It had taken more than eighteen months to do something seemly, appropriate even with his human remains. The pale wooden box containing the ashes, all that was left of him, had stayed on the rarely ever used cane tea trolley from the day they were delivered to me by Davis Funerals. To be honest I had at first imagined I would find that situation quite macabre but as the months passed it was strangely comforting to have him there. I could place my hand on the box and talk to him and wonder if he somewhere, somehow heard me. In fact I developed a regular habit of speaking with him, often as I walked the streets of Parnell compliantly getting the daily exercise that was supposed to be good for my back. Later I conversed with him in London and then I cried more than I had in Auckland because he should have been there, walking alongside me.
It would be true to say
that I did not deal with his death as well as I might have done and probably
that was simply because in a disturbingly infantile manner I refused to believe
that it had actually happened. Somehow
or other providence should have intervened like a good fairy at a story book christening
ensuring that normal life be restored in all its predictable certainty. But that wasn’t ever going to happen was it? The B-cell Lymphoma did not allow for such an
outcome and as a doctor’s wife over so many years I should have realised that
very well, except that I didn’t. So I
withdrew into a mini-fortress, did not answer the telephone, and threw away the
endless flowers that relentlessly and exasperatingly arrived day after day. The neighbours, witnessing the latter piece of
eccentricity gaped and I smiled and might have even wished them Good
Morning.
There was definitely not
going to be a funeral. He and I had at
least discussed that and I told him it was never going to happen and disapproving
friends and colleagues could think whatever they liked. Perhaps I imagined that if there was no
funeral – (oh the finality of such a thing) – possibly there had been no death.
He elicited a promise that I would at
least put a notice in the New Zealand Herald and I agreed that I would. And then he asked me what I would do with his
remains. Ideally, he said, and with
only slight hesitation, and only if I felt able to do so, he wished for his
ashes to be scattered in the South Island, in Oamaru, perhaps Dunedin and at
Whitechapel by the Arrow River – and if I could face it, some in London because
it was a place that held many precious memories. He told me he realised I might find it very
testing to make any promise in this respect and so I didn’t. He understood me well of course after so
many years.
He slipped from life
without too much kerfuffle, grateful for the morphine that gave some respite
from what he was by that stage calling his Galaxy of Pain. And I withdrew from life also for the most
part, avoiding human contact where possible, crying torrents of tears, throwing
flowers away and watching Coronation Street where Leanne’s little boy, Oliver,
was struggling with a life-threatening illness, a story line that at the time
seemed comforting. A
modicum of solace also came from those who also coped with the death of someone
greatly loved but I was astonished to feel fury and resentment at others whose
nearest and dearest were still living. This
I concluded was because, as I had long suspected, I was not a very nice person;
no surprises there then.
He had died on a Sunday
morning in October 2020, leaving me emotionally stranded, astonished that it
had actually happened. Several people
said I would feel a little better in six months but in April 2021 I felt the
same, missing him as fiercely as ever, still weeping copious tears on a regular
basis, still avoiding social contact as much as possible. The
people I agreed to see and speak with were very few and I used every possible
excuse I could dream up not to attend groups I had somehow or other been cajoled
into joining - even the Zoom meetings. I
became eternally grateful for Covid lockdowns because month after month I was
most at ease when completely alone except for laptop, Ipad and Patrick’s collection
of CDs that for a number of years had been left in my care. The world’s greatest violinists were eternally
helpful, the musical genius of Menuhin, Heifetz, Hassid, Huberman, Kreisler and
Ricci was infinitely sustaining. Outside
my cocoon of misery normal life continued to jog along of course but after
eighteen months for me it was still mostly long dead violinists and the ashes
on the cane trolley.
It was Sinead who urged
me to consider some positive action as far as a farewell to her father was concerned. It was time to do so she thought, and she
would come from London and give help and direction. We would go to the South Island and visit
all the places that had been important to him, and then go on to London and do
the same. It might turn out to be
difficult but we could be certain he would be proud of us. And so it was agreed.
In the end three of us set
off South early in May 2022. Patrick
joined us and we were in good spirits, keen to rediscover favoured and significant
places in Dunedin and Oamaru once more and perhaps with just a little
difficulty find the site of Whitechapel on the Arrow River where the previously
Jewish Harrises, confusingly each generation possessed of the name Samuel Lewis
or Lewis Samuel, ditched their former customs and traditions and became
Anglican. We had been told that this
dismissal of heritage was not particularly unusual at that time and we were
content to believe what we were told.
The mission was
seamlessly accomplished and by the last week in May we were already deep in
plans for a return to London, though sadly without Patrick who was unable to
extricate himself from his workload.
Sinead and I would go together and I was to stay for three months and
become re-acquainted with all that I had left behind me in my favourite city
nearly five decades previously.
And it wasn’t just going
to be a trip down Memory Lane because my daughter was eager to show me her new
house, ideally situated in an area of Hackney called De Beauvoir Town in honour
of Richard de Beauvoir who in 1640 bought up a large amount of local farmland. Further down the track in the nineteenth
century a keen descendent began to build houses on the land which was fortunate
for women like Sinead, intent upon becoming owners of acceptably priced Victorian
properties. We both agreed that her
father would have been extraordinarily proud of her and perhaps more than a
little bit envious because his own ambition had been to become a London property
owner. The closest he came to fulfilling
the dream was the acquisition we made together of a tiny basement flat in Cloudesley
Square, Barnesbury and even then financial constraints forced us to sell it
within a year.
Now in mid 2022 it was
from the house in De Beauvoir Town that I set out again and again on journeys
of re-discovery. And once more,
somewhat predictably, I demonstrated to myself that I was still unable to come
to terms with the death of the man I had been married to for forty-eight
years. Again I walked the streets in
tears and conversed with him, fervently wishing that the last year of his life
could have been lived with less pain.
And on a daily basis I berated the son who had caused us so much misery
by ignoring the terminal illness and then the death of the father who had loved
him so much - and I lauded and was
thankful for the son and daughter who demonstrated on a daily basis their deep
regard, their love and their care and concern.
Over those three months we
made pilgrimages to his favourite pubs, in total forty such excursions and from
time to time we wondered which had been our own favourites, in finality
deciding upon The Old Mitre, The Princess Louise, The Cittie of York, The Black
Friar, The Mayflower and The Barley Mow.
And of course we went to the
restaurant in Maiden Lane that had meant so much to both of us – Rules. In fact, ignoring the expense, we went there
twice.
I was in the final weeks
of my visit when we at last spoke of the London scattering of ashes. We walked at dusk to the Holy Trinity Church
in Cloudesley Square, comfortably bounded on all sides by Georgian houses where
Sinead had made a ritual visit at the time of his death armed with candles and
melancholy memories. And as previously
she determinedly provided a link with Patrick in Auckland via her phone and the
wonders of modern technology. This
final dissemination felt like completely losing him and it was gruelling though
I was comforted by Sinead’s assertion that we had now created a physical place
where it was possible to stop by and reminisce about his life and that part of
him would always be there.
Gordon James Harris, an
ordinary man, came into our lives at a time when he was sorely needed, when I
was in dire need of someone to depend upon and Patrick just four years old,
longed for a father. He more than
fulfilled all our hopes and expectations.
He was an exemplary husband and father and became dearly loved and greatly
respected. His daughter’s resolve, her
relentless organisational skills have allowed us to ensure that his mortal
remains have been deposited with certainty in the places he would have most wanted
to be.
A week or two ago when I
returned to New Zealand I was oddly cheered to see that the pale wooden box
that had once contained his ashes was still in place on the rarely used cane
tea trolley. I can still reach out and
speak with him at will.
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