jmgoyder

I have to tell the days after my father’s death in point form:

• I stayed with my grandparents in Sydney for two days until they could arrange a flight back to Perth
• My mum, and my two brothers, picked me up from the airport and, during the two hour trip down south to home, we exchanged funny anecdotes about Dad
• The next day it was felt best if I went to see Dad’s corpse in the morgue
• I kissed his freezing cold cheek and got a shock
• Husband-to-be took me for a long drive the day before the funeral
• I couldn’t cry at the funeral service so I tried to make myself cry at the cemetery
• It took two years for me to stop crying for Dad
• My mother kept her own grief away from me
• My brothers kept their own grief away from me
• I went back to work for Inna
• One afternoon, I went into Husband-to-be’s bedroom where he always had his 5-minute afternoon nap
• “Could you give me a hug?” I asked
• He sat up on the edge of his bed and patted the space next to him
• I sat down, nervously, not wanting him to think I was an idiot
• A beautiful, kind smile spread across his face
• He gave me a big hug
• My tears stopped falling

I felt my father’s palm against mine as this time I let myself fall in love.

The Bible college in Sydney was very new and I think we (that is the dozen or so others and me) were the first cohort. I remember a lovely grey-haired man, the founder of the college, giving us our first lesson in leadership and I remember his wife, a heavily made-up woman with coiffed hair, giving us our first lesson in (the concept of) love. This same woman was unable to make eye contact and was extremely unapproachable. Our ‘lessons’ were on the top floor of a highrise building and, periodically, we were asked to go to the surrounding glass windows, look down on the crowds and pray for the sinners below.

We lived in a dis-used convent, dormitory style. The cohort was a mixture of aspiring leaders/meglomaniacs; the troubled/depressed; total looneys/looneys; and a couple of normalish, searching people like me. We were all young, but I was definitely the most bewildered and naive. Once, when I accidentally confided in one of the cohort that I was missing Husband-to-be, he gathered everyone together in the basement of the convent, lit candles and attempted an exorcism. Mid-way through this weird event, I broke free of their hands and raced back up the stairs into the daylight, ran down the street to the phone box (there was no phone in the ‘dorm’) and rang my dad. This ended up being my last conversation with him:

Me: Dad, can I come home? These people are weird. (I then told him some stuff).

Dad: Tell them to go to buggery and come home!

Me (crying): Thanks, Dad!

It took a bit of time to arrange my homecoming and I don’t remember the details. What I do remember is having to wait and finish the first 4 month semester. I was happy to do that because I knew I would be going home soon. I missed my parents and I missed Inna desperately, but most of all I missed my Husband-to-be and the missing of him was like always having sand in my eyes.

One morning, during the window session, I had a strong premonition that my dad was sick; that night, the Bible college held a religious skit night and, when I heard the phone ring from a distance (in plush rooms of the grey-haired man and his coiffed wife), I knew, without any doubt, that my father was dead.

My parents got a bit worried about my infatuation with Inna and her son, Husband-to-be, so after six months of working for the family, I agreed to go to a Bible college in Sydney (the other side of Australia) to do a leadership course.

I didn’t want to go, and everything inside me pulled against going, but it seemed the best thing to do at the time so I went. The grief of leaving Inna was indescribable, but the grief of leaving Husband-to-be was much worse and my most vivid memory of that is Husband-to-be coming over to my parents’ house to say goodbye the night before my flight. This was quite awkward and very brief, and I kept wishing that he would simply ask me not to go. He didn’t.

But, as I was seeing him off, he got into his car, then jumped out again, wrapped me in a bearhug and whispered in my ear, “Oh Jules, I wish you didn’t have to go.” Then he kissed me on the cheek and was gone. It was all so quick and I spent a restless evening wondering what his hug, kiss and words had meant.

The next morning my parents drove me up to Perth and put me on the plane but I have no recollection of this because I guess my teenage heart was too torn. On the plane, I kept thinking that I should have stayed, I should have stayed, I should have stayed, but eventually I went to sleep, only waking when the plane landed, my eyes full of dried tears.

I never saw my father again because he died while I was away. I will always wonder about this and about my reluctance to go in the first place. My mother told me that well before Dad died, he had somehow intuited that Husband-to-be was the meant-to-be person for me and gave his blessing.