We all sat and composed ourselves. I was the first to speak, asking my brother if he was there when it happened. He said he arrived around 9 a.m. and Mum was in bed, with Dad sitting next to her, holding her hand. He said she looked skeletal and diminished, but there was still a light in her eyes, and definitely a flicker of recognition. He leant down, hugged her, and told her he loved her and that everything was okay. As he stood back up her eyes followed him across the room. He said there wasn’t a definitive moment when she left—no shudder, no noise, no last breath that he could discern—but within a minute or two just a total stillness. And then she was gone. He said her eyes were still open, and they were looking in Dad’s direction, but the spark had vanished. Dad seemed unaware she had actually passed, so my brother left the room to find a nurse. She checked Mum and confirmed she had died. She seemed reluctant to pass on the news, as if not wanting to finally close the book of their long life together. When she did, it was quiet and respectful: ‘She’s gone, Frankie, she is at peace now.’ Dad then leant down to say his last goodbyes. As he stood back up, my brother saw a look of bewilderment on Dad’s face, almost childlike, as if he was wondering, what do I do now?
I had very mixed emotions about what I was hearing, and what had just happened. My sister and I had conducted virtually an around-the-clock bedside vigil with Mum, and the moment by brother walks in—bingo, she decided to let go. And of all days on Father’s Day!
The only reasoning that made it sit okay with me was the thought that Mum was in control of that moment. She knew my sister and I had been by her side for all that time, and she was just holding on until my brother could make it. And she knew everyone would be around making a fuss of Dad that day, so it was the perfect time for her to leave us. That was the only possible scenario that made any sense to me, and didn’t leave me feeling mad and frustrated and robbed of being there for those final moments. Maybe she knew my brother was tougher than me and my sister combined, and we wouldn’t have actually coped being there at the end.
Dad was as calm and composed as I had seen him for a long time—maybe he had been waiting for my brother to arrive also?
I asked if I could go back into Mum’s room and say goodbye. As I entered her room I could feel my body tensing up. I had never seen a dead body before, and had absolutely no idea what would be waiting for me on that bed. I instantly thought back to a scene in a movie I saw as a teenager, where a deceased body was lying in a bed, and then suddenly catapulted itself towards the person standing at the end. Was this possible—something to do with the soul leaving the body? I was pretty confident it was just an urban myth. Hoping it was anyway.
The first thing I saw was Mum lying on her back, propped up with a pillow, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly ajar. I’m glad her eyes were closed, as I didn’t want to have to close them. I had seen this done so many times in movies, and had always wondered how they did it. Do a dead person’s eyelids just close automatically as a reaction to being touched, or do you have to exert some pressure on the eyelids and actually pull them down with your hand? On telly it always seemed so smooth and easy.
Someone had placed a single yellow rose on her chest. Who did that? Did they have roses on hand for this specific reason? I knew they didn’t sell them at the nursing home, but someone had put a yellow rose on her. That was nice.
I walked closer to the bed and just stood for a while looking at her—watching to see if she really wasn’t breathing. I leant down to brush the hair off her forehead so I could kiss her. I touched her skin and pulled my hand back in fright: she was stone-cold! That feeling of her cold skin almost sent me running out of the room in shock. Although it made sense for her body to be cold—and I have heard and used the saying ‘the body wasn’t even cold yet’—I wasn’t expecting her body to actually be cold. She had passed no less than an hour ago—how could her body be so cold so soon? And so still and quiet? No sound, no movement, no twitching. Nothing. I struggled with that.
As I touched her forehead again, I instantly felt like that wasn’t my mother lying there. I had been too late, she had left us. Maybe if her skin had still been warm I would have felt like part of her had remained. Is there something in the thought that it takes a while for the soul to leave the body? If so, hers had gone. I had really wanted to be there to hold her hand while she took her final breath. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her and how she was the best mother in the world and that I would miss her every day for the rest of my life. But she was cold. I would never get to tell her those things because she was cold.
I bent down and kissed her cheek, then sat down to tell her everything I needed to. All of those things I should have told her the night before but didn’t, because she wasn’t meant to die that morning.
I left her room and walked back into the bereavement area. We all just sat there dazed for a while, until the nursing home manager came in to talk business. She gave us all big hugs, conveyed her sadness for our loss, and then asked if we had a funeral home in mind. I ordinarily would have used the line ‘The body is not even cold yet’ but it was, so on to the next thing, I guess.
For thirteen years we knew this day was coming, for the past six years we could see it coming, and for the past four days it was upon us—but not one of us had talked about this post-death stuff. We had never mentioned a funeral, had never talked about cremation or burial. In fact Mum and Dad’s will hadn’t even been looked at in over 30 years. What was that about? Why hadn’t we as a family talked about this? Is that denial at its best, or is that normal? I see those pre-planned funeral ads on television and think to myself, who goes in and pre-plans their funeral? Who invests in a funeral plan? Obviously people a little more realistic and organised than us. I didn’t have the first clue as to what to do or who to call. Did Mum have to go to a hospital to be declared deceased, or did she just go straight to a funeral home? It was a Sunday—and Father’s Day at that—so would funeral homes even be open today? Did we need a priest? Did we need to put some clothes on her? She was still in her nightie and had a yellow rose on her chest. Do her false teeth go with her? My head was swimming and I still couldn’t get over how cold she was.
I sat down and ate that elusive orange cream biscuit, just to clear my head.
There was a funeral home on the corner of my street that I passed at least twice a day, but at that moment I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was called. I have always had this weird suspicion when driving past funeral homes that if I look at them, it’s a sign that I will end up there. Makes absolutely no sense, but I’ve always avoided them like the plague. Luckily my sister is not as unhinged as me and she remembered its name. Apparently funeral home staff are on call 24/7, even on Father’s Day, so the nursing home arranged for them to come and collect Mum.
It felt like less than ten minutes had gone by before I looked up to see an empty trolley being wheeled past the doorway and into Mum’s room. I asked Dad if he wanted to go back in to see Mum one last time, but he declined. He had said his goodbyes and was at peace with how he left it. He probably got to say everything he needed to say while she was still warm. Good for him. I was still feeling a little cheated.
As we sat there waiting for them to bring Mum out, I started to get a little agitated. I was stressing about looking up and seeing the trolley come out of her room with her lying on it and a sheet over her head. Surely they wouldn’t have one of those little tags tied to her toe with string, would they? I didn’t want that to be the final image of my mother that stayed in my head forever. Thankfully, just as they were bringing the trolley out, a curtained screen was slid across the doorway to our room and we were shielded from her final exit. I wondered whether that curtained screen belonged to the funeral home or the nursing home, and was it called the ‘death curtain’, or did it serve other purposes as well? Did they have different sizes in case you are wheeling a body past double doors? It resembled that green curtain in The Wizard of Oz, but it was beige instead of green. Beige see
ms to the most inoffensive colour when dealing with death.
The rest of that day just kind of happened, with me feeling like I was in some removed state of mind. Pretty sure I went home and crashed for a bit. Dad would be staying at our house for a while, so it was going to be a game of smoke and mirrors to shield my son from what had just happened. Pa arriving at our house on a Sunday was enough to cause a certain level of suspicion, but we just kept up the story that Nana was a bit sick so Pa would be staying with us for a while.
Soon the flowers started arriving, the phone didn’t stop ringing, and we were in full mourning mode. The funeral home was in my street, so it seemed logical to use my house as base camp for the next few days while we got stuff sorted. It was weird knowing that Mum was just a few doors up in that funeral home, possibly lying on a trolley, and who knew what they were doing with her in a post-death, pre-funeral kind of way. Were they being gentle with her? Do they refer to her by name, or is she just a number in a group of bodies they have lying around? It’s been two years since Mum passed, and I often walk past that funeral home twice a day and still my mind conjures up all kinds of crazy scenarios.
I love a good event to organise, and Mum’s funeral was going to be a beauty. Granted, I had no idea where to start, as I had only been to three funerals in my life, and all were utterly different. One was for a roommate from England, who committed suicide; only her father and brother had flown out to Australia for her funeral, attended by my parents and another friend—so, pretty low-key and tragic. The next funeral was for my aunt, Mum’s sister. There were lots of family and friends, and at the end of the service, they draped her coffin in a Collingwood Football Club flag and played the club theme song; even Mum wasn’t as committed to the Collingwood cause as her sister! The last was for a close friend who had survived cancer for many years, but lost her battle with the disease at the age of 32. She was a public figure, so her funeral was bigger than Ben-Hur—the full-meal deal with news crews and security. Pretty certain Mum’s send-off was going to pale in comparison to that one.
The first order of business was to discuss our options and wishes with the funeral home. Walking into the building felt a bit freaky: so much time had passed leading up to this event, but not a single moment’s thought had gone into it. I found myself shaking the director’s hand and saying, ‘Nice to meet you.’ Actually, it wasn’t nice to meet him. I wish I didn’t have to meet him, but I didn’t know what else to say. My brother, sister and I sat down at a round table and agreed on a day and a time for the funeral. The celebrant we requested wasn’t available, so the funeral home suggested another celebrant, who ironically was a former actor in a soap opera that Mum used to watch religiously—so it seemed rather fitting that he would preside over the ceremony. Mum loved a good celebrity sighting, so that would have made her very happy. We talked about flowers and, given our parents’ love of growing orchids, decided on a nice bouquet of orchids to adorn the coffin. And the coffin—how does one go about choosing a coffin? I wasn’t too fired up about the idea of walking into their coffin showcase room and neither was my sister, so my brother gallantly volunteered to choose one, following the funeral director through a doorway while my sister and I stayed behind talking about whether Mum would like a white coffin with gold accessories, or something a little more neutral. We got through about two options and my brother walked back into the room.
‘All done,’ he announced proudly, and sat back down.
‘That was quick!’ my sister said in surprise.
‘Well, I just went with the first and cheapest one I could find—there’s no use spending a ton of money on a coffin, is there? And besides, it will be covered in flowers.’
My brother had a point, but I was a little stunned at the efficiency of his decision. He was clearly operating on autopilot and emotions were just going to get in the way. In hindsight I guess it was good to have a family member make a rational decision and not prolong the process agonising over choices of colours and finishes, or whether Mum would have preferred gold or silver handles.
We looked through some order-of-service booklet examples and decided that as I had a graphic design background, I would design the booklet myself and send the artwork through to the printer. We were saving money all over the place here! We then talked about readings. My brother wanted to do the eulogy, and his youngest son wanted to talk on behalf of the grandkids. My sister and I decided we would read a poem together for moral support. We decided against a video or photo collage tribute, but to instead to keep it all quick and simple with a few songs and meaningful words.
Let’s see how much this send-off is going to cost, then.
After a few minutes of punching numbers into the calculator, and a few ‘we can factor a bit of a discount in there’ comments, he left the room to print out the breakdown of costs, before sliding the printout across the table for us to look at.
So, that will be FIVE MILLION DOLLARS! All that was missing was the funeral director’s pinky finger placed at the corner of his mouth.
It’s not as if we were going to say, ‘Well, we’ll have a think, maybe shop around, and get back to you.’ They had Mum as collateral.
It’s very much like buying a car; there are tons of extras that add up—beige interior, sunroof (maybe not a good idea for a coffin), gloss exterior, shiny accessories …
Will that be cash or credit card today?
I hit the ground running; there was so much to do. Music to choose, photos to find, a frame to buy for the photo of Mum on the coffin, artwork to prepare for the order of service, catering to organise for the afterparty at my house, and invitations to send out. I actually sat down to start working on an invitation, and then remembered people don’t send out invites for a funeral. You just put a notice in the paper and then word would just get around. Well, that was one less job to do.
I spent a whole day choosing photos. Mum and Dad were always the life of the party, and I found plenty of goofy shots from their time together, some of which Mum would have been horrified at having on public display. I chose a beautiful photo taken about a year before she started to go downhill, showing her at her best—big smile, sparkling eyes and a beautiful complexion that defied her years. Mum was always a classic beauty, and up until the day she passed her face had barely a wrinkle on it. (I am lucky enough to have inherited her complexion—pale skin and freckles. I spent many a weekend in the bathroom using lemon juice and bleach on my skin trying to get rid of those damn freckles. And if I had a dollar for every person who said ‘If you joined them all up you would have a great tan’, I would be rich and then I could afford to have that skin-bleaching surgery that worked so well on Michael Jackson. But I also inherited a susceptibility to skin cancer. Two years ago I had a skin cancer removed from my temple, and the dermatologist confirmed that this is going to be my lot in life. I spend way too much time thinking that if the skin cancer doesn’t get me, the Alzheimer’s will.)
I printed out the photo and slipped it into a lovely gold-painted wooden frame. It looked so nice I decided to place it on the mantelshelf in the lounge room for a few days before I took it up to the funeral home, with a small bunch of flowers next to it as a tribute.
That day, when my son arrived home from school, he called out for me to come in and look at something. He was sitting on the couch in the lounge room and had turned the television on. He looked up at the picture of Mum and said, ‘Why is that picture of Nana up there?’
‘Well, Nana has been very sick, and I thought it would be nice to put a photo of her up there, so every time we look at it we think about her,’ I answered.
‘Did Nana die?’ he asked, not taking his eyes off the photo.
Okay, so I knew this conversation was coming, but I was hoping we could get through the funeral first. Through all the raw emotions still on the surface.
‘Well, darling, she did die, because she had been very sick for a long time, and it was time for her leave us.’
Still he wa
s looking at the photo and although his eyes didn’t move, I could see that they were welling up, and his bottom lip was starting to protrude. I put my arm around him.
‘It’s okay to be sad, buddy, you know Nana loved you very much.’
He then started to actually cry, and turned to put his head into my shoulder.
‘I know you are going to miss Nana, mate, but she will always be with you.’
I managed to extract his head from my shoulder and look him in the eye. He was trying to compose himself, and took a breath in before he spoke.
‘I’m going to miss her wheelchair!’ he sobbed.
I did a pretty good job of not laughing or dismissing his genuine feeling of loss—albeit for the wheelchair, not his nana.
‘Well, we still have her wheelchair, so you can have a ride in it anytime you like.’
He turned his head away, and looked back at the photo on the mantel. Then his gaze shifted back down to the TV. ‘Hey look!’ he said. ‘That’s Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks.’ He bounced up on his feet, happily walked out of the lounge room, and we were done.
I was glad to be spared all the questions I had feared were coming—where is Nana now, is she in heaven, can she see us, can she hear us? These were all questions I was grappling with myself. I think my son was possibly the perfect age to face a death in the family. From that day on he spoke of Nana in the past tense, so he clearly understood she was no longer with us. He had a certain amount of sadness that she had gone away, but perhaps didn’t quite comprehend the emotional loss or the finality of it all. His relationship with her had never been quality one-on-one time spent talking and playing. There really wasn’t anything about Nana that he was going to miss—except for her wheelchair, of course. He did, however, realise that her death had affected everyone else in the house, so he took it upon himself to check in on everyone’s state of emotions as often as possible. He would constantly ask if I was missing my mum, and ask my dad if he was sad that Nana was dead. There was no way any of us could let our minds forget even for a moment what was happening. He was always ready to snap us back into reality.
Not Right In The Head Page 14
