You are the person doing those ordinary things - like catching a plane or looking at a sunset - and you also become the person observing the other self doing these things: this is me watching the sun set. That's my father commenting on the late arrival. This is me responding to him as I watch the sun set, and me observing it. Common place things become loaded with meaning, and so in the years following are vividly recalled as part of the total experience.
We drove through the streets and then back to the house. The house smelled of disinfectant. She, Sue, had died upstairs not more than 15 hours before. I looked around at the familiar space, noting the things that remained unchanged amongst those that had - a new TV, a coffee machine. My dad seemed much the same too, still fit looking, still looking years younger than his age, but, I noticed, with two lines running from the corners on his mouth to his chin. Was that different? I thought so.
We went out for dinner. We sat opposite each other and spoke of normal things and gradually circled around to the big topic. For the most part I was content to listen. I wasn't sure how much I could directly ask him, though I thought it would do him good to talk, and so occasionally I would prompt him with a question, then another.
He was happy to talk I think. He is a hard man in so many ways, but at heart he is a sentimental man. He was very much in love with Sue, and in so many ways they were a great couple. He was able to calmly relate to me the events of the last days, but at times he would begin to quaver with emotion. This was the case all night, and on each occasion he would pause and I would remain silent and look away. He did not seek to hide it, but nor did he seek sympathy - that is not his way. At one point later he actually apologised for his tears. We are very alike in that regard.
We returned to his home and sat at the kitchen bench drinking cask wine. I was tired. It was early still but I'd have happily gone to bed. Part I think was the mad rush that had come to rest. And partly, I think, was a kind of emotional exhaustion that comes with the shock of such news and the subsequent management of those emotions and, in my case, in walking the thin line in being there for dad.
As it turned out we sat there until after 1am. I just let him talk, and tried when I could to steer him towards happier memories. He shared a lot with me about her and their relationship and it was very nice and at times I was deeply moved. It prompted my own memories in these familiar surroundings, of other times happy and now seemingly ridiculously distant. How could they lead to this, after all? Yet everything leads to this.
24 hours before I had been happily walking the dog - now I was in another city, tending to my widowed father. Such is life.
