O'Connor's Law

O'Connor's Law

Today is the anniversary of my Dad's death.
He died five years ago. It was sudden. He went to golf one day and
never returned.
His death will always be with me. But death is like that, like an
unwelcome acquaintance, desperate to become your friend. You can hide
for a while, but you'll eventually have to confront the
interloper.
What will always strike me as bizarre is the disbelief I felt that life
around my grief stricken household continued as normal. Why hadn't the
world stopped turning? Someone had just left this earth, destination
probably nowhere, and day continued to become night. I guess all of
this is no surprise to anyone who has ever read a pop-psychology
article in an American ad-infested mag, let alone genuinely experienced
grief. What truly amazed me was that after a mere forty-eight hours, I
realised I could also appear to actually function. Tears even
occasionally gave way to reluctant laughter.
I had flown back from Auckland the day following Dad's collapse on the
golf course. My sisters and their families lived not far from the
parental home and my brother had been staying with Mum and Dad since
arriving home from Thailand three weeks earlier. They'd all been
waiting for me. It was as if they couldn't begin to think of Dad as not
being around until the remainder of the O'Connor clan had gathered, and
I know I couldn't begin to believe it all react until I was enveloped
in my mother's arms on her doorstep.
My mother organised a pilgrimage of 'James's family', as she had begun
to refer to us, to the site of Dad's last moments. We arrived to a
saddened, parochial golf club, their flags flying at half-mast. The
staff couldn't do enough for us, insisting we borrow two pristine golf
carts to journey us to the now sacred ninth hole. The club pro had
given us careful instructions as to how to drive the simple machines
and how to arrive at our destination. Of course each of us took no
notice. Did we look like idiots? Did he think grief had robbed us of
all our brain cells? How hard could it be to find a tiny hole amongst
acres and acres? Besides, Grant had followed Dad like a puppy around
the eighteen holes, as a means of getting to the nineteenth.
As the drivers, number two sister Catherine and Grant, struggled with
'forward', we bumped our way along the course, upright and uptight like
English royalty, with the mid week grey rinse set waving as we passed.
'There's James's poor widow and orphans. Imagine it just ending right
here and now. With me trying to give you mouth to mouth', was one
shouted-but-thought-she-had-whispered reaction to our procession. There
resulted a stricken look on the meeker companion's face at the thought
of departing the world without a moment's notice. On reflection, given
the leather skin and the Helga the Weightlifter frame of the deaf
putter, the pale face response could have been a mere reaction to the
very thought of receiving her companion's spit and bulk.
After we pulled Catherine's cart, which also carried our pale, grief
stricken Mum, out of a muddy ditch somewhere around the sixth hole,
Grant finally conceded defeat. Yes, he was bloody lost, and it wasn't
his fault he couldn't remember the layout of the course he'd been
playing on since he was six years of age. He'd been trekking through
Asia and Europe on and off over the last five years. He had since
achieved a higher state of mind. And besides, he'd always just followed
Dad. Grant had learned stuff all about the ancient game of golf. He
had, however, developed a great appreciation for beer, and as we stood
humiliated next to our now ochre-coloured carts for the club officials
to witness through the expansive plate glass clubhouse windows, we
should appreciate that fact. Us sisters grew rigid. Lisa, sister number
one, was about to verbally crucify our darling little brother. This was
a task not normally associated with the usually self-absorbed blonde
princess. Perhaps the grief and her grass stained white jeans had
robbed her of her serenity. As she spat out the first
weak-but-strong-for-Lisa insult, our mother stopped her dead in her
tirade. She was laughing.
Mum stood at the top of a ditch, her black trousers and leather slides
caked with mud, and just laughed. And laughed. Tears streamed down her
face. Three of us were transfixed. Catherine, thinking Mum had
succumbed to an incontrollable bout of grief, was about to slap her
cheek. Snapping to, I risked personal injury and grabbed Catherine's
arm in an effort to prevent my petite Mum copping a blow from the near
Amazon that is my older but not oldest sister. Catherine began to not
so quietly inform me of my mental state, and its comparison to our
mother's when the hysterical woman herself interrupted. What else could
you do but laugh in the face of such adversity? She was laughing with
Dad. She believed he was commenting from a place far away upon our
mutual inability to successfully complete a simple task. His
oft-quoted, unoriginal work mantra was 'Anything is possible if you put
your mind to it.' The domestic version, accompanied by a tut-tut and
role of the eyes, 'O'Connor's Law. When my children put their minds
together, attaining the possible is an uncertainty.'
As our mother became a bit more like Mum, we all began to relax a
little. If Mum could act a little more in character then we all seemed
to feel we could as well. Grant even went so far as to un-reinvent
himself a bit and stopped proffering Eastern spiritual platitudes to
Catherine, whom our Dad had always referred to as one who 'called a
spade a spade and a shovel a backhoe'. Lisa noticed this and smiled,
and I, not really knowing what to do, went about informing the
black-sheep of Dad's death and inventing euphemisms for Mum's descent
into her own private hell. Of course, always with a smile in my
voice.
The coroner's office took its time in releasing Dad's body, claiming it
had been a busy weekend. A contact from inside informed me that five
nursing home residents had simultaneously died just as the double sex
act, ordered by a proud and still randy ninety-four year old for his
own birthday, powered up the sex toys. The autopsies were to be carried
to ensure that heart failure was the answer and that there wasn't a
serial killer at work. Grant attributed to the delay to 'Big Brother'
allowing US owned pharmaceuticals testing on cadavers. This was music
to ears of a widow waiting to say goodbye to her partner of forty-five
years, and still unaware exactly of just why he had to leave when he
did. Luckily Catherine was out arranging the catering for the wake at
this time. We would have two more funerals to organise had she
overheard her darling little brother. Grant, the Ghandi of greater
Melbourne (who once tried to use the theory of passive resistance as he
was being mugged by a junkie, losing his casual weekly pay from Target
but gaining a broken arm), wouldn't have stood a chance against
Catherine, Warrior Princess, and Mum would have dropped dead at the
sight of her limbless baby boy. I didn't like the chance of obtaining
anything other than a vacant smile as assistance from Lisa in dealing
with the slaughter and clean up.
After many calls, we discovered Dad had died from a massive coronary.
Following the heavy two-minute silence generally experienced at such a
moment of great levity, the expanse of time that feels more like two
hours, I tactfully launched into the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
Catherine, who has lobbied for the establishment of a McDonald's
frequent glutton program since 1991, proffered an alternative theory.
Her rationalisation of death was that of an atheistic gambler - when
your number's up, it's up, and that's it. Finito. Grant was about to
espouse the virtues of taking the path of Zen, when Mum burst into
tears, and escaped to her empty room. Lisa smiled her sad smile.
When Dad finally made it to the funeral home, we all embarked on our
second pilgrimage. As we grinded to a halt outside the premises of
Robert D Graves Funerals (I kid you not!) we all realised that the site
had once been the home of the nefarious 'Shag Shack'. We were all a
little stunned at the location of Dad's temporary residence. Although
Mum had mumbled something along the lines of '&;#8230;and he better
not have been here before&;#8230;' The correct name of the knocking
shop had been Earthly Pleasures, causing great confusion to celestial
followers in search of that elusive crystal. Anyway, it had been shut
down following the discovery of the police commissioner tied up in the
'dungeon' wearing nothing but gartered stockings during a raid. The
commissioner failed to convince the then Premier that he had been
kidnapped whilst searching for a piece of quartz, so retired to a
sixty-square Portsea beach shack at the age of forty-five. Earthly
Pleasures could just have been renamed something like Last Stop on Top
of Earth.
As we passed through the steel barred outer door, I noticed the
requisite brothel round red light that had once adorned the front wall
of the old house had been replaced by a translucent, flickering dove.
'How symbolic', I had thought, just prior to Catherine pointing out
that the dove's bulb needed changing. The funeral director must have
scoured Melbourne's bonbonniere shops for months.
The employees had offered the usual Christian sympathetic phrases as we
handed over our large deposit (like Dad was going anywhere), not
allowing for the fact that one of us was agnostic and always had been,
two had turned atheist as they'd felt the warmth seep out of our
father's body in a busy, anonymous hospital accident and emergency, and
one a combination of every Eastern religious and hedonistic philosophy.
Mum, well she was oblivious, too overcome with grief to really
listen.
We were sombrely informed by the earnest looking 'Head of the Dead'
(Catherine's title for the funeral director) that Dad was waiting for
us in the Front Parlour. Did Dad have afternoon tea waiting for us?
Grant had attempted a little joke, subtle as ever, in remarking on the
naming of the still red-carpeted room and was rewarded with a blank
smile. I had assumed the director must have an amazing sense of humour
to attempt to get away with this whole set up, but the irony of the
situation was tragically lost on him.
We were left alone with Dad. We all kissed him. Dad wasn't Dad, but it
was all I had left of the physical Dad. He was cold and hard, but he
was still our Dad. Saying goodbye like that was a turning point for all
of us.
In fact, the whole trip from the funeral home was nearly our last.
Catherine had forgotten to take her glasses. It was pitch black, it was
raining, she was driving her husband's brand new, and as such
unfamiliar to her, four wheel never-to-be-taken-off-road drive. After a
near miss in pulling out of Graves's driveway, an incident in which she
claims not to have seen the 'van' disguised as a road train, she had
assured the four of us that if she closed the one eye that was really
myopic, and then all would be okay. Our own mortality was staring us in
the face, our eyes were firmly glued on the road ahead and our hands
would need to be pried from the 'oh God' handles.
To take her mind off the scenic trip home, Lisa proceeded to give us a
blow-by-blow description of an autopsy. The information was quite
illuminating, and Lisa proved an excellent pupil of Patricia
Cornwall's. Of course, my mother was delighted. Ever the diplomat, I
asked Catherine what on earth had possessed her to choose such a firm
to deal with the funeral. Her deadpan response was 'It would have
appealed to Dad's sense of humour.' As our knuckles grew whiter, we
recounted some of Dad's finer moments.
The trip home, coupled with the fact that I had only fifteen hours and
forty-two minutes till the funeral, provided the impetus needed to
compose my eulogy for Dad. Sorry, I should state that it was a joint
effort, with my three siblings not by my side as I completed our last
public words for Dad at three thirty five the morning of his funeral.
They actually did appreciate what I had written as I read it back to
each of them at dawn. I called Catherine first, who only had three
corrections, and one comment to add based on not offending some distant
relative. Lisa cried down the line, but I could still hear the faint
smile in her hiccups. Grant, still lying on Humphrey B. Bear pillow
cases, had been so damned relieved that he hadn't had to contribute
that I could have said Dad was a Nazi and he would have still said
'Yep, fine, really good sis.'
The turn out was huge. We hadn't realised just how well respected Dad
had been. There were only a few hitches. Dad's casket was naked. The
flowers hadn't arrived. He was also very late. The hearse and family
car drivers got lost on what should have been a simple fifteen-minute
car ride from Mum's to the crematorium. Catherine made them pull over
on the side of a narrow road that was twenty-five minutes from the
crematorium. She forced the drivers to relinquish their mobile phones,
retained one and redistributed one to myself. She was going to
navigate, and would keep me informed in the family car as to any
dangers up ahead. She then hopped in the front of the hearse and
ordered us onward. From the way her driver was breaking I could tell
Catherine was operating as a rally car navigator would. I desperately
hoped Dad was firmly secured.
As we pulled up to the crematorium chapel, we were presented with our
second opportunity to give the non-committal royal wave. It was very
uncomfortable. Mum was still reeling from the disappointment of Dad's
minimalist casket statement, when Grant attempted to cheer her up by
pointing out that the flowers had arrived out front as promised, and
wasn't it nice that they were so bright. The 1.8 metre white roses with
lilies had turned into a 0.73 metre, blinding array of pink
gerberas.
I made it through the eulogy, but only just. Half way through my paying
homage to my beloved Dad, the civil celebrant's mobile went off.
Recovering swiftly, I mustered the courage to finish. I felt triumphant
as I returned to my seat, thinking how Dad would have compared me to
the proud and witty Gough, our mutually admired great Australian.
Having handed over Dad's own self-mixed cassette to the celebrant
prompted and clearly labelled with my choice of Dad's favourite song
for the post eulogy 'reflection', I expected all to hear the Beatles
reiterating my theme of All You Need is Love. Instead, AC/DC's classic
rendition of Highway to Hell blurted from the loudspeakers. Dad's taste
in music was eclectic, to say the least.
Many close friends and distant family returned to the house for the
wake, and as when it comes to any gathering, there were many of whom my
Dad referred to 'free-loaders', and they were there with their bibs on.
It only takes a few. We ran out of food in the first thirty-four
minutes, and beer within the first sixteen. There were about eighty
people back at the house, and we had generously catered for one hundred
and twenty. Catherine and I were forced to raid Mum's
passed-the-used-by-date pantry for Jatz and Kraft processed cheese, and
Grant was sent to the bottlo to purchase slabs to ward off the hungry
crowd until the pizza arrived. In the end we managed to get all fed and
watered, the rustic finger food and pizza proving a hit and Grant had
brought enough beer and wine home to quench the thirst of the town of
Kalgoorlie. I'd stupidly given him my ATM card and PIN details, so he
had felt obliged to empty my account. He hadn't wanted to feel
stingy.
The service had at least provided a talking point for those waiting to
satiate their hunger and thirst. Amid responding to comments on 'how
different funerals are these days', I found myself answering questions
about us 'kids'. My response to the golf buddies and work colleagues
became standard - 'Yes, I'm Sarah. And yes, Dad was correct. I am the
youngest girl. Lisa is ten years older than me, and Catherine is two
years younger than Lisa.' Red faces mumbled various takes on 'it's all
about levels of maturity'.
The night wore on and eventually only our immediate family and very
close old family friends were left slouching, the men in our family
room, close to the bar fridge, and us girls in the lounge room. The
lads discussed sport, the only genuine topic of conversation for a
gathering of more than two heterosexual suburban males, and we swapped
tales of Dad and managed to work in comments such as 'Can you believe I
wore that to &;#8230;'
It all seemed so unreal.
It still feels that way.