Ten years later…

We lost dad 10 years ago today. In some ways, we lost him five days earlier when he went into the coma. That was the day we got the call to go to the hospital, when we gathered as they said last rites over him for the first time. It was a shock for all of us. You don’t die from a hip operation, right? But embolisms happen, and sometimes that’s how it goes.

It was a horrendous five days. Adjusting to the news, flipping between hoping it would all be ok while preparing for the worst. Our hopes bounced around like popcorn. And then, like everyone who has lost someone, we had to get on with life without him.

I have some baggage from dad’s death. If I hadn’t pushed and pushed to get him to have his hip operation early… in time for my wedding… who knows what would have happened. And on the day he died, after five days of sitting outside Intensive Care units in Goulburn and then Canberra, feeling like nothing was changing and wanting an hour of “normality”, I went to a rugby club meeting and turned my phone off for an hour and a half. That’s when he passed. While frantic phone calls from my mum and the social worker at the hospital were being made to me, when I was needed most, I had my phone off and was sitting talking about pre-season rugby or some other such bullshit.

Anyway, that’s some stuff I can’t change and can beat myself up over when the mood strikes. But there’s one bit of baggage I could do something about. It relates to a choice I made with regard to his burial. John Crooks, funeral director, told me that dad was eligible for an Australian flag as a Nasho who’d completed his service and earned an Australian Defence Medal. I didn’t take long to think about it and said no thanks. I know dad got embarrassed when anyone brought up nashos. For a start, dad never bragged. Ever. Okay, when Parra or NSW won, but that was pretty much it. He had never seen action, but had friends and family who had and didn’t think he’d done anything special. I remember things he’d said about some Nashos he felt made too big a deal of it.

So, I said no to the flag, and I was confident at the time, but since I’ve begun to think that the flag wasn’t for dad so much as for his loved ones. Over the years I’ve wondered if I let the family down in saying no, so I contacted John Crooks (who had done such a great job getting me through the funeral service ten years ago) to ask if it was too late to get the flag. Thanks to him, and the great guys at the RSL sub branch, I had the flag in a couple of days, along with a poignant chat with sub-branch president Gordon Wade about the significance of the nashos efforts. My dad wore the uniform, he said, and prepared to defend the country, and that’s no small thing.

So we got the flag, and he was entitled to it for his national service according to the Department of Defence, and who am I to argue with them.  But it strikes me he was entitled to it in so many other ways.

For a life time of working the farm against growing debt and mounting obstacles. For working six and sometimes seven days a week and holding second and third jobs at Gulsons brickworks, driving taxis, delivering milk and delivering bread to make sure we ate. For sacrificing holidays his entire work life in order to do all he could to hold on to the farm. For decades with the Tarlo bushfire brigade risking life and limb to help save I couldn’t guess how many properties and lives. For somehow bouncing back from the day the semi-trailer flew over the top of Gordon Vale hilland tore through the grazing flock, killing hundreds of head of sheep. For somehow, even though he knew he was fighting a losing battle with trying to keep the farm afloat, getting up out of bed every morning and working his arse off, somehow not succumbing to the depression that claimed the lives of two of his siblings and, driven by an intense sense of duty and responsibility, kept trying to provide for his family.

Flag? There should be a bloody medal.

We move on, the world keeps spinning, but I think of you every day and I know the loss for mum has been even more  painful. I remember you through the stories that I bore people to tears with from repetition. I still drive your car with your number plates on it and I still measure myself against your example. I don’t measure up yet but it’s a work in progress. Love you dad. That’ll be all. Stand down, Private.