Skip to main content

Dreams of leaving

Somewhere between here and there, as we raced home to see him, Dad passed across the line. We were airborne. I was dreaming. In the dream, I framed objects in the foreground for a photo, then noticed that Dad's cheeky smiling eye loomed across the picture from the top corner. I awoke mid-flight. This was the time of his passing. I felt rested and calm. Thanks for all the steady care and love over the years to my beautiful father. I know he could hear me when we communicated on the phone from LA airport. He knew we were on our way back to see him. Xxoo



Postscript:

I hope there will be many more words I write about Arfur. These were the very first ones I formulated after landing and finding that we had not made it back in time.

Comments

  1. Hugs and love to you, Anna. What a special beautiful moment x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! It is a tough time. All words of support much appreciated x

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Widening Crack

The little flame in our forty-year-old wall furnace, the one that was supposed to hold tight, hang on and persist, was being extinguished, again and again. The pilot light had become unanchored, blown away and shut down. We were in lockdown, in a Melbourne winter.  We had been bunkered down in our homes on and off over the last two years. We had sat tight as we amassed days upon days of lockdown. At one stage, the summer came. We had mask-free beaches, we had open cinemas and bars.  But then, another Covid gust gutted us in 2021 and shut us back inside. Here we were, like a little pilot flame, buffeted and blown away but still holding out for better days. I would walk past the heater to find that the fan was blowing cold air into the small home. Each time we re-lit the pilot light, it didn’t last long before it was gone. Still, we kept holding onto hope as we sat through the days of rising case numbers and deaths. The gas technician (essential worker; exemption) was on his han...

Coming of Age

The bricks were always cold underneath my bum. Cold and hard. I could feel their sharp edges. In the nights we sat and talked, my brother and I and the neighbourhood boys. The smells of sour smoke and saliva on one, body odour on another, and menace on the other. The fluorescent globes hummed from the train station platform across the road, and the street lights pooled at the corner. Inside was out of bounds to these boys, so we met on our side stairs. The frosted glass door between us and our home. These were the kids we didn’t trust, the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Where were their parents? Absent fathers, unsighted mothers, these boys roamed the streets and set me on edge. The attraction to the dirt, to the smell of one’s mouth...I can still feel it now. It was an urge, but not an infatuation.  The hearts of these boys remained hidden. It was as if they walked in costumes, played their parts, and kept their distance. One day, my mum greeted me at...

Not smiling, wanking

The bricks were always cold underneath my bum. Cold and hard. I could feel their sharp edges. In the nights we sat and talked. The smells of sour smoke and saliva on one, body odour on another, and menace on the other. The fluorescent globes hummed from the station platform, and the street lights pooled at the corner. Inside was out of bounds to these boys, so we met on our side stairs. The frosted glass door between us and our home. Outside; offside: the limits to friendships. These were the kids we didn’t trust, the boys from the wrong side of the tracks. Where were their parents? Absent fathers, unsighted mothers, these boys roamed the streets and set me on edge. The attraction to the dirt, to the smell of one’s mouth...I can still feel it now. It was an urge, but not an infatuation.  The hearts of these boys remained hidden. It was as if they walked in costumes, played their parts, and kept their distance. We weren’t allowed to welcome them in. One day, my m...