So, I mentioned that I moved to New York for work. The leaving-Australia part was fun – I had party after party. I flew to see my dad, then my mum, my grandpa, then more friends. I partied, drank, ate, said goodbye and partied some more.
Before hitting New York, I flew to Hawaii for a few days with two girlfriends – to chill out after all the partying at home. We met another friend there and set about the mission of enjoying some cocktails, the beach, the sunshine and the rancho-relax times.
The second day in Hawaii, we had all eaten dinner and three of the four of us were on our way to partake in yet more alcohol at a less than salubrious establishment. I was about three cocktails down when I noticed a missed call from my dad’s next door neighbour. I called back.
“Um…” she said. “I don’t know how to tell you this. But your dad has died.”
“Oh. Right. Ok. I have to go.” (This was a very confused me – and this is exactly what I said.)
“I’m really sorry…” her voice trailed off as I hung up the phone.
I walked back into the bar and grabbed my bag, downed the rest of my drink and made to leave as my bewildered friends looked on. I looked at them and stated (in hindsight, extremely bluntly but also oh so calmly!) “my dad died. I have to go”.
Once outside (with my friends scrambling behind me), I called the neighbour back and she confirmed that no, it was not a joke, and yes, my beloved dad, who I had just spent a fab week with, had passed away the night before. It appeared to be a heart attack.
I have never, ever experienced what I experienced next – which was like being punched in the stomach without the pain. I felt the breath go out of me, I doubled over as if in pain and I heard a cry (that I didn’t realise was my own) come out of me. When people say “that’s when it hit me”, that is what they mean. It struck me. Hard.
The next 36 hours were spent trying to get back to Australia and down to where my dad had lived. The sadness and grief was overwhelming and tears came (uninvited) every 30-45 minutes. I had never experienced such a feeling of finality as this.
I got to dad’s home town and his house was as he’d left it. I had had to collect his house keys from the local police station and they warned me that they hadn’t cleaned the place up. I wasn’t sure what they had meant but getting inside, I saw the 20cm-in-diameter pool of blood where he had fallen after his heart attack/stroke/embolism (we know now it was a heart attack but didn’t know at the time). I guess it was some solace that the pool of blood was small indicating that my wonderful dadda was probably dead before he hit the floor.
The next thing was going to see his body. Having spoken to lots of people since my beautiful dad passed, there are mixed feelings on whether this was a good or bad thing. Let’s face it, anything to do with death is pretty f***ing awful, but for me, I think it may have given me some closure (eventually – certainly not right away). I went and saw my dad and his body was hard and cold – for some reason I hadn’t expected that. His nose had been broken in the fall and this hospital hadn’t cleaned the blood from his hair. It wasn’t as gruesome as it sounds but it was certainly as terrible. More tears. More heartbreak. I loved my dad so much.
A few days later I had to travel to Melbourne to the coroner to identify my dad’s body again. I hadn’t agreed to him being moved and wasn’t even notified before he was apparently sent on the two hour journey down to Melbourne. There were a number of f***-ups, to be honest, but I can honestly say that I couldn’t have cared less.
Eventually, the coroner released dad’s body. I organised a funeral and was given some good advice. “All you can do,” my dad’s best friend told me, “is to honour anyone who has passed.” And it’s true. All the crying in the world won’t bring them back (believe me, I cried enough to give it a red hot crack!), and there is really nothing else than making sure the funeral (or memorial, or whatever it is) does the person who has passed justice. My dad was quite religious so I organised a church service. I flew his favourite pastor down from his new parish. I tried to get the word out to everyone he knew.
A number of people came up to me at the wake and told me that my dad would have loved the funeral and the gathering afterwards. In fact, someone told me, the biggest shame was that he wasn’t there to enjoy it. That has given me a lot of comfort in the past 4 years. My dad would have loved to hear everyone talking about him and telling stories and tales of his antics.
For anyone else out there going through a rough time with grief after losing a parent, I promise it does get easier. It takes a long time and there is nothing you can do than get through it, but if you make sure you honour your parent when they pass, remember the love and wonderful times you shared, it really, really does get easier.
Stories of life, love and laughter 