The Household Guide to Dying

Late of the Parish

Underneath which had been added:

Also Alice Elizabeth

Wife of the Above

And in smaller lettering the saddest inscription of them all:

Henry James Proudfoot

Stillborn.

And then, under all that:

Died 1875

Gone but Never Forgotten

Always in the Cockles of Our Heart

An entire family history, in one brief and savage year, captured on one tombstone, erected by a family member now probably themselves unknown. There was something inescapably Dickensian about it. Especially when the largest and blackest crow I had ever seen alighted on the headstone two rows down and fixed me with a challenging look.

Let’s check the map, I said to the girls, still thinking about the cockles of the heart.

Archie had walked way ahead, taking photos of the enormous monuments to the dead built by the Italians. There were vaults out here larger than inner-city flats, and probably more expensive. Entire streets devoted to housing the dead. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see some black-scarfed woman emerge from a vault doorway and start sweeping down the pathway in front, or a few old men sitting at a corner smoking and playing cards.

There was nothing extraordinary about the dead, I had already accepted that. But it was extraordinary that I had lived most of my life without visiting them. Now I was doing research for my book. And I was also looking for my father, Frank, who died after a sudden heart attack some thirty-five years ago. His grave was a place I’d never visited. Now that I knew I was dying I needed to come.

I’m bored. This is so boring. When are we leaving?

I told you to bring a book or something.

But Daisy’s complaint was fair. It was tedious for a child of eight to be trailing behind an adult around a cemetery. I knew that Estelle was bored too but she understood why it was important for us to come to Rookwood, and anyway she’d brought her Nintendo DS.

I, on the other hand, was delighted. I hadn’t found my father yet, despite the maps posted all around as well as my mother’s directions, but was happy to wander past the rows and rows of family vaults. We had seen vaults perched like caravans on temporary-looking bases. Maybe they were temporary, maybe some families planned to take their dead relatives with them if they ever moved interstate or overseas. I’d gazed at the Lithuanian monument and peered closely at the sample of Lithuanian soil preserved behind a panel of glass. It looked more like something from a biology experiment than a handful of dirt.

Over here, called Archie, and so I followed and finally came to the place where my father was buried. The headstone was plain, as I knew it would be, Jean being the practical person that she was. It was grey granite, low and modest, with a brass plate inscribed with his name. It said:

Frank (Francis) Bennet

(not even In Loving Memory Of: that wasn’t Jean’s style)

Husband of Jean

Father of Delia

Sadly Missed

And that was it. No other details. No date. At the foot of the grave, Jean had planted some sort of groundcover which required maintenance once every five years, which was about all she visited now.

Hibbertia, said Archie. It’ll outlast a nuclear war.

I leaned over and examined it more closely. This end of winter, the weather was mild and buds were just forming. Soon it would be covered in flat yellow flowers.

I was five when my father died and I wasn’t taken to the funeral. Those were the days when everything to do with death was silenced, hidden and guarded, like a rabid beast that a family was still obliged to keep. Children especially were kept well away, even from their dead parents, as if the bite of that beast would infect them forever. In the first few years after my father died, Jean would visit occasionally with a tin of Brasso and a fresh bunch of fake flowers, but she would never take me, and I don’t remember wanting to go. Now it was so different, it seemed normal that I was bringing my daughters here – complaining though they were – just as it was normal to be discussing with them aspects of the dying process, which, after all, they were watching month by month, week by week.

Had enough? Archie said after I’d stood for a bit longer at the grave of Frank Bennet. I barely remembered him. He was not much more than a tall shape from the past. I remembered him mainly in the study in the house where I grew up, which contained books that he would take from the shelves with such reverence they seemed to be fragile things. I was rarely allowed to touch them. He had a garden shed full of tools also forbidden to me. He would make me watch from a safe distance as he planed a piece of timber or sharpened the lawnmower blades. The strongest memories of my father involved images of me running to his study or shed with messages from my mother about phone calls or dinners, and the powerful sense of importance that gave me.

I had thought the moment might have been more emotionally charged, but it was not like that. I felt nothing much at all, standing there. But I was glad I came, to see him, and to say goodbye in a way. My father’s only heart attack had been sudden and final. He was in his study at his desk one minute, on the floor the next. I wondered what had happened to the cockles of his heart, if they’d just shattered or closed off, or if they’d been faulty all along.

As we drove out of Rookwood cemetery I noticed a huge warehouse on the left, with loading docks down one side. Surely there wasn’t that volume of the dead to be stored or processed like airline cargo. At the end of the building was a red and white sign. Australia Post.

It must be the mail processing centre, I said. Strange place to have it.

Maybe it’s the dead letter office, said Estelle after a second. Then we both screeched with laughter.

I don’t get it, said Daisy, looking aggrieved.

Never mind, sweetie, Archie said as he turned back onto the highway. Do you still want to go to Waverley?

I looked at my watch. It was just after midday.

Yeah, why not? Maybe we can get some lunch around there too.

It’ll still be boring, Daisy said. Why can’t we go on a different excursion, why can’t we go to the beach?

It is near the beach. We could go to Bondi afterwards and get an ice cream.

But I want to go swimming! I want to go to Manly beach.

No, I said, slipping a CD into the player, it’s not nearly warm enough to go swimming at the beach, or anywhere. Besides, I get to choose the excursions from now on.

The opening notes of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ filled the car.

Eww, not him again, Estelle said. Can’t we listen to something else?

No, I said. I get to choose the music from now on too.

Four (#ulink_c80c0bfd-2401-5b81-a2ad-3c962fc25ca0)

A few months before our visit to the cemetery, I had left on another excursion on my own, and I’d found it was also a matter of the right music.

There was a place I had to revisit before it was too late. Way up north, a place where I once lived. Where we’d both lived. But I knew if I told Archie, he would stop me. I knew if I tried to say goodbye to my daughters, I wouldn’t be able to leave. I had to choose the day carefully, a school day, a work day, a quiet suburban sort of day, when a drive to the local shops could casually extend into a long trip. I just had to get in the car and go. And of all the things I should have been attending to, the only thing I cared for was the accompaniment to my long drive north. Get the background music right, and everything else would slip into place. It was a soundtrack, this road movie of my life, this one-shot-at-it adventure to end all adventures, where my ears would become the organs I’d rely on more than any other, more than, at times, it seemed, my very heart.

So, I forgot checking under the bonnet for oil and water levels, forgot the spare tyre. Forgot phoning ahead to see which places had motels and which didn’t, which places were indeed places, not just dots on the map, specks with only a petrol station, cafe and general store all in one, a pit stop for the loneliest drivers, the emptiest of tanks, a tenminute stop surrounded by bitumen and disappointment, and on a Sunday afternoon always shut.

I didn’t fill a Thermos, or even check I had sunglasses, packets of nuts and dried fruit, two bottles of water, one for me, one for the radiator. Just walked out that door with the barest of essentials in a small bag, a couple of books, and drove off leaving the house to its own rhythms and noises. The beds were roughly made, the dishes rinsed and left in the sink, the note was on the bench.