Almanac Life: Memory Project – Remembering Dad

Col Ritchie has asked us to dive into our memories and share a few for the Almanac readers. 

 

The piece below was published on this website in 2021. I was remembering my father, who died in 2016, from a photo one of my brothers had sent. This photo and the memory surfaced again recently after I attended the funeral of Jim McShane. Jim died about ten days back. He got to 94. Great knock. 

 

Jim was a Montmorency stalwart, the small suburb in Melbourne’s north east that I grew up in. There wasn’t much to Monty in the 60s and 70s. We spent our childhood roaming the many paddocks and bush blocks. And we often spent those days playing cricket or footy or doing nothing much with Jim McShane’s kids. There are eight of them. We’re still very good mates. All of us. We have rich and humorous and sometimes difficult memories to share. 

 

Jim and my father were great mates too. They would often take us all to the cricket at the MCG. We’d chew on sandwiches that Mum had made and Dad and Jim would sip whiskey from their flasks. I watched Lillee and Chappell and other heroes in the stands as the temperature went past 100 degrees, and Dad and Jim would put old hankies on their heads to keep the sun off. They had their own version of slip, slop, slap, sip. 

 

It was sad at Jim’s funeral. He was a wonderful bloke; quiet, intelligent, humorous, gentle. He was a gentleman. But the wake after the ceremony with the McShanes was a belter. We have another shared and treasured memory. 

 

Here’s what I wrote about Dad in 2021. 

 

 

Recently one of my brothers sent me a photo of my father taken in 2014. Christmas 2014. He was sitting in a chair and peering out across my brother’s backyard, just gazing, reflecting, lost in thoughts he only knew. He died two and a half years later. It was pretty quick when it happened. He was going well. Then he was floored by stroke. Eighty-three is a pretty good knock.

 

I’ve looked at that photo several times because it reminded me of something, and I couldn’t work out what. Or maybe it reminded me of someone? I’ve seen it before. A man at peace. Gazing. The slightest of smiles perched on his lips, balancing there, like a drop of water on a grape. The shape of contentment. Not smugness but stillness. Ease. Calmness. Rare commodities these days.

 

 

 

 

He had nearly reached the point where the world couldn’t hurt him anymore. Perhaps that’s nirvana? The unattainable.

 

He had nothing when he died. Nothing material that is. Sure, he and Mum owned the house and he had a few quid in the bank (not much but enough) but he owned nothing other than a six year old Toyota Corolla. I marvel at what an achievement that was. It was like he threw the book back at the financial gurus who stress accumulation and expansion. His aim wasn’t to have enough in retirement but to have just enough. Close to nothing besides the necessities of family, a roof, food, music, wine and a garden. Barely anything but plenty, nonetheless.

 

It sounds easy but it isn’t. Try to imagine the process of divestment, of leaving things behind, of casting off the heavy clothes. I think what he achieved took immense skill. It was masterful. To wind down at the perfect rate. To walk at the same speed as the universe expands, but in the opposite direction. To judge the allotted days and to fill them with glorious intangibles. To achieve a whimsical balance.

 

If he possessed a thing he got rid of it. A thing to him was anything that wasn’t in the list above – family, a roof, food, music, wine, the garden.

 

When he died, we couldn’t find his Stawell Gift winner’s sash or the medal he won that Easter in 1955. This once prized possession, previously housed carefully in a box filled with tissue paper and stored away for safe keeping had disappeared. We finally found it all – stuffed into the corner of his jocks drawer. It had become a thing. Perhaps slightly more than a thing because he kept it, but it wasn’t what gave him tranquility. It wasn’t the drop of water on the grape.

 

I remember he told a story of going into the bank one day. He wanted to deposit a cheque or some such thing. He waited patiently until it was his turn at the counter. He explained the transaction he wanted to complete to the young person who couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.

 

“Oh”, he was told, “if you want to do that you have to go over there,” pointing at another counter further along.

 

The old man simply replied:

 

“I don’t have to do anything.”

 

It was polite but firm and tremendously powerful.

 

I want to get to that point. I want to be able to say that one day. The weariness of the pandemic tyranny is profound. Serenity is the new gold.

 

I eventually remembered what the photo of Dad gazing across the garden reminded me of. There is a similar one on the wall at Giverny, in France. Monet’s garden. A man sitting, imagining, thinking, peaceful, complete.

 

 

 

 

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