Grief followed me to the writer’s festival.

Well I did my first stint at the Canberra Writer’s Festival this afternoon. There was a bit to take on board with having to get versed in using a mobile phone app to scan ticket bar codes but I managed my way through it even if it was hard to read the codes at times and I had to draw on help from others when my phone played up and some of the barcodes proved difficult to read. I had not been to the University House site before at the Australian National University but it was calm and old and beautiful, surrounded by lovely gardens. The green room for writers and staff looked out through French doors onto a long canal that flowed past the pathway and this strip of water was visited in the late afternoon by ducks, as well as a small child toddling around under the watchful eye of her Grandfather.

I was put in charge of checking tickets for guests entering the forum held in the Great Hall, a gorgeous, stately, old room with huge ceilings and dark timber parquetry flooring. This particular ‘forum’ was titled, “Dear Dad” and took the form of three writers in conversation with another writer moderating and asking questions while the other three shared their experience of loving and losing their fathers. Wow, me being me I was partly excited to be there with such a meaty subject, often on the brink of tears as some shared their grief. It was so interesting to see which of the writers was most in touch with their feelings and who had the very tough fathers who seemed to have left fairly harsh defensive marks on their sons.

Australian actor and writer William McInnes nearly shouted the hall down when he was imitating the way his father used to disparage and yell at him and at one point I had to leave the hall as it was hurting my body so much to hear all the yelling. Later, I remembered though that I can be a bit of a ‘yeller’ at times too.

The most moving testament came from English born writer John Birmingham, a former Rolling Stone’s journalist whose father died of cancer only two years ago, it was sensations associated with his father who was often dressed in a boiler suit from his mechanical job that John spoke while movingly articulating how, in the aftermath of losing his father, he became over come by huge waves of grief and sobbing and then encountered a period of depression.

I ended up buying John’s book On Father at the book signing and approached him to get it signed and I will include a few excerpts from it at the end of this particular post. The other writer was a former Vietnamese refugee who is also a comedian and many of his answers to questions posed on his father by the interviewer, whose name I cannot call to mind right now were tinged with lots of humour.

I sat out the later afternoon talks and spent the time quietly in the Green Room with some of the other volunteers. Things were mellow and I felt a bit raw after hearing the speakers speak of their own father loss, it was not something I was expecting to face when I signed up to volunteer today but I couldn’t help but reflect on how grief and loss affects everyone and just seems to follow me around a lot. I could have been sent to any of the other venues or lectures today but it was to that particular one I was sent.

On the drive homeward I also thought of the Buddha told a follower of his who came seeking his help to deal with loss, to knock on the door of every house and when he did he realised that everyone he spoke to had been visited by grief in some way. Often we think we are alone with the losses we endure and loss itself can hit us like a freight train at times. John Birmingham entered a profound period of depression following the loss of his father where as the other two writers seemed to brush it off with a more cavalier attitude, that said when I spoke to John at the book signing he said what a soft man his father was and how sensitive, perceptive and astute he was. And even though the Christian brothers saw fit to beat the left handedness out of him and his father was dyslexic, John himself through his articulate writing talent has been able to give voice to those softer, deeper feelings of loss that perhaps he carried for his father who ended up dying a painful death from cancer.

I am now interested to read some more of John’s writing maybe because it resonated with my own loss. I know I write about grief and loss a lot, but hearing these writers talk it also made me grow in compassion for the humanity of both my parents. I feel a bit guilty at times for having seemed to have rebelled so hard against both of them at times, not aware of the emotional constrictions they faced in life until a lot further down the track into my sobriety. Its growing dark from dusk right now and I have been crying and praying to both my parents. It occurred to me that I never once remember my father saying the words, “I love you” until he was diagnosed with cancer in 1984. I remember how I crossed the room to him and he opened his arms to me and broke down in tears, on that late October afternoon he shared his ‘news’. That was the most emotion I ever saw my own father share in his life and sadly it came on the back of illness, but as I sat in the Great Hall today I heard him telling me how much he loved me and I felt that comfort and despite all our challenges I no longer feel angry just peaceful calm if somewhat slow and subdued.

I will end from some paragraphs from John’s little book, On Father :

When a parent dies, for those left behind it can feel as though half of the sky has fallen. My father was the sheltering sky, and beneath his mild firmament no storm ever raged, no hard rain fell. His nature was as gentle as the fallen world is brutish…..the cancer did not care that he was a good man, the best I’ve ever known. It did not care that he was loving and loved. It just took him, and with him went everything he ever was. Everything he had seen and known. The notes he had plucked from a guitar as a younger man, silenced….

the things he did count for so much less than who he was. Husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend. To everyone he loved, he was the sky. You were safe beneath his light and warmth. A man of strong faith and gentle nature, he could no more betray his faith or nature than the sky itself could fall.

And then he was gone, and I was left to look up and find the sky half gone without him.

John heard his brother say the words : “John he’s gone” and

For a weird, contrary moment, it felt as though the foolish and precipitate act of opening that door had killed my father, as though we would still have him with us if only I’d been allowed to wait and hide in there forever.

John didn’t allow himself to give way in his grief to so called ‘magical thinking” but remained ‘rational’ in the face of death. I am glad I didn’t share with him today that in the midst of his talk I still heard my father’s voice and felt him around me, perhaps he may have looked at those ‘thoughts’ or ‘perceptions’ as magical too. And yet I wonder too at both approaches as each has meaning. For I do feel our father’s live on in us, and an earlier death may leave an even more deeply etched lasting legacy, after all John was well into his middle years when he lost his father. That is not to suggest that the death was any less painful, how could it be, for it was HIS father and those bonds between fathers and sons run deep, but only to suggest as he goes on to explore in the book that each passage and trajectory of grief is individual to the person and very connected to both the stage in life we lose a parent and the type of relationship or bond we formed or found it difficult to form. In John’s case his father was loving, accepting, gentle and non punitive and he helped to protect his son from childhood bullies.

I will not spoil any more of John’s exploration of his grief nor of the abuse that both he and his father suffered at the hands of the Christian brothers, if you want to you can read the book. But I must say my heart did do a little skip of joy today to see the subject of father loss being dealt with. The mediator of the discussion has recently written a exploration of ‘toxic masculinity’ which I am hoping to read soon. He asked some penetrating and emotional questions and I was very moved by the session however I did have to leave the room at one point when William McInnes started yelling. I just felt too raw at that point to stay and a lot of emotions were being triggered and its good to be able to put it all into my blog this evening.