Laying the past to rest : reflections on the anniversary of Dad’s death

We cannot move onto the new while the past is still holding us so powerfully in its grip. Today my sister and I finally went to the cemetery to take the steps to have Mum’s ashes released and buried in the grave with my father who died on this day back in 1985. It was a very very hot day again and we struggled to find the grave although we were both very near to it. It was not as neglected as in years gone by when no one in our family bothered but even the amount of time it has taken us get around to this shows something about our family. My brother’s permission is needed to get everything rolling and he has taken himself off overseas again for 8 months. He gets on with his life and I don’t want to criticise him in any way.. Slowly I am finding the love for him beneath all of the estrangement and pain. But this was also my father’s pattern. To take himself so far away.

I noticed this week I, too, had thoughts of wanting to get as far away from Australia as possible. The threat of fires and the knowledge of how the planet will be heating up over ensuing summers scares me. The cemetery where Dad is buried is miles away in a very dry place. Those who don’t know Canberra may not know it was just plonked in the middle of the bush when they chose the bush capital. Apparently they stuck a pin in the map to find a location that was equidistant from Sydney and Melbourne. My God father once told me of how when the train pulled up to bring he and his squadron to Canberra to collect the B52 bombers he looked out the window and all he saw for miles was paddocks and had the thought they had been brought to the middle of nowhere.

This place is the endpoint as far as our ancestral migration goes and its not lost on me that Dad died around the time my ancestors were borne across the oceans on a massive sea journey from Cornwall to the UK. I am interested that as the Moon makes its progression toward Cancer (the sign of maternal ancestors and tribal cultures) that this is all being dealt with as it comes to oppose both Pluto (sign of death, regeneration and transformation as well as evolution) and Saturn (sign of earthly manifestation through at times harsh material conditions and prunings).

It took a lot of energy to accomplish today, we had lunch first and it all happened sponateneously. I shared with my sister some of what passed for me at this time of year back in 1985, she was not aware of the pain I went through over Jim leaving me via telephone call just after Dad died and of how Mum forced me to travel away overseas anyway. We also got to speak about her ex husband and my brother in law who I really love and miss. It has been hard to express my soft feelings and empathy for him around her as she was very angry at one time I seemed to be taking his side but when I look to his own family history I see the connecting threads. I miss him a lot at times. I know it was not easy to marry into our family. But he also ran when things got too tough with my sister emotionally.

I broke down in tears and a bit of a frenzy when I finally got back home at around 3.30 pm. I had to email my brother to get him to get in touch with the cemetery and crematorium to authorise what my sister and I wish to carry out. I felt the twin desire to be connected and free of the burden of the past. I was talking to Dad and my ancestors today and I know that if I didn’t reach out to my sister today to invite her for lunch, none of this would have happened. The time to move through grief allows us to let go….and that process got blocked for me.

There are still a lot of tears I shed in a family that very rarely cries. At least with Mum I got to share tears but now she is gone I don’t have someone to talk to as deeply but I am grateful for the growing connection with my sister. This time a year ago she was too sick in the psyche ward to think of accomplishing anything at all. I just tried to call her older son to say the ashes are finally being sorted. I asked him to go with me a year ago and he said yes but knowing how much he has to deal with in his own life didn’t want to place that entire burden on him. Also as my Dad’s grandson I know he has so many of the lovely qualities of my father, hardworking, thorough, practical, caring in a more Saturnian way. When Dad died he was not yet 3 years old and he looked at Mum and said “Why did Poppa have to go and do that? He was going to take me fishing.” Remember him as such a sweet, sweet child, so open and absorbent as a Sun sign Pisces.

Its not only me lost Dad and I forgot that at times in my self centred grief. My sister shared some of her memories today of the final two weeks in Dad’s life. I am so glad we can talk about this loss now, even though, for sure “it happened “years ago”” and I am so glad it was my nephew Ryan who with his family turned the pattern around by choosing to move back to his home town 16 months ago. They don’t speak of the feelings but I know they are hidden there somehow and today I am grateful that these family members are around me, even if they never reach out……God knows they are always, always close to me in my heart.