A memoir (of sorts)…

I

People say the opposite of dying is living. But it’s not – the opposite of dying is beginning. And in this case, death is a slow, slow thing, and seems out of place with the coming of spring. Winter is already over – no more dark nights. The nights are too full for darkness now. It’s all light breezes, and big moons, and open stars, and the waking-up that is spring. The sun stays out all day.

On certain sun-filled afternoons like this, I’d visit the house – that house, with the friendly, musty bookshelves. I’d feed the chooks, sip coffee out of brown 70s mugs, and look longingly at the Yoyo biscuits contained neatly in the glass jar. With gentlemanly consideration, I was always offered one, but would politely refuse. After boiling the kettle, we’d sit by the fire (in summer we sat in the kitchen), and I’d listen to stories about old Adelaide (glorious days!), Eyre Peninsula in the 60s, World War II, the Wesley brothers, poetry, music, politics and the general state of the world – all manner of things I shall never hear about in the same way again.

Nowadays, there is little talk and much sleep. There is weakness. I observe this, knowing what he was in his younger days, his adventuring days when he worked on ships in the Navy and climbed rocks and swam the ocean and drove the lonely lengths of a desert road in a Morris Minor; when he flew the distance from Australia to the Middle East and took photos of crowded streets and raggy washing hanging out to dry in the filmy blue; when he took a boat to the island of Patmos on a sunny day in Greece. He is not like that now. Now, the magpies come to talk with him, and he listens, but doesn’t say much back. The sun comes in very slowly and stays around for a while to touch everything gold. The kookaburras laugh because, like Granddad, they know something about the irony of death; the camellias come out, and whither just as quickly – empty petals laid to rest on the concrete drive, while fresh buds peek at them curiously from above; the lonely warmth of an old yellow light; the wind outside the glass, the pattern of the carpet; the smell of the study and the books; the light tumbling in through the cracks to let the waiting angels make shadows on the walls. These are the things that matter in death…

II

Angels are where the camellias droop, where the moon is always close,

            and where the stars – the chimneys – stand stalwart for the night.

Where the broken paint flakes, the red bricks twirl in river-patterns,

            And where the old carpet creaks.

Angels are where the books laugh – quietly now – and wait for their mending.

Where the sun, upon a summer’s eve comes tossing in,

and where the spring softens to gold.

Angels are where the gums drip –

            and carrying with them the magpies, the rosellas,

            shout aloud to the golden west. 

Angels are where the porch light gathers, and the screen door tinkers,

and some bent figure leaning on a frame appears

            to haunt another time when the city was young.

Angels are where the bent figure leans over a book,

            dozing.  

Angels are where the windless hymns are sung.         

III

And now silence. We only whisper. Even the old house ceases its creaks and ticks. The radio never speaks anymore, the fireplace shakes about cautiously and forsakes its old rattle. Yesterday, it was shyly expressing regret at the loss of its master, and I heard it shiver behind me, flying sparks about against the glass. But that was all the resistance it could muster. Obediently, it settled back into a sad sigh, waiting for the end.

IV

A true gentleman. I know he was such because he made me want to be the best lady I could possibly be. We remain, in his own words, ‘Parted, but not separated.’ Certainly death is not the end. Though sometimes that can be hard to believe when one is faced with all the temporal endings in this life. I mentioned earlier that dying is the opposite of beginning. I would rather say that death – when a person has lived for the One Thing worth having – is a beginning. And a glorious one at that.  

3.3.1927 – 10.8.2024