listening to my father Bye, Mum and Dad

It's been a hectic couple of weeks for me. I turned 50 on the 15th of August, took the grandkids to the Museum for the first time last weekend, and I lost my mother, from pneumonia, aged 89, on Wednesday the 27th of August 2003.

 

This is a montage of pictures taken at an impromptu picnic Mum, Dad and I treated ourselves to in 1981.

 

It was a spur of the moment thing. I'd just been fired from a job I was no good at (but had wanted to be good at) and was feeling down, despite the generous severance pay. I rang Dad to spread around the misery and he just blurted out the suggestion that we should all go on a picnic. I was feeling awful sorry for myself and not in a picnic mood, but I didn't know how to say "no", so I drove over to their house and we all set off. For where, we didn't know. "We'll find somewhere nice", said my Dad.

 

My Mum, who is reading the racing form guide in the newspaper in the top picture, was put out by all this recklessness. We didn't have any sausages. Where was the barbeque griddle? Couldn't we make it some other day? A thousand excuses. Truth was, she wanted to slip up to the betting shop and put some money on a few favourite horses that Mick Dittman (one of Sydney's leading jockies at the time, who lived three doors down from them) had told her about.

 

"Oh come on Kit," Dad and I both said. We hadn't been for a barbeque picnic since I was a kid, and I was getting used to the idea of a day in the bush. So she relented, packed a few essentials and off we went.

 

We ended up an hour-and-a-half or so later driving down an extremely steep, dilapidated and severely potholed road, with Kit (a diminuitive of "Kate") saying out loud, "Let's turn back. This looks dangerous." The bravado my father and I displayed was more born of the realisation that there was no turning back, rather than any innate bravery on our parts. The road was simply too narrow for any turning stunts.

 

At the bottom of the hill we found this place, called (I know now) "Wheeny Creek". A cool sandy bottomed creek, an old bridge and a lush grassy meadow beside it. Perfect!

 

We had the dog, Robbie, with us and so let him off the lead for a wander. The first thing he saw was a rabbit and he took off after it. Half an hour later I caught him (the dog) and then we tied him up for a while, until his whimpering and whinnying tore too much at our heartstrings.

 

The food was plain but tasty, cooked over a fire made from dry branches we found lying around. The salad was delicious and the creek was cold. I threw the dog into the water for a joke, to see how well he swam (I had heard that all dogs could swim), but the current swept him downstream. It took me another ten minutes to fetch him - wet and bedraggled - both of us. No more swims after that.

 

Mum never got to put her bets on, but took the newspaper and studied the form anyhow. She had a very active mind and was always on some mental project, be it learning German or studying the form. This was in stark contrast to the state she was in just last Tuesday when my sister and I visited her for the last time. But I prefer to remember my mother this way - active and interested - not the way she was on her death bed.

 

It turned out to be the last picnic the three of us went on together. My father's health began to deteriorate not long after, and he lost all his energy. He lingered on for 8 years, dying in 1989 at the age of 73. I don't know who was more surprised when it happened: us, his family, or him. We all believed he was indestructable.

 

My mother really just gave up the ghost after his death. She began a seven year descent into dementia, becoming almost completely catatonic by 1997, a state she remained in (except for one return to near normalcy) until she passed away. She lived on her own for a while, but then my sister and her husband took her in (despite being nearly driven mad by her antics as she went back to her second childhood). It was something I couldn't have done. Even a night or two with her left me exasperated. Thanks, Sue. It was wonderful of you.

 

 

(The one revisit to sanity that I witnessed came about when she had a bad fall in the nursing home. The loose screw in her head for a couple of hours fell back into place. I had been rung by the hospital at midnight to come in and sign some papers so they could do tests. I asked her my ritual question, "Do you know who I am?". I hadn't had a sensible response to it for years, but I always asked. This time, though, she nearly knocked me over by answering, "Of course I do. You're Anthony. You're my son." We had a near normal conversation in the early hours of the morning, with her on a trolley in an ER ward and me beside her. I was conscious of time running out as we chatted and she asked me about my father and where he was, her sisters, the dog. I didn't tell her they were all gone. Ijust wanted to chat and not upset her. I fell asleep next to the bed and was woken by the nurse the next morning. I said "Hello Kitty", but the time had passed: she had gone back to her dementia while I dozed. This was 1995).

 

For years after my father's death Mum and I used to go on drives in the country, every weekend, looking for this spot, that I only later came to know as "Wheeny Creek". We had originally found it by following our noses, turning down ever more precarious country roads, then lanes and finally goat tracks. We didn't bother to log the exact location. Finding it again became one of those obsessive quests I engage in from time to time. Almost every weekend my mother and I would go looking for it.

 

We never found it, but had a good time looking (although Mum never got over her distrust of bumpy roads). Eventually she became permanently bedridden. The drives in the country had to stop. Eventually my visits to her stopped as well. There was no point: she didn't know me any more.

 

A couple of years later I found the negatives of the roll of film I shot on that day, while cleaning out some drawers in my office. Perhaps I could work out where the place was from these?

 

Using forensic skills, I blew up the newspaper she was reading to 400% and got a date from the top of the page. It was "Monday March-something-9, of 198---". A piece of grass obscured part of it. But I was able to see that the form guide was for the Melbourne races that day. The feature race was the "Labor Day Handicap". In Melbourne, Labor Day falls on the second Monday of March (in other states of Australia it's in September or October). So the day of the month couldn't have been the "19th" or the "29th", it had to be the "9th". It was a simple matter to go back through the almanac and find which year in the early eighties had the "9th" of March on a Monday. Eureka! The year was 1981.

 

I had a date at last. Now for the place.

 

It took me two years of searching, and then I found it by accident (literally). I was out driving by myself and chanced upon an auto accident with a local tow-truck driver in attendance. As the accident was blocking the road, we got chatting, the tow-truck driver and I. I mentioned my search, describing the place I was looking for, but he didn't know the area. However, his boss was the president of the local historical society and he might be able to help me. The driver gave me a business card and told me to ask for "Mick", but this was just one of many leads I had and forgot about, at least for a while.

 

I continued my search. I even engaged my wife in the hunt and we actually came to this very spot, but there was no bridge (instead there was a causeway) and there were concrete picnic tables scattered around, even a public toilet. Not the sylvan grove we had visited back in 1981. The road down was gravel, but it was well-graded, not pot-holed. We decided it wasn't the spot.

 

Several months later (it was the year 2000 by now, eleven years after my father's death) I found "Mick's" card when I was cleaning out some old drawers (I clean out old drawers often, but it never makes much difference). So I rang the number. I told him what I was looking for and why. I was looking for the place where I spent the last day with my mother and father that would mean so much to me.

 

He said, "Sounds like Wheeney Creek to me." I corrected him and said I'd already checked Wheeny Creek out, and there was no bridge. "That'd be right, the old bridge was swept away by floods in the early eighties," he replied. "What year?" I asked tremulously. He said he couldn't remember, but he'd call me back with that information. He'd have to check the local historical records.

 

Another couple of months went by and I forgot about the conversation. But then I found the business card again. It jogged my memory that Mick had never rung back. So I called him one more time.

 

His wife answered the phone and told me the bad news that Mick had had a stroke in the meantime and was paralysed down one side. He was still able to talk though, and it might do him good to speak to me, to anyone, as he was a bit lonely. Would I mind? "Not at all," I told her. Mick, just before his stroke, had looked up the date that the bridge was swept away, to be replaced by a causeway: July 1981. Wheeny Creek COULD be the place, after all.

 

I drove straight down there, but felt the same combination of familiarity and unfamiliarity I had felt on my previous visits when I had crossed it off the list. Mick had been wrong, I was sure. But this time I had brought along blow-ups of the photos I took all those years ago.

 

Everything was different. It wasn't the same place. What an idiot I'd been to come here again, on my silly quest. And then I had an inspiration. The trees might be different, the bridge might be different, the grass might be different, but the rock formations wouldn't be different. I took out a picture of one of the river cliffs from 1981. There was my father with the dog, and behind him some blurred sandstone bluffs. I compared the two: realit

Tony

 

My commiserations on the death of your mother.

 

As Wheeny Creek obviously means so much to you, I'm sure it would be a good place to spread her ashes. This montage and your story are already a lovely tribute to her.

 

Regards

I don't have to explain too much why this has had a similar impact on me, as the previous image in this folder did.

This is a wonderful uplifting story and I am very grateful that you decided to share in this place. Thank you!

Beautiful tribute to your parents Tony. I'm very sorry that you've lost your mother. Or rather, that you've lost her again.

 

I'm struck by the similarities in our stories. Like you, I lost my father long ago after an extended illness. In fact he died just 8 months after your picnic at Wheeny Creek. Even though I knew what was coming I was still too young and stupid to say the things I should have said to him. I still miss him.

 

My mother just celebrated her 77th birthday on the 18th of August, nine short days before your mother passed. She has what's been described by the doctors as moderate Alzheimer's, although if feels pretty severe to me. While I'm thankful that at the moment she stills knows who I am and where she is, the decline is alarmingly rapid. As with my father I know what lies ahead for her too, and worse yet she knows as well having watched her own sister drift away from the same disease. She doesn't talk about it but I know she's frightened, so am I. Luckily I'm older and wiser now, and I continually say the things that need to be said.

 

That shot of your mother reading the racing form brings a smile to my face. And it becomes even more poignant knowing what the future would hold for her. And for you.

 

Again, my sympathies. And my compliments on a wonderful tribute.

Tony, I havent even looked at the picture yet. Youre short story has been fascination enough. It was a wonderful read. The picture couldnt hope to equal the tenderness of your recollections. Im convinced that job you got kicked out of couldnt possibly have involved descriptive writing or narrative.

 

So well done, and thanks for thinking so highly of your Mum and Dad. And saying so. I always like hearing of family tributes like this, with the element of ordinariness becoming fundamental to the memory of an era. My deepest sympathy on losing such fine people.

 

PS I can see the picture now. There it is as I paste this response out of MS Word into the little comment box provided. You won't get mad will you if I say I prefer the story? It was marvellous.

lovely photographs and amazing story - with all its twists and turns. am both touched and speechless.

Tony, this picture, along with the story behind, looks like a jigsaw puzzle that you ve just finished achieving ... and the story which goes with it, although very sad and very moving, seems to bring life again and happiness which quite rare for memories...

Thanks for all your reply posts. I wasn't really looking for them, but now they've been posted they're well appreciated. This page is a sort of condolence book, really, isn't it?

 

If you think my piece above was long, you should have seen the eulogy I gave at her funeral.

 

Apart from a small group of her relatives (we wanted a "private" funeral), there were about thirty or forty patients from the nursing home and the adjoining returement village who are devout (if habitual) attendees at these occasions. If they were expecting the regulation requiem mass with a few kind words, all over in a quarter of an hour, they got more than they bargained for.

 

It's such a beautiful Italianate chapel (with seating for about a thousand - a harkening back to the days when the nuns had a large community to cater for) that it seemed a waste to just mutter platitudes.

 

Although not a practising Catholic any longer, I can readily appreciate the usefulness of a ritual valediction for the dead. A church service, in ruling off the page (as it were), reminds us that there are powers greater than us; not necessarily spiritual (although perhaps they are), but certainly physical: future histories that we must all face one day. They allow the opportunity for us privately - but in a public place with the strength of numbers - to reflect on our fates before we get back to a life of pretending (at least for practical purposes) that we can live forever. Some could call this "denial". Some could call it "common sense". I just prefer not to think about it, until forced to by circumstances.

 

It's not that I'm under any illusions that my mother's life was in any way significant in the grand scheme of things. Rather, I wanted people to know she had a story, that she wasn't just another Little Old Lady with no history... and it also helped the rellies, who were pretty teary, to hear some of the amusing family stories once again. I even got a chance to put in a sarcastic story at the expense of Australia's current Prime Minister, who my mother met, publicly and pointedly ignoring him under famous circumstances (they were neighbours for a time when he was in the political wilderness, but she knew a wrong 'un when she saw one)... family anecdotes like that.

 

The eulogy wasn't really that long, about 10 minutes, but had rather more solid content than the usual kind words between the gospel and holy communion. It was my way of saying, "I know you've all got stories, but I can't tell them. Here's one I CAN tell, though. It's for you all"

 

Oh, and I readily agree the pictures are nothing special. You had to be there.

 

 

I have to disagree with your last sentence there Tony. We didn't have to be there and this makes these photographs very special indeed.

Sorry to hear (read) this. My sympathy to you and your family.

You made a wonderful tribute to your father and mother. I think it are these memories that are precious. They are worth more than anything else.

 

Take care.

 

 

 

 

Thanks!

Tony, so sorry to hear how things have been going for you recently and this whole year! I just read every beautifully written word you wrote about this shot. Then I looked at the images.. The whole thing just brought tears to my eyes.. The pictures have a way of inviting us in to that sweet memory of the day of the picnic.

I'm very sorry for your loss... Thanks for sharing this tribute with us..

I also would like to suggest or ask if you've ever considered writing? You have a gift with words AND photography. Might be an interesting combination in the form of a book... Just a thought.

It's a great memory you have.

Thanks again for the later comments.

 

To address a couple of questions...

 

The job I was fired from was as a newstape editor at a Sydney television station. I was hopeless when they decided to fire me. Although I improved after that, the dismissal got stuck in the bureaucracy and I was booted out a month later. I never really fitted in there. My politics (left of centre) were wrong for the place, which was run by an Australian establishment family, reknowned for its rightwing predilections - not the (Rupert) Murdochs, by the way (of current Fox News infamy), but the other lot (for those Aussies out there).

 

And yes, Mary, I have often thought about combining writing and photography. My main fear is that I probably wouldn't stick at it, and finish it. It's easier to daydream.

 

Once again, thanks to all. One sometimes forgets there are so very many friendly souls out there.