timwrite.net

Curious writing for curious people

Tag: Daughters

  • At The Funeral

    My daughter, Zuzu, died in 2004 at home in Sydney.

    The peace that flowed from her sleep

    Stopped suddenly

    In her bedroom near dawn.

    While I slept.

    There is a hall with a curtain and an oven

    For her body

    To lift away

    As smoke

    Into Sydney’s spectacular light.

    On the perfectly green lawn

    Of the modern crematorium

    Ice cold air filled with fire

    In the July winter sun.

    We were so deeply moved

    By your scared sacred kind wishes,

    Evaporating in front of us

    As we tried to survive the future.

    As she lay there, in the mortuary

    I brushed her hair

    As I often did before

    In her short beautiful life.

    Although her skull

    had been opened

    and emptied

    Her brain delivered to hope.

    I listened to other mourners

    Behind me talking about her life

    Because they knew her and loved her.

    (Her laughter was real once

    It had drifted away

    It had gone

    Imagine that

    If you can)

    She left pursued by white balloons

    Brought along to the fire scene

    By someone I don’t know

    Who was doing their very best.

    After abnormal handshakes

    And crushing embraces

    We went down to the pub in town.

    and I started drinking

    For decades.

  • A Childless Father’s Day

    I realise that you can’t stop being a father once you’ve been one. Well, I can’t stop being a father.

    I realise that you can’t stop being a father once you’ve been one. Well, I can’t stop being a father. Despite the fact that my daughter died in 2004.

    So, most Father’s Days I sit looking at a bottle of whiskey and thinking about playing Joy Division and Mötorhead. Instead I drink green tea and listen to Kohachiro Miyata.

    I don’t think that Zuzu would be too keen on whiskey and Motorhead right now. I have her face in my heart right now. I have her smell – not the smell of her vomit or her tube-feed – but the smell of her just out of the bath, lying on my chest drying off.

    I played her Miyata-san only occasionally; once when she had bitten down on her finger and couldn’t unlock her jaw; once to calm me down after another night of bed changing when she couldn’t understand my frustration and I could but I couldn’t get her to understand so she laughed. 

    I wanted to calm down, I listened to Miyata-san and Honshirabe.

    The last note, however, brings me back to here and to staring at whiskey.

    I can smoke now on a Sunday afternoon, and I can get drunk, smother my heart in alcohol. I did that. It destroyed me. I don’t do it now.

    Maybe I will or maybe I’ll listen to some more Miyata and drink some green tea.

    If I think that had I never had a daughter like Zuzu, I wouldn’t be able to miss her so much. The fact that I do miss her so much, the fact that I am still her father, the fact that was with me in life makes missing her worthwhile. 

    So, I suppose that Father’s Day is a day for fathers to remember their children, no matter where they are.