Chapter 34

Beth

By 9am the day after Gran died – when I finally dragged myself out of the spare bed at her place – word of her passing had well and truly spread. I had accompanied Gran on many of her volunteer trips, so several of her friends and acquaintances I knew from the herbarium had reached out with messages of condolences. There was also one each from Alannah and Geoff from work.

The texts contained variations on the same themes: shock of hearing the news, admiration for Gran, and thinking of our family ‘at this sad time’.

One of the more irksome statements that appeared verbatim in at least a couple of the messages was that ‘we must be glad she died doing what she loved’. There was, I supposed, a comfort in knowing she had died in the bush near her childhood home on the country that coursed through her veins, doing what she enjoyed, with someone whom she loved. But the suggestion that any of this made me ‘glad’ was preposterous.

What did make me glad was seeing that there was also a message from Nick.

I hope you managed to get some sleep. I’m thinking of you. x

I put my cursor in the reply box.

Thanks. I slept a bit. The hard part was waking up and realising that it wasn’t all just a bad dream. We’ve got a day of funeral planning ahead of us, so that should add a new layer of heartache. I imagine it will be like a bad group assignment, but with my family, who have less decorum or reliability than uni students.

It was the middle of the night in London, so I knew he wouldn’t reply right away.

I heard a commotion at the front door and knew my family had arrived. When Gerry and I had left Mum and Dad’s place in an Uber (my car was still at work, since I hadn’t made it back to the office from our site visit yesterday), we agreed they’d come around to Gran’s to plan the funeral.

I pulled on yesterday’s pants, and fastened my bra under the T-shirt I’d slept in. I opened the spare bedroom door quietly, so I could sneak to the bathroom to brush my teeth and splash some water on my face before I saw anyone. As I crept down the hallway, I passed Herrick and noticed that a spider had added a web to the beads that hung from his antlers. How dare it just assume permission to make its home on Gran’s beloved jackalope, I thought irrationally. Then, as I reached the bathroom, I heard Mum say that someone had sent her a link to a company that did open-air cremations – like a big bonfire. I felt myself bristle; it would be a testing day.

Once in the bathroom, I hunched to look at my reflection in the mirror. The lids of my eyes were puffy and I could feel the beginnings of a stye coming up. The skin around my nose was red from my attempts to manage the snot and tears that had flowed with a staggering persistence since I’d taken Mum’s call.

I slid the mirrored bathroom cabinet open and leaned in to look for one of the spare toothbrushes Gran kept for if we stayed over. Like the packets of tampons and pads she kept in a basket next to the toilet, despite it being several decades since she’d been through menopause, she stocked the spare toothbrushes so we would have everything we’d need to feel at home.

I inhaled sharply at the sight of her own toothbrush. Yesterday, this was just Gran’s toothbrush – an unremarkable utensil for removing plaque from her teeth. But now it was Gran’s toothbrush – an artefact of her life that seemed irreplaceably valuable.

The toothbrush was standing, handle down, in a water cup, with a tube of toothpaste that had at least two rolls at its base (one must roll, not squeeze, according to her). The toothbrush’s bristles were dry – a testament to them having missed their pre-bed and post-breakfast call-up.

On the left of the water glass was the tube of BB cream, eyeshadow compact, mascara and lipstick she’d bought and worn for her reunion with Gerry. I blinked away the tears that gathered in my eyes at the thought of how happy she had seemed the night she had worn them in London.

Next to the make-up was the hairbrush that she’d had for as long as I could remember. Her delicate white hairs were coiled around the bristles – a messy tangle of her DNA; a nuclear link to her life. I resisted the urge to pull a strand to keep. What on earth would I do with it?

Unable to look at the contents anymore, I closed the cupboard door quickly. My teeth would have to wait until later.

I opened the bathroom door to find Mum loitering in the hallway.

‘Oh, Bethie.’ She pulled me into a hug. ‘How are you doing?’

Mum was wearing a long flowing green dress with a sheer green overlay adorned with large gold embroidered butterflies. She had a chunky gold necklace around her neck, which pushed uncomfortably into my collarbone.

‘I’m okay,’ I replied, exiting her embrace when I felt enough time had passed to satisfy her need to hug me.

‘How was it, staying here last night?’ she asked, looking at me intently. I could tell she was searching my face and body language for clues about my current state; she often did this when she was dissatisfied with the comprehensiveness of my verbal replies.

It had felt strange to stay in Gran’s house without her there to make sure I’d had enough to eat, was warm enough and had a glass of water beside my bed in case I woke up thirsty during the night.

I had heard Gerry get up at midnight and use the bathroom. Her footsteps were slightly heavier than Gran’s and she didn’t know which of the creaky floorboards needed to be avoided to stealthily navigate the hallway.

At about 2am, it was my turn and, as I padded down the hall, I noticed an illuminated arc on the carpet outside Gran’s door; the lamp on Gran’s bedside table was on. It seemed that grief-induced insomnia, combined with the tail-end of jet lag, was a cruel adversary for us both.

But I was glad I had stayed. I knew Gran would have wanted us to watch out for Gerry, and it comforted me to be in her house.

‘It was fine,’ I responded casually.

‘When you’re ready, come into the kitchen,’ she said, turning to walk back down the hallway. ‘I’ve got the kettle on.’

I noticed her stride seemed slightly tentative; it lacked its usual buoyancy. It struck me for the first time that she was the older generation now Gran was gone.

I entered the kitchen as Dad, Elijah, Jarrah and Gerry, who were seated around the table, all erupted into laughter.

‘Hey, Bethie,’ Dad said when he spotted me. ‘How are you?’ His voice was deeper than usual, and his face contorted into an exaggerated frown. It was a look I came to expect from everyone I encountered over the following days.

‘I was just telling Gerry about the time we gave your gran a ride on a Harley-Davidson for her eightieth birthday,’ he said as I sat down at the table.

Gran had always wanted a ride on a motorcycle, so we recruited the services of Daz – an entrepreneurial biker – and his Harley-Davidson to take her for a spin. Daz’s Harley had a sidecar, which we’d assumed she would find more comfortable than riding two-up. But she insisted on sitting on the sliver of seat left behind him once he had positioned his enormous body on it.

‘If Queen Elizabeth could ride a horse at ninety, I can throw a leg either side of a motorcycle at eighty,’ she announced defiantly. Daz roared with laughter. The rest of us worried that we might have caused the birth and death dates on her headstone to match.

Gran loved the ride but told us afterwards that, as they had hurtled down the freeway at 100 kilometres per hour, the wind had caused Daz’s beard, which hung down to his belly button, to split at his chin, wrap around either side of his head and tickle her face like two hairy tentacles.

‘Maybe we can have a Harley pull her casket along on a trailer?’ Jarrah offered enthusiastically.

‘Nice idea, Jarrah,’ Dad said kindly as I was about to snap a retort, ‘but I think those types of traditions are reserved for bikies and people who have ridden all their lives.’

I felt tension creep into my shoulders. I had prepared myself for the fact that my family would approach organising Gran’s funeral in much the same way they threw together most of the events in their lives – with complete disregard for methodical processes.

‘Did Gran ever specify what she wanted for her funeral?’ I probed, opening the notes app in my phone to retrieve some thoughts I’d jotted down during one of the hours I lay awake the night before.

‘Not that I remember.’ Mum leaned her chin on her hand as she searched for memories.

I realised I was in the denial stage of grief, and probably a little hungover, when I nearly suggested we ask Gran. The abrupt realisation this was impossible smacked me a new blow.

‘Well, why don’t we take our cues from what she wanted for Grandpa’s funeral?’ I suggested, blinking away a fresh flow of tears. ‘I can’t remember all the details, but the funeral director must have them on file or something. I mean, we know where she held the service, and I remember she once insisted on a plain and inexpensive casket. We can assume that what she chose for his funeral were the things she’d like for hers.’

My family nodded their heads in unison. Gerry dabbed her nose with a tissue.

‘You’re right, Bethie,’ Mum said. ‘Good thinking. The funeral director is due at 10.30. We’ll ask then.’

‘But before we get to that, we need to register her death,’ I continued. The word ‘death’ caught in my throat. ‘I researched the process last night, and there’s paperwork that needs to be filled out and certificates that need to be obtained. Mum, do you know where her birth certificate is? And we’ll need the date of her marriage, and the birth dates and occupations of her parents.

‘And we should let her friends know,’ I continued. ‘Word has already spread through her volunteer networks, but we need to tell her family friends, and any relatives out there. Perhaps this afternoon, when we’ve got the details of the funeral, we can go through the contact list in her phone and her rolodex and divvy up the calls.

‘Then, at some stage, we’ll need to advise the tax office, social services and Medicare; get in touch with her accountant and bank; and think about what services we disconnect from the house.’ I ran through the checklist I’d made on my phone.

‘My goodness, Bethie,’ Mum said, having obviously given none of this any thought at all. ‘We’re so lucky to have you around to think of all these things.’

She reached out and squeezed my hand, and Dad gave me a side hug. I couldn’t recall a time they had praised my organisation skills. For a moment, I felt appreciated.

~

Nora, the funeral director, was a portly middle-aged woman who arrived wearing a sympathetic smile, a white suit and a navy blue broad-brimmed hat. She removed her hat as she crossed the threshold and then greeted us one by one with an unexpectedly firm, gloved handshake. She irritated me immediately.

Mum welcomed Nora into Gran’s kitchen, and we shuffled around the table to accommodate an extra chair.

‘I always enjoy the opportunity to meet with a deceased person’s family in their home,’ she announced. ‘It helps me to get a sense of who they were. And I can see by looking around that Eliza was a very special lady.’

‘Elise,’ I said, more curtly than I’d intended but not more than she deserved. ‘Her name was Elise.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ Nora replied, rifling through her papers as if looking for evidence of a clerical error of someone else’s doing. ‘I’m so very sorry. Elise.’

Having not uncovered anything that would exonerate her from her faux pas, she uncapped her pen and poised it officiously above the lined pad she’d produced from her navy briefcase.

‘Now,’ she began, scanning each of our faces. ‘Have you thought about when you might like to have the funeral?’

‘We were thinking this Friday,’ Mum replied.

‘Right,’ Nora said and then moistened her index finger with what I thought was an unnecessary amount of licking, before thumbing through a large diary that she had also produced from her briefcase. ‘The thirteenth. Good. Good. Yes, that will work nicely.’

It peeved me that Nora found it necessary to assure us that the date we had selected to bury Gran suited her schedule. I wondered if she expected us to congratulate Gran when we caught up in the afterlife for dying on a day that was convenient.

‘Wait,’ Jarrah interjected. ‘That’s Friday the thirteenth. We can’t have it then.’

We all turned to look at Jarrah.

‘Why’s that?’ Dad asked indulgently.

‘Because it’s an unlucky date,’ she said, her eyes bugged as though it should be obvious. ‘We can’t lay her to rest on an unlucky day.’

‘She’s already dead, Jarrah,’ I snapped. ‘I don’t think she’ll mind. And what’s the worst that can happen? It will bring her bad luck?’

Nora turned the page of her diary and tutted quietly as she digested what she discovered overleaf.

‘It’s just that …’ Nora began before pausing to make a clicking noise under her breath. ‘The next few days are quite …’

‘It’s fine,’ Mum interrupted. ‘It’s just a date, Jarrah. And Bethie’s right; Gran wouldn’t have minded. I think Friday is good. It will give us time to get organised without dragging the whole thing out.’

‘Well, don’t blame me if she comes back to haunt us all,’ Jarrah said, crossing her slender arms across her chest in a huff.

For a fleeting, irrational moment, I wished she would haunt us. I would have been thrilled to spend one more minute with Gran, even if she was a poltergeist with a bone to pick.

‘So, the thirteenth it is then,’ Nora said assertively. ‘I think Friday is meant to be nice weather. It will be a lovely day. We’ll make sure of it.’

I sensed that Nora was well-practised at placating irrational grieving people.

‘Bethie, try and keep an open mind,’ Dad pleaded after I shot down Jarrah’s suggestion that instead of having a eulogy, we conduct a treasure hunt around the city where people find clues to piece together her life story.

‘Don’t you think it would be a hoot?’ she asked enthusiastically.

‘I don’t think funerals are meant to be a hoot,’ I snapped.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But you’ve already pooh-poohed my idea of everyone contributing to a mural on her coffin, having an ice-cream van at her gravesite and dressing as something beginning with “E”. I’m just trying to give her a special send-off.’

‘But none of this would be special to her,’ I retorted. ‘Do you really think Gran would be impressed if I scribbled all over her coffin while eating a soft serve cone and dressed as Elvis? If you want to give her a send-off that would be meaningful to her, we should use flowers from her garden in the floral arrangements, scatter some of her ashes at Woodside Ridge, or read one of the poems she liked.’

Silence fell over the table as my family processed the reminder that Gran’s funeral was intended to be about her, and not them. We managed to survive the rest of the meeting without adding to the body count. And Nora referred to Gran by the correct name all but once more.

We settled on wildflowers (a ‘lovely choice’, according to Nora); an eco-casket (a ‘responsible choice’, according to Nora); and a reading of a Dorothea Mackellar poem (a ‘moving choice’, according to Nora). We agreed that Mum, Dad, Jarrah and Elijah would perform one song – an improvement on the five originally proposed – and family friends Sharon and Mike would be asked to deliver the eulogy.

Nora left with one of Gran’s outfits to dress her in, and her favourite hat, which was to be placed on her coffin for the ceremony. When Mum fetched it from the plastic bag of belongings the hospital had given her, I noticed the hat still had the red-tailed black cockatoo feather, which she’d found when we last visited the orchids together, sticking out of its band. I allowed a new wave of tears to fall as I watched Nora walk away with the hat. It felt like pieces of Gran were already dissipating.

But my mood was buoyed slightly as Nora walked down the path towards the road and one of the local maggies swooped to within about 30 centimetres of her head, clicking its beak loudly. Nora hurried to the safety of the car, and I made a mental note to defy wildlife legislation just this once to toss the maggies a couple of bits of cheese when no one was watching.