Strange to think that it is fifteen years ago tomorrow that my father died. What a time that was. Inevitably, some of the detail has become fuzzy, the sequence of events has been lost, and some elements of pure fiction, I’m sure, have become truth through repetition. Also inevitably, the weeks leading up to his death are mostly viewed through the fractured prism of the pain, grief, and human stupidity that came after.
It happened this way. I was working as a solicitor in Leongatha, and living in the weatherboard splendour of 84 McCartin Street. Adrienne had been on the scene for about six months. Dad had been feeling run down for a couple of weeks, and eventually retired to his bed. Tests were run. I moved back to the farm at Fish Creek in order to help out. Leukemia was diagnosed. He was rushed to hospital in Melbourne, and died three weeks later. He was 63. I was 25.
What follows are the moments that are frozen in my mind.
It’s a Tuesday night at the farm. I have been feeding the animals. Mum and I are having dinner; dad is in bed. His doctor calls. The test results are in. It’s leukemia. There is a bed organised for him at the Alfred Hospital in Prahran. We have to get him there the next day. What’s leukemia? It’s a type of cancer. Oh. How does he feel about that? (As in all things, he takes it in with a calm equanimity.) Mum and I struggle to finish our dinner in silence, then make some phone calls.
The drive to Melbourne. Mum, struggling with her own poor health for some months, has been packed off to stay with her brother and sister-in-law at Inverloch. Uncle Jack (dad’s brother) is furious that an ambulance couldn’t have taken dad, but I am grateful for the chance to spend some time alone with him. Before we have travelled the mile and a half from the farm gate to the main road, dad says that I shouldn’t be upset at what might happen, because he has already lived a good life. He tells me to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. Later, I begin to see this as metaphor. Maybe he knew that the period after his death would not be easy.
It is a Saturday afternoon, two and a half weeks later. Dad has been through the hell of intensive chemotherapy, but the only thing that seems to be upsetting him is the quality of the food. “You’d think they could at least get porridge right.” He is in good spirits; he talks about getting back into lawn bowls, and about his (our) plans for the farm. Driving back to Adrienne’s house, I feel bouyant.
I bound into the hospital next morning, in boyish high spirits. The door to dad’s room is closed. Various medical staff are running around. Something has happened overnight. I am not allowed to see him and I can’t find anybody to explain the sudden turn of events. I feel lost, confused; I might as well not exist. I leave, not knowing how serious things really are; I drive back to Leongatha and try to put myself into the right frame of mind for work the next day.
Sitting in my office. It’s now Monday morning. The phone rings. It’s my dad’s sister, who has been looking after dad’s daily needs and feeding me information. The doctors say dad has 48 hours to live. What can I say? “Thanks for letting me know.” I arrange not to be at work for a while. What I really need is to talk to Adrienne.
Tuesday. I drive mum to Melbourne on the Tuesday. She has neither seen nor spoken to dad since he and I drove off down the hill in a cloud of dust, not quite three weeks earlier. This trip is, obviously, a big ordeal for her. When mum walks into dad’s hospital room, his face erupts in pure joy. I cry. They don’t really talk, as dad is (and this is a huge shock to all of us) beyond any sort of lucidity. At some point he calls me over, and struggles to tell me some very important, but almost totally incomprehensibe, information that seems to involve Kerry Packer and six million dollars. His last ever coherent sentence, addressed to the hospital pastor, who happened to drop in while we are there: “This is my wife.” As we are leaving, the decision is made to increase his morphine intake. There is nothing more to be done.
The drive back to Inverloch occurs as if in slow motion. Nobody says very much. I try over and over to make sense of dad’s story about Kerry Packer and the six million dollars. I decide it is probably the final manifestation of his long-term plan to turn the farm into a golf course and sell it to a rich businessman, and that he is handing over the reins to me. (It is not to be.) Adrienne and I spend a very strange, otherworldly night at the house on the farm.
The next day, we are sitting on the brick retaining wall outside the Alfred, eating some lunch and watching the traffic drive past, knowing that, a few floors up, dad is nearing the end. I am in no hurry to head up. Dad’s brothers and sister are in there, and I don’t particularly feel like seeing anyone. It is a fine and sunny spring day in Melbourne.
Sitting across the room from dad, for three hours, the only sound is the rasp of his breathing. As his breathing becomes more erratic, I instinctively hold my breath at each pause, waiting for his next intake. The pauses are increasingly unnerving. Then the breathing stops altogether, everything is silent and still, and he is gone.
