LIFE, DEATH AND FAIRYTALES

I’m not religious.

I don’t believe in after life. I don’t believe in praying. I don’t believe in heaven and hell. I just …. don’t believe.

But….

Maybe just this once, I wonder if I can. Believe that is. It would be nice to know he was going, I don’t know, somewhere.

I’m watching him lay there. His eyes are closed, his chest is rising and falling very slowly now. I can’t tear my eyes from his chest. I’m waiting for it to fall and not rise again. I can hear that it’s hurting, even if he can’t feel it himself. It’s not a surprise. We knew this was coming eventually.

So why do I feel surprised?

I scrape my chair closer, the noise grating, irritating. It makes the three other people in the room raise their red eyes over to me in sad annoyance like I’ve disturbed the equilibrium in the room. I mumble an apology and move the chair a little more, being careful to pick it up first this time.

I lay my cheek on his arm and close my hand into a fist as I feel a sob rise in my throat, but now is not the time. I close my eyes and start to talk.

“Remember when you used to make me hot chocolate and I would complain about the milk on the top? What a pain in the arse I was.”

“It was so funny the time you taught us to monkey walk down the hall, we laugh about that all the time.”

“I loved your stories, even the ones you told over and over.”

“You were so brave raising us on your own, I’m so proud of you.”

Once I start. I can’t stop.

I know it’s over when I feel the air in the room stop moving.

“You’re free now.” I whisper to him.

…………

He is slurring his words again. Fidgeting. Eyes darting. I notice it as soon as I walk in the door. “Great.” I say out loud, “Excellent.” I say even louder. I walk past him to the kettle. “Sit down and I’ll make you a cuppa.” I tell him, knowing he wont. He wants to escape and he will eventually, but I’m not going to make it easy for him.

It’s strange how you can love someone, your flesh and blood. Yet be so disgusted with them at the same time.

I already know that this is the beginning of a bender that could last weeks, maybe more, and will end in a gutter, a police cell, a hospital, who knows where. There is no stopping it.

……………

Once when we were little, my two sisters, my brother and of course me, stole some type of alcohol bottle from dad’s cabinet. The taste was disgusting. I remember how all our faces screwed up as we each stole a gulp from the bottle. We hid under the kitchen table thinking we were clever. My brother started crying because he hated it so much and we laughed at him for being a baby.

Dad caught us. Of course I’m not sure how we thought we’d get away with it anyway, he was just sitting on the couch watching television in the next room.

“What are you kids doing under there?” he asked, his voice had a slight slur, but also a smile, like he thought it was funny.

“Nothing.” We all answered in unison, with the exception of our brother, who was still crying.

“You want to have a drink like an adult do you?” he peered under the table and took the bottle, “Ok then, up you all get.” He laughed, “wait here.” He got down glasses from the cupboard and poured all of us a drink, a big tumbler full each. We looked on, horrified, it was one thing to have a sneaky taste, but we all agreed it tasted like petrol and none of us wanted any more of it.

“Drink up then!” he saluted us like a solider, laughing at us. We all stood looking at our glasses and then looking back at him.

“I don’t want to, Dad,” I whispered, “I’m sorry we took some.”

“Drink!” he pounded his fist on the bench, “you want to be adults? Then drink!”

I could hear my sisters start to cry and the sniffles still coming from my brother. We were scared, not of him, but of the thought of drinking more from that bottle. We all picked up our glasses and drank clean to the bottom. Then proceeded to vomit all over the kitchen floor.

“Clean up your mess and don’t touch this stuff again. It’s poison.” Without looking back, he strolled back to his couch like nothing had happened.

I never touched alcohol again. My sisters, rarely. My brother, unfortunately did.

…………..

It’s 4am.

I’m sick of waiting, but they wont won’t let me leave till the paperwork is finished and he has been admitted. I know the questions off by heart.

“When was his last drink?.”

“How long has he been an alcoholic?.”

“What was the date of his last admission to the rehabilitation clinic?.”

He is supposed to answer these himself. But he’s never able to and even if he’s sober enough, he just lies anyway.

I’ve been awake for over 24 hours and my body hurts, my brain hurts, my heart hurts. I look over to where he has passed out on the hospital bed and close my eyes.

………….

Roast dinner. The smell wafts through the door as I walk in. It smells delicious and I’m starving. Dad is a great cook.

I hear lots of voices chattering and laughing at the top of the stairs and instantly I’m at ease. All is well for the moment.

“Hello,” I call out as I walk in, “who forgot the gravy?” I plonk the gravy tin on the bench and walk over and give my sisters, my niece and nephew and my dad a kiss. My brother isn’t here, he is in rehab again.

Sitting around the table, I quietly watch and listen. My older sister holds court as she tells us about her job. My younger sister, multitasking, feeds her three- year- old son as she breastfeeds her new baby daughter, looking up to nod and comment.

My dad, head of the table, is bent over his plate eating with a smile, laughing at his grandson who is spitting the food on to the ground.

No husbands here tonight, daughters only night.

I like that.

……………

The phone call comes around 6pm on Saturday.

It’s been a hot day, and I’ve been at the beach with friends. My skin is prickly with sunburn and it’s fairly painful to get up off my couch to find my mobile.

It’s the hospital.

“Can I speak to Suzanne, Derek Humphrey’s daughter please?” the woman on the phone asks me. “That’s me.” I answer. She tells me she is from Burlington Hospital and they have my father in there.

“Oh right, no problem,” I say, “where did they find him?” I asked, looking down at my arms and stomach assessing the damage of my burn.

“No I’m afraid he has had a heart attack.” She says to me.

A heart attack. I was pretty sure my dad would get run over while drunk, or bang his head falling over, something to do with his drinking anyway. I’d been preparing myself my whole life for it. Not this.

I ring my sisters. I ring my brother. He needs us.

……….

He had a favourite saying that I never understood till now:

“Remember its it’s always about life, death and fairytales”

Its so clichéd, but its it’s raining today. He would have liked that, because he had a thing for clichés.

That makes me smile as I pop my umbrella and stand under it. The clouds are low and dark, forming strange patterns in the sky, it looks like night time, but it’s only midday.

I’m surprised at the number of people who are here at his funeral. He never, well, I thought he never had much of a social life. Too busy with us and getting drunk.

I’m 27 years old and I’m burying my father today.

He gave one of my sisters and me a talk once when I was about 7. We shared a room and couldn’t sleep, so he came in and told us a story. He said:

There was a king who had three beautiful princesses and a prince, they lived in a castle on a hill and there was a giant moat around it so no-one bad could get to them. The king loved his children more than life itself, but the king was very sick and he needed to teach his children how to protect the castle and to make sure the water was still sitting high in the moat. The king hated being sick, but he made sure that his children knew he loved them so that when he died, they would be able to be happy.

I thought it was a great to-the-point fairytale at the time, but my sister, two years older, cried “But Daddy, I don’t want you to die.” She clung to his arm. “Oh sweetness, everyone has to die sometime, that’s why we enjoy every single day we have together.”

I try to think that he did enjoy every day, but how could he, if he couldn’t do it sober. He spent my whole life waiting to die.

I’m giving the eulogy. Apparently I’m the strong one.

I stand up the front along side his casket, and look around the room. People are crying, some are shifting uncomfortablye in their seats, some are just looking at the ground.

My sisters and brother are staring at me., “What?” I mouth to them. My brother points to my arm and I look down. I’ve been leaning on the casket and pushed the flowers off to the side. “Oh sorry.” I whisper to them.

I’m not surprised, Dad. I always leant on you, I say to myself to myself. And you always leant on me. Why should it be any different in death?

……………

I’m finding it hard to breathe.

I’m sitting here in the living room with my older sister. The other two couldn’t be here, too hard they said. I know my brother is drinking again, and we need to deal with that, but not today.

We are packing away his life, going through his paperwork, throwing out his things, we are erasing him from existence. It feels wrong, but it’s been over a month now and my excuses for not doing it have dried up.

Jo picks up a ratty old box, torn down the side, taped up with sticky tape. “Photos.” She tells me.

“Do you want them, or should I take them?” I ask.

She’s not answering me and when I look up to see why, I see her holding a photo close to her face, studying it.

“You’re crying, Jo, what are you looking at?” I shift over to her and catch my breath. It’s a photo of our parents. “Mum.” I whisper. We thought there were no photos of her left in the house.

“He didn’t drink so much when she was here,” she says, “he was happy then.”

We both fall silent as we process this. I know she’s thinking about her, but I’m thinking about him. “I’m pretty sure I hate her you know.” I say “What she did to him, to us.”

“Oh Suze.” She stands and stretches her legs. “Maybe we should try to find her now and tell her he died.”

“She wouldn’t care Jo, you and I both know that, she hasn’t been in contact for over 20 years.” I say that, but I’m thinking, what if?

When your mother leaves and never looks back, when your father raises you the best he could but was a drunk, what is the point of bringing in more pain? I can see from my sister’s face, she wants to.

“It will hurt,” I tell her, “but do it if you have to.”

……………

There is a nip in the air today, letting us know summer is coming to an end. Still warm enough to wear my shorts, but cool enough to need a little cardigan.

This is what I’m wearing as we sit at the coffee shop. My two sisters, my brother and me.

We are waiting. For her.

“You know she might not come, right?.” I say to them. “Just because he died doesn’t mean she wants anything to do with us.”

“Shut up now, Suze,” my brother speaks says. “Seriously, just shut up.” He is nervous. Well of course he is., I am too, we all are.

I wonder what Dad would have thought of us sitting here, nervously sipping on our coffee’s, heads jumping every time someone walks past.

Waiting for her.

I stopped asking him where she was a long time ago. It was an unspoken rule in the house. We all knew it.

My little sister looks at her phone. “Well, it’s 12pm,” she tells us “how long do we wait?”

We all look at each other, then look at Jo – the organiser of this meeting. She looks sad and my stomach clenches for her, I told her this would hurt.

“I dunno.” She whispers into her coffee. That’s all she can manage.

“Let’s give her till 1 guys.” I take charge, as always. I was the one who looked after dad’s messes, this is supposed to be Jo’s turn.

Everyone nods and shifts around in their seats, one more hour of sitting here means we have to get comfortable.

It ended up being really easy for Jo to find her. She just found the phone number of our grandmother and that was that. She even lives in the same state as us. I think this annoyed Jo more, the fact that she was so accessible. Jo didn’t actually speak to her, she spoke to an answering machine. That’s why I’m even more sure this is a waste of time.

No-one is talking. We all have our phones on the table, watching the minutes roll over.

…………

I didn’t tell them, but I went and visited Ddad early this morning.

I took that photo of him and Mum with me. I sat next to his grave, still brown with fresh dirt, the grass only just starting to grow back. There were flowers there, one of the others must have been here recently too.

“Hi Dad.” I lay my hand on his gravestone “I always loved you, even when it was hard too, you were a great father for us and I know you did the best you could.”

I dug a little hole in the dirt with my fingers and put the photo in.