Day 4 – The Funeral and the wake.

I wrote these entries on 12 March 2002 about looking back on the days that followed my brother’s death. Please read them in day order…

 

 

 

I was not allowed to read his eulogy, I was too emotional. I was bundled up in the hearse.

 

I fought with my dad about him not letting my younger sister Amber come to the funeral. This has been something that has eaten away at her for years. She changed from that day onwards.

 

I remember thinking at the time that there would be at least 100 people attend. There wasn’t even standing room in the church… people lined up, on the church front lawn, out into the street. I saw faces I knew from walking down the street, close to 1000 people. I could count my friends on two hands.

 

We had expressly asked the undertakers to carry the coffin; we didn’t want it to be dropped as we had seen at another funeral recently. His friends pushed the undertakers out of the way and carried the coffin out of the church. My father was livid. I remember thinking that he couldn’t be in that box; he was so much bigger than that, wasn’t he?

 

We started on the slow drive to the cemetery, a procession of cars during the day with their lights on. I screamed for the undertaker to stop the car. I tell Marty and my lifelong friend Ben to jump into the car. We slowly approached the Iron Cove Bridge and Ben said, "Can we pull over? I need to take a piss".  My mum, wounded and direct says “No. All of the other cars are following us”.

 

He hands me a letter written for Marty, a tribute like no other.

 

We arrive and line up around the lawn.

 

We do not lower the coffin; I am taken away from the service and PUT in the car because the intensity of my wailing is unbearable for everyone else.

 

I get out of the car and slam the door. I see the lid of his coffin open, his friends sitting around it putting mementos inside. Now I am livid. How dare they disrespect MY wishes?

 

I say, “What the fuck’s going on? I said no looking at dead flesh. NO DEAD FLESH”.

 

I want them to remember his sunburn and freckles and his blue eyes. His strong forearms like Popeye. His milk bottle white legs. Mum’s mouth, dad’s hair, my eyes, as they were, alive.

 

<span lang="EN-AU" style="FONT-SI

ZE: 12pt; LAYOUT-GRID-MODE: line; FONT-FAMILY: "Trebuchet MS"”>The kids there were of Celtic, Aboriginal, Pacific Islander, Mediterranean, Asian, and Slavic descent. Only now, I realise that this was important for their healing and part of their cultural ritual.

 

Everyone joins us back at the small apartment. We cannot all fit inside, the relatives and family friends stay inside with my mum. I sit out by the pool with hundreds of his friends for hours, drinking, listening to music full bore. None of the neighbours dared complain they had already tolerated the dead flowers underfoot.

 

We drank. I talked and connected with his friends for the first time.

 

Nicholas my first love had returned out of the ether and stayed with me for those three days, holding me up, literally. We walked down to the banks of the Parramatta River, where he used to spend his unemployed days fishing, smoking cigarettes and eating jam donuts.

 

My mum still says, “Those bloody boys lost the esky that day”, as though that mattered.

 

Finally, everyone left at around midnight. I was left with my mum. We were both hammered. My dad had gone home to his new family.

 

Mum and I could not talk to one another. She begged me for the gin; her teeth clenched "Give me the bottle. I am telling you to give…me…the bottle". This battle was already a feature of our lives, prior to my brother’s death.

 

The anger began. The only emotion I was to feel for years afterwards, everything was expressed as anger.

 

The wake was over.