This post was written and should have been published in November 2008
the reason the text is in two colours is that I can't get this system to separate paragraphs in articles I post by email. If anyone knows how to deal with that problem I would be grateful for your advice.
Journey to Yeppoon and a Rite of Passage
Do you recall my telling you about a visit to friends in Rockhampton, one of who had been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx? (http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-do-you-say.html ) Graham had been given three months to live, but lasted almost a year. When he died it was incredibly quick. He was in hospital for less than ten hours. I received an email from Inge, his partner, on Monday (
You almost certainly heard about the three hail storms that clobbered
I arrived a little after 7, and after having a sandwich and a brief chat I went to bed. Next morning, after breakfast I headed for
However, what I can say is that fairly early next day I headed for Rocky. I wanted to see the art gallery so I went into town, parked and started looking for the arts precinct. I found it, and was seriously disappointed by what I saw. For some reason I had the idea that Rockhampton's regional gallery was really good. I had seen what I thought was an excellent exhibition there, including several paintings by James Gleeson, just after it opened in the mid seventies. What was there was OK, but none of the permanent collection was on display – that part of the gallery was closed! No reason, it just "isn't open at this time". On my way back to my car I lost my bearings and couldn't find it. I began to think that it might have been stolen, because it wasn't where I thought I had left it. To make things worse, it rained while I was in a long stretch of street with no awnings. I had an umbrella, but, of course, it was in the car. As a last resort I returned to a place that I knew I had passed on my way to the gallery, and turned 90 degrees to the direction I had been looking and behold! There it was.
Inge was resplendent in blue dressing gown when I arrived and stood at her front door waving as though a monarch dispensing Large S to her adoring subjects. I was introduced to the family: Christine, Graham's twin sister, Phil, his brother and Val, Phil's wife. I'd heard of Phil, but not of Christine, so to say that I was surprised would be an understatement. It would not be the only surprise of the day. More on that later. Inge was in good spirits; Christine not so chirpy; Phil very polite and chatty; Val quietly observing and throwing pertinent observations into the mix. Just after I arrived the Funeral Director phoned. It was raining heavily in Yeppoon. Alternative arrangements might need to be made for the funeral service. There was a church very close….. NO!! Get a marquee, was Inge's reply. A church! The very thought!!
As we headed to Yeppoon, however, we saw with our own eyes what the Funeral Director was talking about. Great bolts of lava, erupting from the landscape, frozen in geological time made for a very dramatic land setting. Above, black behemoths 50,000 feet high churned and roared as they flung bolds of lightning to the ground at a rate of 90,000 to the solar day (a fact gleaned from the bureau of meteorology the next day.) The closer we got to the cemetery the more menacing the rain became. We arrived to see about a dozen plastic chairs under a marquee that would barely cover a nuclear family's dining room table. Nothing underneath it was dry. A bevy of grave site workers stood in varying degrees of saturation smirking at the first cars to arrive. It didn't take much to convince Inge that the church was the sensible option in the circumstances. So we gathered.
As the rain increased the lightning began to scare some people I said to Inge, This is Graham not going quietly. She was so amused that she told everyone as they dribbled in, and even the bloke conducting the service took up a variation on the theme – speaking of whom, this is where it began to become more interesting than I had anticipated. Graham had been a volunteer tutor at the
To start with, the music was very Graham. Not that the Chaplain would have had anything to do with that. But that's the point. Were Graham being buried as a Catholic (more on that later) in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest, the priest would have ruled out every piece of music that was played at the service. I have to tell you that I personally LOVE good liturgical music (the kind of music a priest would approve of), and HATE the ditties that get sung in Protestant, especially Pentecostal, churches. But the very fact that this guy probably has no preconceptions about what is appropriate liturgical music, meant that he didn't bat an eyelid at the Blue Danube from 2001: A Space Odyssey; Shirley Bassey's version of This is my life; and another piece that I can hear in my mind's ear but can't name.
Secondly, and this would have been worked out between the Chaplain and Graham and Inge, and possibly other people as well, the body of the service was a series of tributes from people who know Graham well. The first was by the other Chaplain. I can't remember what she said, but I remember thinking that it captured something about the occasion that was maybe a bit unusual. She was followed by the Principal of the High School, who opened by disagreeing with the sentiment that the weather was Graham making himself felt, suggesting, rather, that it was whoever is in charge up there expressing dire frustration now that Graham had arrived and was telling him how to do his job. If you didn't know Graham, that comment tells you much. She went on to outline the way in which Graham had started out as a volunteer tutor to struggling students, making a point of the fact that he very quickly gained their attention and respect and did a great deal to help many of them; and then became a moving force behind significant fund raising efforts – not just in big bucks (he was responsible for over a million dollars worth of donations to the school) but also in small ways, ferreting out and securing minor donations that made a significant difference to particular students and groups of students in the school. She didn't hide the fact that many people had to get used to Graham's methods and approach – which, by now, you have probably guessed could be … how shall we put this … um … confronting – to put it nicely. She was followed by a representative of Livingstone shire Council who told a similar story of vigorous participation that brought such results that Graham was awarded the local Citizen of the Year Award on Australia Day 2008. She too, spoke of Graham's characteristic enthusiasm, specifically his tenacious attention to detail that got some people hot under the collar, but served the cause of good order in council affairs, and got things done.
I had anticipated what Pat the Preacher said next. He asked if anyone else wanted to speak. I went to the lectern and said that, prompted by a certain television show that began by asking people to say one word that summed up the subject of the program, I had thought about a word that summed up Graham. It was two words, actually, but only one of them mattered: Quick witted. Clearly, I said, everyone present would agree, but my purpose was to point out a particular meaning of the word Quick, which doesn't just mean fast. I recalled that there is a phrase in our language, The quick and the dead, and said that it is the King James way of saying the living and the dead; a phrase that does not distinguish between people who are alive and people who are deceased, but between a particular way of living – the Quick – and the walking dead – the people a famous wise man was referring to when he said, Let the dead bury their dead. Graham, I said, was a good example of the Quick, which is why I will never think of him as dead.
I was followed by Christine, Graham's twin. She began by saying that God had given them to each other so that they could learn from each other. She then said, I am a Franciscan Sister. Was I gob-smacked? She told us some aspects of the family's life, including the fact that their mother had died when she and Graham were very young and that they had spent some time in an orphanage, and that their father was a Catholic, and that they had been brought up in their early years as Catholics. You wouldn't believe what went through my mind in that instant. Suddenly I understood a great deal about Graham that I might not otherwise have figured out. I can't remember anything else she said because my mind was racing with thoughts about what Graham had been dealing with for most of his life, and how there but for the grace of … well, how life is a two edged sword … that one person's grace is someone else's grief, and that there may be no difference between them in the end – or the beginning.
Others may have spoken too, but Inge was the last to pay tribute. He really wasn't easy to live with, she started, and then went on to explain why she lived with him for most of their lives. If I can be so bold, I will sum up what she said in one word: Quick. That's what it amounted to. He really lived. And she really glowed giving us an account of that life. Inge is the daughter of German patriots. Her passion, like Graham's, is for getting things done, and doing what she does well. She is elegant, considered, impeccably spoken and insightful, yet not at all in your face – in this last respect, the complete opposite of Graham, but in every way that matters, his peer. As she stood at the lectern regaling us with carefully selected anecdotes about their life together, she animated all present with an account of her soul mate. Oh yes, Graham lives.
Other significant things happened at the service, but I can't remember all of it. What I will never forget was our adjournment to the cemetery. As the coffin was lowered into the earth, the Principal of the High School poured a bottle of Graham's blood – well, red wine, actually – into the grave, and Inge threw in several cigarettes as they intoned, Go jollily amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence… Well, I might have made some of that up, but, as I said to several people, Graham's life is now in the realm of Legend, so …
Graham's twin stood for a very long time at the grave. The coffin was placed head down hill. Not comfortable, I thought, until I noticed the two pine trees at the edge of the cemetery. So look at his view, I said. Christine looked up and saw what I was referring to and said, No. He's looking down. I smiled, but didn't say, Well it all depends on which view of the resurrection you believe.
The finale was the Wake at the pacific Hotel, where Graham went regularly for blood transfusions. No party pies and fried thingies, but canapés and other fair befitting a farewell to a restaurateur. I spent some time chatting to Christine. Phil joined us and the conversation spun out of control. Val rolled her eyes. Pat the Preacher showed up. Graham was right: not much of a fundamentalist after all. I have to say that in spite of my own convictions, I came to regard him as a good bloke. He really did do the job well, yet didn't compromise his own sense of what he was doing. He reminded me a bit of a bloke who famously ate with publicans and tax collectors, and made friends of tradesmen and small business people, and did so because he knew who he really was. I understand why Pat and Graham were friends regardless of their world views. And now Inge has a new life. The fact that about half of the human population (you know, the ones who outlive their partners) have the same experience does not make it any easier for anyone when it happens. Every one does it alone, even if they are surrounded and supported by others. So by saying Vale Graham, let us not forget that we are also saying Vado Inge denuo.*
The return journey was relentless. I had to leave the Wake before I should have because I had to get back to
*For a translation cut and paste Vado * denuo into the website below, and select Latin to English. The word inge has a Latin meaning, hence the asterisk. Oh, and I know it's only pig-Latin, so if someone wants to give me the rite stuff, please feel obliged.
http://www.tranexp.com:2000/Translate/result.shtml
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