Dear life – by Susan Francis
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For one hundred days we lived inside my father’s house. We lived in near silence, neither of us inclined towards cramming still space with pointless chatter. We lived with the kind of mortification that makes the sweat stick your hair to your forehead, a mortification that every morning – after I stripped him of his green-striped flannelette pyjamas – arranged us into unpleasant and painful configurations. My father’s dry, sandpapered arms, reaching childlike, straight above his head. Veins distending from his neck, the exposed roots of an ancient tree trunk. Me bent over cupping his ball sack in the palm of my hand – it always pitched below the shower seat – then I washed his privates while he perched rigidly on the metal chair, staring at a cracked tile like dear life depended on it. Later in the day, by the time lengths of midday light stretched across the bedroom floorboards, we had purposefully placed our cringing, the flinching, the wincing aside. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched myself snatch up that hefty packet of embarrassment and hurriedly jam it out of sight, away in a drawer till tomorrow. I don’t know where my father relegated his indignities. Sometimes, when he wasn’t feeling too weak, I slid his old felt slippers onto his feet, he leant on my arm and we shuffled down the hallway to the front room where he sat in the sun and flipped the pages of the newspaper. Look at that Bob Hawke, trembling forefinger tapping the paper. Best Prime Minister Australia’s ever seen. Labor voters both of us, which we concealed from my mother, whose resentment of my father was held so deep she refused to care for him even as he died. My father had done badly by her so many times, but to me, his first adopted child, he showed interest, affection, offered intelligent advice; you sure you want to marry him, Susannah? You don’t have to marry him, you know. The first time I remember laughing is when he sat me on his knee and steered the taxi he owned, one handedly down the driveway, encouraging me to press the horn over and over even as my mother appeared on the tiny front patio, hands on her hips. Propped up in bed, late at night against a bank of pillows, the bedside light polishing his wire glasses. He was reading The Collector by John Fowles. But he turned the book down, listened, serious-faced, as I stood to attention before him and read the first poem I’d ever written, Camping with the Germans. And me, awkward as one can be at that dreadful age of thirteen, pimplish, plumpish, a pair of cat’s eye glasses spoiling my face. Now, fifty years later in the front room, as we waited for him to die, he said:
After this is done Susannah, think about searching for the people who gave you up//But dad, I said. For God’s sake. I don’t want to think about them now// He said, people refused to tell me who my father was// I said, dad, it’s not important now //He said, I’ll never know my father//I said, c’mon, dad. Please dad.
Forty days we lived inside my father’s house, and we lived near silent. He refused all visitors. Those good ol’ boys, his fishing buddies, sun-faded t-shirts rudely straining across beer bellies, or ex-cop mates shuffling at the foot of the bed, unable to think of anything to say. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want them witnessing his stick-thin arms, caved in cheeks, the broken yolk of yellow staining the whites of his eyes. My father had always been a proud man. In his dying he was no different. He didn’t slip up once, not to cry, not to express fear. Not to hug me to him. But me? I embraced the art of tiptoeing. I tiptoed around our isolation. And every day I tiptoed around my own despair. I tiptoed down the hallway, balancing a tray holding a bowl of Heinz tomato soup and a plate of white bread with the crusts cut off, deliberately dawdling, secretly wishing he was already sleeping so that I didn’t have to enter a room hung with too much reality. Eyes blinking open, he examined me as I stood in the doorway, and he said:
I despise that damn organisation//Which one, dad? //The Salvation Army, he said//I said, why’s that? //He said, because when they discovered that my mother was pregnant, they turned her out. You need to find your mother, Susannah. And your father//But Dad, I said, I don’t want to think about that now//He said, it’s the only regret of my life. Make sure you find your father//Dad, I said. Don’t do this.
For ten days we lived inside that house. We lived almost silently, except for the hiss of the oxygen racing through the plastic tubes, the sound of my father’s restless, fretful turning, trying to find a comfortable position in which to lie, to die. And we lived with a mortification more tender, because caring for him in bed, running the soap across his plucked, chicken carcass chest, sliding the warm washer between his thighs was more dignified, less confronting than when we faced each other, him sitting upright.
Susie, I need you to promise me something, my father said//I said, anything, Dad. I mean it. I promise you anything.
For seven days we lived inside the house. We lived almost silently; his voice weaker than a whisper. He slept most deeply, most hours of the day and he slept away those dark, dark nights. Susannah, remember what you promised me? //What Dad? You mean that promise I made to overdose you with morphine if this all becomes too hard? Or the promise I made to search for my family because you never knew your own? God, I said out loud. I need your help? I need you to help me now, please?
For three hours we lived inside the house. My mother, my brother and me. Leaning over him, crouched beside him, holding his hands as he sunk into insentience. It’s okay dad. It’s okay to let go. We’re all here. Mum’s here. Jack’s here. I’m here. We’re all here, dad, and we love you, and we’ll always love you, and it’s okay for you to let go, now. Just let go. We’re all here.
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Image: Mo - Flickr
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