In the end, the call I had dreaded since moving to Australia was not a call at all. It was an email from my mother’s friend in London telling me my father had suddenly been taken to hospital with acute pneumonia and was not responding to treatment. My mother was with him and had been told to expect the worst.
Taking a break from her vigil by his side, Maman had later left an uncharacteristically garbled message on my mobile. She sounded marooned, disoriented with shock. Alone in the middle of the night, words deserted her: ‘He’s got … oh … what is it … what do you call it … ? Anyway, it’s not looking good … so there you are …’ She abandoned the sentence in mid-air, leaving meaning to drift like smoke.
I reached her at the hospital, where they had no bed to offer but had volunteered a sofa for her to rest on. She sounded dazed, like someone wounded wandering around the scene of an accident who has not yet been attended to by emergency services.
‘Shall I come now?’ I asked, trying to sound upbeat and helpful.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, sincerely forlorn and bewildered. ‘I can’t make a decision.’
Six hours later, my father was dead.
My mother had been by his side, watching and above all hearing him struggle for every breath.
‘It was terrible. The nurse said he was in pain,’ she told me, sparing me nothing. ‘He made noises like a hot water bottle.’ I thought about the slooshing sound the water makes when it is moving around in its rubber sheath. Until then I had found it vaguely comforting. Was that what she meant? Then I thought of the sound the hot water bottle makes when you expel the air before turning the stopper tight. A breath.
Why did he die in pain? I had a sanitised view of death, imagining morphine would be given in any situation. But it turns out that pneumonia is an exception, because the opiate narrows the airways, making it even harder to breathe. Surely, if someone was dying anyway, that wouldn’t matter, and morphine could make their decline gentler, easier? Apparently not. Perhaps my mother was not sure what to ask for or wasn’t aware how medical staff use euphemisms like ‘We can give him something to make him more comfortable’. Every time the nurse asked her if she would like to be alone with her husband for his final moments, Maman begged her to stay.
Listening to my mother talk about my father’s death, I wondered how much of her helplessness as a child by her grandfather’s bedside haunted her in my father’s final hours. Except that now she was an adult and, to my mind at least, waiting to be released from years of being hostage to a man who had long since vanished. When I Skyped her, she did not turn the camera on, preferring to remain invisible in her distress.
‘Did you hold his hand? Did you tell him it was alright to go?’ I asked, lamely resorting to movie clichés.
‘Oh, he wasn’t listening,’ she snapped. ‘His eyes were open but not focusing on anything. He had no idea I was there.’ She sounded accusing. But really the right word is aggrieved.
‘Still, perhaps he could hear you,’ I insisted. Who was I trying to comfort? My mother or myself?
‘I don’t think so,’ she said. In her pain and trauma, I think she wanted me to suffer a little of what she had endured, rather than make it easier in my imagination. Perhaps so she would not have to feel so alone with it all. I wanted to hear her sound relieved that it was over. But there was no relief.
‘I’m on my way,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
You say you’ll jump on a plane, but it’s not that simple. Flights from Australia do not depart hourly like European shuttles. They are full at short notice. It takes a day to disengage from life, cancel work, think about what to pack, organise technology. I had no idea how long I would be gone for or what the weather would do. It was technically autumn, but the temperatures I read online suggested an Indian summer. How long would that last?
I felt calm. Detached. It had happened. At last, at last. And at least I was not in the air, racing to get there, uncertain. At least I knew the outcome. That made it easier, didn’t it? Within minutes, it was as if I was enclosed under a bell jar, sealed into a vacuum by a special kind of loneliness that stole up on me like a predator. Intellectually, I knew I was not alone. David was beside me, literally as well as figuratively. He would follow me to London within a matter of days. But meanwhile it was as if a vapour had seeped into the air, making me feel apart, disconnected, as if the molecular structure of the atmosphere had changed.
Seeking to escape that toxicity, I went for a walk on the beach and experienced another strange sensation: while I was stepping over the soft sand I felt myself ageing, as though I could detect it at a cellular level, as if my skin were leathering and becoming a reptilian carapace I would never shed. So this is how it is, from now on, I heard deep, deep inside in a voice I did not recognise. My older self had taken possession, an unwelcome squatter who had moved into the basement and was not going to budge anytime soon.
I went into efficiency mode. I would organise the funeral on the plane and start on the eulogy. I would make a list of people to contact. I would not waste the flight time. I launched myself into Competent Caroline mode, a state I knew brought out the best in me. Efficient, practical, calm, in control. In a crisis, I was my father’s daughter. But when I got to the airport I was not quite so assured. Waves of tears crashed over me at the check-in counter—enough to earn me access to the business club lounge. No upgrade on compassionate grounds, but still, something.
‘We’re full, I’m sorry,’ said the ground staff supervisor. Every crumb of kindness made me feel so grateful I only wept more.
Even at an airport, always a place of heightened emotions, there are prescribed zones for crying. You are supposed to do it all before you go through to Departures and have pulled yourself together by the time you get to Immigration. No one cries at Passport Control, Security and beyond. You shop, you eat, you buy a magazine and some nuts, you people-watch, but you do not sob. If you do, you feel you are letting the side down, failing the team. You are spreading unnecessary alarm like germs. In these times of heightened vigilance, someone might report your distress and complain.
On the plane, I kept to myself. Normally chatty to help time pass in a more bearable way, I’d make basic conversation with a neighbour when meals were served. But not this time. I had no desire to impose my feelings on anyone or take an interest in their reasons for travelling. No film or book could hold my attention.
David had arranged for a driver to meet me at Heathrow. We chatted a little. I called my mother to say I was minutes away. I told the driver the reason for my visit. He nodded to me in the rear-vision mirror.
‘I lost my daughter last year,’ he said, jolting me as abruptly as if we’d hit another car. He said it so calmly. ‘She was thirteen.’
I asked how it happened. ‘An accident,’ he replied, matter-of-factly. ‘She was on a ski lift and she fell off it and died of internal injuries.’
By now we were at the gates to my mother’s home.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I stammered as he unloaded my suitcase. He shook my hand and smiled the smile of the permanently wounded.
‘She was my favourite.’ That confession pierced my heart. Perhaps only a stranger could be told such a painfully intimate admission.
My mother opened the door to me in a cobalt-blue waffle-weave dressing gown that I would see her wear for the next three weeks, its yoke uncharacteristically grubby. Catching my focus immediately and anticipating criticism, she lobbed a pre-emptive explanation: ‘It’s toothpaste, it doesn’t come out.’
Beneath her defiant ferocity I sensed fear and alarm, panic and dread. She had obtained a death certificate, but now, with that one formality processed, she had no idea what to do next. She had the name of a funeral director, but wanted me to take charge.
‘I don’t care what you do, it means nothing to me,’ she said with the Gallic shrug that punctuates so many of her statements. One day, I would like to investigate how the French have turned that sudden movement of raising and dropping the shoulders into a gesture of national eloquence, expressing everything from contempt to acceptance.
Wandsworth is as unlovely and unloved a part of south London today as it was in my childhood. It has resisted gentrification or perhaps not been offered the option, unlike Clapham and Battersea. As a child, I remember passing these rows of identical narrow red-brick Coronation Street–style terraces on the way to school and seeing small children with sooty faces playing barefoot like Dickensian urchins around the back of Young’s brewery, the area’s main employer. Its headquarters on the Wandle, a waterway feeding into the Thames, looked like a Victorian poorhouse. The company delivered its cargo of barrels to pubs around the city on carts pulled by heavy-limbed dray horses. The industrial revolution did not appear to have lifted the prosperity or working conditions of the borough in two centuries, despite the proliferation of high-street chains and shopping centres with branches of Uniqlo and Wagamama. Why would anyone want to linger here? Gillman Funeral Directors defied the drab streetscape with its dazzling white façade and interiors, blindingly bright in their denial of decay, like a row of perfect teeth in an otherwise ravaged face.
The first shock was how long it takes to get a date at a London crematorium. The city is busy dying and you enter a queue, just as you do everywhere else. We could not find a venue any earlier than ten days hence. How would we fill all that time, I wondered. With so little family and such a small social circle, arrangements would only take up so many hours.
‘What do you like about your job?’ I asked Kelly, our funeral organiser, slipping into journalist mode to cope and for the benefit of my mother, who could not even bear to look at the list of services available. I noticed Kelly’s tattoos as well as her long spatula-like acrylic nails, which prevented her from holding her pen normally, forcing her hand into a peculiarly awkward, almost simian clench.
‘Customer satisfaction,’ replied Kelly with cheery conviction.
Not this customer. I had imagined we could choose a cardboard coffin (known in the trade as a Barbara Cartland, which I am sure she would have loathed, given that she was not one for plain packaging of any kind) as a budget option. But the eco options (water hyacinth, bamboo, cardboard) cost exactly double the more traditional timber options. So we settled on a coffin called Rippon (but which would have been more aptly called Rip-off). No trimmings. No flowers. We would choose the music and I would conduct the service.
‘You are very brave,’ said Kelly admiringly.
Overconfident, I missed the warning in her comment. I thought back to hosting my father-in-law’s funeral at which the role of MC had fallen to me by default. I had, if I am totally honest, enjoyed the role—being emotionally detached I had revelled in using the skills of my working life to welcome the congregation at that modest family gathering and settle them into a mood that was not too sombre, for the benefit of the young children present. I did not want their first experience of this rite to be frightening. The only thing that shocked us all was my mother-in-law’s sobbing the moment she saw the coffin. It was like her laughter, completely uninhibited and full-throated. Impolite in volume. There was no stopping it, no matter how much her son and daughter squeezed her from both sides as if applied pressure could contain her grief, like a tourniquet on a bleeding wound.
At home I wrote a list of my father’s colleagues to call and email. Back in her dressing gown, my mother sighed, becoming more and more agitated.
‘I don’t want to see these people. Where have they been for the past six years?’ she said, her voice catching with resentment. If she had a shopfront, she could advertise: ‘Long-term grudges a speciality’. Once again, as it had six years before and more mildly ever since, the apartment smelled of sour milk. She was curdled with sorrow and anger, interspersed with flashes of unsparing self-awareness. ‘I know I’m only feeling sorry for myself,’ she would say hotly, as if someone was arguing with her.
Sometimes her behaviour embarrassed me. When she met a fellow resident of her building in the elevator or foyer, she would barrel up to them, ignoring the proprieties of personal space and say, ‘Do you know my husband died?’, waiting for a reaction that was never up to the standard she expected. If she savoured their discomfiture, it was short-lived. Ultimately, everyone disappointed her. ‘I don’t know how to be,’ she said, flinging her arms from her sides in a gesture of helplessness.
The next day, we went to Nightingale House to empty my father’s room. But within thirty seconds of crossing the threshold, my mother bolted like a spooked horse.
‘I’ll wait for you downstairs,’ she said, making her escape to avoid the sympathy of carers she was not ready to face. They, too, were grieving: some had gone on rostered leave and returned to find Mr Baum gone forever and were dealing with their own shock after six years of his dominant presence. Each came and hugged me as I emptied out the flimsy drawers and cupboards.
Someone went to find the key to the memory box. I took his car keys, passport, Michelin guide and photographs from the perspex shelves. His presence was wiped from the place. All that remained as proof of his existence was a pencil portrait in a hallway as part of a series commissioned by the home. Mournful, haggard, his eyes baleful and vacant, his cheeks sagging. It was not a likeness I wanted to own.
Downstairs, my mother was sitting on the terrace, having a cup of tea and watching a group of residents, most of them in wheelchairs, being led through a class in flower arranging.
‘It’s so nice here,’ she said with a wistful little smile. ‘I wish I were Jewish.’
I took that to mean: I wish I belonged here. Or somewhere. The implied question, too frightening to utter—What will happen to me if I need care?—remained unasked, hovering over us like small puffs of cloud above an active volcano.
Perhaps, she ventured, if we had to have some kind of reception or wake after the funeral, we could have it here? We were shown to a function room, round, bright, chintzily intimate and overlooking the garden. More importantly, it was offered free of charge.
I worried that the setting might be too grim and put some people off.
‘Fine,’ retorted my mother.
We were introduced to a young black woman from catering whose name tag announced her as Efficiency. She lived up to it, making notes about smoked salmon sandwiches and suggesting chocolate brownies. Perfect. My father adored them.
Exhausted by decision-making and negotiation, we were in bed by eight o’clock. Jet lag and anxiety make terrible bedfellows.
The morning brought mail, which my mother opened but did not read: she checked the condolences cards to see who they were from but ignored the messages.
‘Ha!’ she would say when she received one from someone she despised.
As more and more former colleagues made it clear they would like to attend the funeral, she grew increasingly hostile to the whole occasion.
There was a brief reprieve when I chose music for the service. Part of me wanted to give my father the rousing flamboyant send-off he would have relished with the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in all its spirited grandeur. To my surprise, my mother, who detests Wagner, agreed that it was a suitable choice and did not leave the room as she usually did when I played the opening of Act III of Die Walküre to check the time cues.
But then, scanning his CD collection I had an inspired and irreverent idea to close proceedings with something unexpected and humorous that would cause a ripple of initial shock but send everyone out with a smile. My father adored the satirical brilliance of Tom Lehrer. His lyrics made my father’s shoulders shake with laughter, even when he knew them by heart. On a compilation album that included family favourites like ‘New Math’ and ‘The Vatican Rag’ we found a darkly apocalyptic ditty called ‘We Will All Go Together When We Go’. Some might consider it tasteless, but that only pleased my mother more. Asked to choose between Lehrer and Wagner, she opted for Lehrer as a way of provoking the congregation.
But her satisfaction proved short-lived. With every hour that passed I watched my mother decline into taciturn numbness. She did The Times crossword with a cup of black coffee and then retreated to bed for the rest of the day. She was not sure she would come to the funeral at all, and no amount of cajoling, or suggesting that it might be cathartic, would sway her. I would not force her, could not, but with each hour that passed my confusion grew: who was she to defy a tradition that had endured for centuries? What was this really about? What was she grieving for at this point? A man she had lost six years ago? A sense of purpose wrenched from her and now casting her adrift? Why did this have to manifest in such an extreme form?
By the middle of the week I was at breaking point. Exhausted from sleepless strain I decided to defuse the situation and take some of the pressure off. I had to admit to myself that this funeral was not like my father-in-law’s and was not the same as hosting an engagement, however stressful, at the Sydney Opera House. I understood in my core than I could not get through the ambitious production I had choreographed and be a caring daughter to my surviving parent while honouring the one who had just died. My mother needed my support more than any fine words or carefully curated images and sounds. Against my nature, I did a total U-turn and decided the funeral should be a private, family-only affair. I could not put her through the ordeal of having to greet people she loathed in such a charged and painful setting.
This was no small change of heart. By now people had booked airfares to come from overseas and word had gone out via industry websites. I had to send around urgent emails notifying as many as possible of changed circumstances without going into too much detail as to the reasons. There would be a wake, to which friends and associates were welcome, but the cremation would be behind closed doors. The blowback was immediate and fierce. Some expressed open hostility, others protested in stony silence.
My mother’s immediate relief and gratitude were countered by my searing awareness of having displeased and disappointed others. After twenty-four hours, remorse had built up tension in my body like a poison. I remembered this sensation of toxins flooding my veins from when the fibromyalgia first appeared six years earlier. I did not want to encourage a recurrence. Taking a long walk in the nearby park to give myself courage, I rang those I knew would be most upset by my decision and allowed them to vent. It was unpleasant and deeply uncomfortable. Did people honestly feel they had a greater claim to pain than my mother? And if they did, how had they demonstrated that in my father’s final years?
Caught between two factions, I felt I could do nothing right and had failed everyone. The hours dragged on with not enough to do. Now there was no order of service for which to select passages. The photo montage would be screened at afternoon tea instead of at the crematorium. The music choices would be reduced to just one simple short piece without a farewell fanfare of pomp or subversion. Day after day was a limbo of misery.
‘Can you get rid of his clothes?’ my mother asked suddenly one morning. When I had offered to do this six years before and every year since, she had refused. Now she wanted all trace of him gone. Relieved to be given a task to pass the time, David and I began the process of emptying my father’s extensive wardrobe. We bagged up more than forty suits (some of them almost gangsterish in their cut and swagger: what was my father thinking when he ordered an off-white silk suit with wide lapels fit only for Bugsy Malone?) together with tuxedos, dinner and sports jackets, a handful of casual brushed-cotton shirts, gaudily printed silk summer shirts brought back from Indonesian conferences that only Nelson Mandela could get away with and V-neck cashmere sweaters. Alongside his handstitched, monogrammed pure cotton business shirts I found a collection of dozens of spare collars and cuffs, as stiff and pristine as index cards in a stationery cupboard. Everything wearable went to a Jewish charity for the homeless. There must be some pretty nattily dressed people sleeping rough on the streets of London.
Drawers spilled with cashmere-lined scarves, soft leather gloves, belts with Gucci buckles, opera glasses in snakeskin cases, gold shirt studs, boxes of collar stiffeners. A tooled leather case container a silver shoe horn and bootlace hook, precious mementos from his Viennese childhood. The trappings and accessories of external finery and display, of vanity and status. And the Hermès ties, of course, ribbons of colour like medieval pennants. I chose one for David to wear at the funeral: the only time I have ever seen him in one. And set another aside as a gift to the director of my father’s care home.
Finally, the day that could not be put off arrived. I had rehearsed my eulogy, trying to take the sting out of the most emotionally risky passages and marking the pages up with stage directions: Breathe and Slow Down … I had delegated the job of finishing its delivery to David if I broke down too badly to recover. I resolved to bring no expectation and pressure to how my mother chose to play it. By mid-morning she came out to consult me about which black dress to wear given the unpredictable weather, and asked me to show her how to tie a scarf in the current fashion. When it was time to go, I took a Valium and half-filled a water bottle with vodka tonic, nestling it in my bag.
We got to the crematorium early, as we do everywhere we go. I turned on the radio. It was playing one of my father’s favourite pieces of music, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony, the stirring fourth movement he liked to conduct, brandishing one of my mother’s fine flexible metal knitting needles. The memory too fresh, I turned it off. Moments later, the hearse arrived, drawing up level with us so that we were looking straight at the coffin.
‘Is that it?’ my mother whispered. When I nodded she rolled her eyes. ‘Quelle comédie,’ she muttered, using one of her favourite expressions of dismay.
I turned the car to face the other way, parking under a willow tree looking onto a bed of wilting roses, and got out to greet the funeral director and give him the CD of Vladimir Horowitz playing Liszt’s Consolation No. 3.
I took a swig of vodka to steel myself. Mum pretended to be shocked. Each taking an elbow, David and I led her forward, bearing her weight as though she were an invalid, her face to the ground, never looking up. When the coffin was brought in and placed on the dais, she bent further forward, like someone about to vomit. A moment that would normally be solemn and silent was punctuated by her constant murmurings of ‘Jesus Christ, can we go now, is it over?’ while we each stroked an arm trying to reassure and calm her. After an agonising minute attempting to find enough stillness to listen to the shimmering music while saying a final goodbye, I gave up.
I nodded to the director to close the curtains. Before they completed their automated beige glide, we rose to leave the way we came in from a space all of us agreed was perfectly vile. Where was the usual side exit into a prettier tended garden suggesting life’s continuity and nature’s eternal renewal? Certainly not at the Lambeth Crematorium in Tooting, where I defy anyone to find any solace or grace. Instead of bodies, they should burn the place down.