Dad says that sometimes men need to do these things with other men. Poppy sits in the front seat and me and Sam are in the back. No one is speaking but you can tell that everyone’s got their own thoughts going round and round in their heads.
We pull off the main road and go up through the big black gates yawning at us, open and wide. The whole landscape is different in here like you’ve suddenly arrived in another country. There are rows of palm trees on the roadside at first and then, later, old wild eucalyptus trees. We drive past the endless marble rectangles of Chinese letters like dominoes on one side and the rows and rows of crosses that change their shapes slightly as we pass the Greek burial plots and the Serbians and then the Assyrians. The Italians, they build marble houses so big you can walk inside them and the Jewish people, they put stars everywhere so that their fields of black marble look like the night sky.
I can’t help but think there must be a lot of people who wake up with the there and not there question on their minds.
We pull up in the Catholic part of the cemetery where the tombstones are guarded by statues of saints and angels watching over them. Dad walks at the head of the line followed by me and Sam and Poppy.
Dom’s place is different from before. The simple white cross and the raised mound of earth have been replaced with a marble headstone and a flat patch of grass. It all looks more permanent now.
Dad shoves his hands deep into his pockets and goes silent like he just doesn’t have the energy to say anymore. He moves forward slightly and bows his head and you know he’s talking to Dom in his own quiet way.
Poppy leans close to me and Sam and says that we should think of what we want to say to Dom now that we’re here with him. But all I can think is, Dom’s not here. He’d never stay in such a still place with all these trees and everyone silent underground. If he’s anywhere he’s back on Church Street, watching the cars slide by.
Sam tugs at my hand and I am brought back to where we are again. In front of me, my father isn’t what he’s been trying to be over the past year. He doesn’t look smiling or hopeful any more. Instead, he’s turned into a stream, just pouring out there, his big hands not enough to hold back the tides falling down his face.
We get up close to him, me and Poppy and Sam and hold him, so he knows he’s not alone and all four of us become a river, right there, pouring our grief into each other.