It’s Christmas, so of course my father is dying.
He’s been sick for a few holiday seasons now but this year, he went in for major surgery. In the lead up, December has felt like an escape room that may or may not have an exit, depending on if the owners chose to spend money on a good builder. Like the houses I’d make for my SIMS on my computer as a listless indoors kid, dad’s coronary ablation had no windows, no doors and a small fire within that would eventually build to consume it. That’s as good a description of cancer as any.
But I don’t feel like writing about cancer today.
It’s Christmas Eve and I’m sitting at my father’s desk in my family home while my wife and dog read and nap quietly in the living room. It’s funny – when every other room of a house has atoms of death in it, the living room takes on a different significance. I hadn’t realised until I sat down to write this that I have been staging most of our holiday in the living room, effectively ghettoising the most important things in my life into the room with the most hope and the least death.
A game of cards in the living room? I’ve heard myself suggest.
The living room’s nice and flat - perfect for wrapping presents! I’ve lied.
Ooh, this TV room’s too dark – let’s watch something on our laptops in the living room.
I want my wife and son to survive Christmas. There are a countless many other people boarding planes, stuffing cars and roasts who also know how possible it is not to. At least not in one piece.
There is always a murder at Christmas. For many years, I would kill off my queerness to appease church-going family at stiff mixers. Now, it’s my grubby child that dies to let the concerned city adult have a seat at the table.
Every single year, something, someone, has to give. We squeeze all of our expectations, wants and unfinished business from the last 12 months of our lives into the flimsy piping bag of the December holidays and expect it not to burst under pressure, leaking sweet icing all over our many sessions of therapy, healthy attachments and other good work.
But when illness visits a house to make it clear who is the dying one, Christmas is no longer the assassin. There’s a lot of sleeping. A lot of forgetting who was supposed to buy the prawns and if there was meant to be fetta in the salad. Spoonfuls of “make sure we have the comfortable cushion”, “let’s pre-cook the meat so lunch moves quicker” and great helpings of “don’t worry about ___ this year, we’ll just take it easy”.
With my parents staying in a small apartment closer to the hospital, my wife and I are rattling around the family home they occupied until now. When we first arrived, I came into my my father’s office to write and noticed something strange. It looked like he’d made a kind of installation. An “in-case-of-death” display.
Neatly laid out in little piles, there were his favourite family photos. They were resting on some typeset letters from the Queen and her husband, praising my mother for some performance she’d done for them on their visit to Sydney. Next to the impeccably preserved envelopes were a set of diaries from 1998-2017, my dad’s prescription reading glasses and a filing folder marked into the following sections:
“WILLS”
“INSURANCE”
“WARRANTIES”
and, finally,
“JOLLY!”.
Yes,“JOLLY!” Naturally I opened that bizarre folder first. Here, he had deliberately filed the booking form for his coronary ablation, detailing the time and date of the surgery, as well as the full pre-op fasting procedure.
Immediately, I understood that he had done this in case something went wrong and the hospital tried to blame it on his not following their preparation instructions. He wasn’t about to be pinned for that. Not when he couldn’t defend himself or direct a complaint to management.
The form left me quietly considering whether I should have asked him if he trusted these doctors. Maybe it was better I hadn’t. In any case, it was too late now. Though the doom clouds of an impending malpractice case that gathered overhead, I pressed on.
It was the next item of his desktop exhibition that really made me pause. On a plain piece of paper, marooned like a pristine island apart from the ruddy business forms and in swirling cursive handwriting, he had written:
“A WHITE SPECK ON A WHITE PAGE”
Just that. Nothing to justify or point to. A frustrating sentence, complete in its incompleteness. It threw me into a rage. I can’t explain why. I could try to offer some working theories – the bold-faced mysteriousness of it, the fact that he had chosen a riddle over a simple and comforting “I love you all” or the fact that he knew I would write about it. That it would cause this in me. I hated it. Him. I really did. For a moment.
Crowning this page like a yellowing halo was the smiling face of my father’s favourite spiritual teacher who died in 1999. I knew that because it had the dates of his birth and death below his portrait. It was his funeral brochure. A suggestion, perhaps, towards how dad might like his own to be set out. I let a great gust of petulance blow heat through my chest. While I had spent the last three days in 30-degree heat stringing haggard tinsel and toothy lights around the house, this was his idea of Christmas decorating. A funeral flat lay.
Fuck you, I whisper into the sagging face of this other man, his teacher.
What’s the lesson here? I hope I get the chance to tell you how stupid this is.
And I cry while my wife asked me if I thought we’d bought enough jelly crystals from the other room. Mum was too tired to do her pudding this year so I’m making trifle for dessert. It’s dad’s favourite, but that’s not why I’m making it, I tell myself. Regardless, the jelly is important.
YES!!!!! I call back, pitch straining athletically to vault any evidence of tears. She goes quiet again, satisfied and safe in the still-living room.
I’ve been sitting here now, contemplating the peacemaking potential of trifle, for the last hour. I’ve also wondered what the items of my own In Case of Death Exhibition might be. In case I die on Christmas Eve 2022, at 32 and 3 days old, and this post goes on to serve as my last will and testament, here’s what I’ve decided on:
1. A chocolate chip muffin from Muffin Break (the GOAT)
2. A picture of me as The Artful Dodger in my first school play, circa 2000
3. The file on my computer called “WRITING” because it’s my book and could somebody please publish it?
4. My good pair of Nike Airs, so I don’t get Achilles tendonitis in the afterlife
5. Books by depressed and talented women
6. Music by depressed and talented women
7. A vibrator by depressed and talented scientists
8. Sugar free iced tea
9. The story I wrote about the adventures of a coin that got flushed down a toilet when I was seven
10. Good shampoo
That’s me in 10 items. My whole thing, the sum of the parts, the conclusion of 32 years of work and discovery. What this list also means is that I don’t have to worry so much about buying presents because this year, I’m giving away a little bit of myself to everyone - my sister will get the muffin, my mum will enjoy the shampoo and I’ll read the story about the coin to my wife from start to finish. The writing folder will go to my dad so he’s very clear on what transparent communication looks like and is never tempted to write something to cryptic as “A WHITE SPECK ON A WHITE PAGE” for his next final exit flat lay.
Yesterday, a woman screamed at my wife and I on the street for holding hands.
REPENT FOR YOUR SINS!
YOU’RE GOING TO HELL FOR THIS!
And so on and so forth. At the time, I was typically bored and disgusted. We get this a lot.
But now that I’ve decided to give little bits of myself away for Christmas, I’m reminded of the Catholic communions I attended excitedly as a child. Like many LGBT children before an after me, I discovered at my first wine and wafer session (the ancient precursor to Paint N Sip) that I liked the taste of the body of Christ. It would go well with cheese, I mused, but I was happy just for the cracker also. And, until a girl named Charlotte tried to gaffer tape my hand to a Good News Bible during a sleepover gone awry, I was a devout Sunday Service attendee. So I understood that Jesus gave us his cracker body to enhance the other flavours of Christmas.
Perhaps the screaming woman was simply trying to remind me of the real reason for the holidays. Which is, of course, eating the flesh of your loved ones. All of which is to say that, in this house of death, living rooms, candy and funerals, when we’re only ever allotted these strange ten or so days of genuine rest, complete grief, lunacy and happiness, I will be invoking both spirits and Christmas this year.
Thank you all for joining me here.
See you on the other side.
Love,
TN
Thank-you TN for your generous writing .. I love what you have to say and how you say it .. all the best to your family for 2023 xxx Susie