In books you read of people who keep their grandmothers in an urn on the mantelpiece. Their ashes that is. People do not seem to keep their grandfathers in the same way. Perhaps grandfathers are not a part of the domestic scene in the same way that women are.
My grandmother was not kept in an urn, reduced to ashes. She is buried in the same grave as my grandfather in the cemetery at Wynyard. My aunt, the artist, and the eldest in the family, organised a garden grave in amongst the granite that was popular after the Second World War. Each spring, grape hyacinths, violets and freesias bloom amongst the weeds. My mother complained each year of having to weed the grave. It was a playground designed for children and long before I could understand the concept of death I was drawn to the little white wooden crosses at the bottom of the cemetery. They were down a dip and not seen readily from the main paths. My mother said they were pauper graves. Some of them had white picket fences around them and they looked like children's cots. I grieved for these babies and children who were not alive.
Felicity asked me how I felt when Lesley and I collected my baby grandson Hamish's ashes.
We had waited days in a town where we no longer belonged, staying with friends and relatives, forging a relationship between two families who had little in common but the dreams of a small baby. The time was strangely long. Pathologists were not available to release the body for some days and the thought of him lying on a cold hard slab at the hospital was never far from our thoughts.
The young adults wiped themselves out with dope and serapax, drove my car far too fast and avoided talking to the older generation. The undertakers wanted to insist on decoration for the small white coffin but Lesley was adamant, she only wanted red carnations and gypsophila from my sister's garden. She wanted no decoration, no religion and no ritual. I wrote the ceremony over the next few days and it lasted less than five minutes.
Days went by and the minutes seemed like days, stretching through sixty long seconds. Sometimes I sat on the beach with Felicity, on smooth black basalt rocks. It was the middle of summer and there must have been people everywhere but my memory is like a Matisse painting, of two flat figures, pasted forever on the flat landscape.
Six days after he died there was a pathologist available. We did not know what he would find but we were all nervous. What if Hamish had been ill and we had failed to notice. How could we have missed it. He was a big healthy two month old child with a strong personality. A big handsome baby who turned people's heads from the time he was born.
The Coroner phoned me late in the evening of the sixth day to say there was no reason for his death and that his death certificate would indicate sudden infant death syndrome. The funeral for immediate family went ahead the next morning five days after his death. I wore the dress I had worn the week before to my eldest daughter's wedding. Lesley wore my niece's hat she had worn for her wedding. There was something of my mother in Lesley at that time. Everything had to be quite correct, including the small veil that hid her eyes.
After the funeral we had lunch at my niece's, and my sister made endless cups of coffee and tea. Hamish's father and his family stood across the large room gazing outwards through the windows across the water, like statues from Easter Island, not seeing and still.
Some years ago Baxter's daughter had a baby when she was fourteen. Baxter had herself been pregnant with her daughter at fifteen. She had moved to Tasmania in the early seventies with the child and bought a piece of land behind Sheffield on a hippy commune. After she and the child had built a shanty and survived on dreams for a few years, she found that she missed Sydney and her career. The daughter was left for months at a time with neighbours, church people, old folks and anyone who was interested. Baxter felt that it would help the girl to grow up with a broad understanding of life.
She was a beautiful child, unkempt, clothed in hand me downs and what ever came her way. When she was ready for secondary education Baxter organised for her to reside in a boarding home for old men, tucked away in a side road in the country. A private sort of affair that probably had no licence. Baxter's daughter was bright, articulate, interested in life but strangely unaware. Children at school complained that she smelt and she was reported to the authorities. But she went missing completely.
She had found a horse in the paddock next door and taught herself to ride bare back. The son of the family who owned the horse was twenty-two and Baxter's daughter fourteen when she fell in love and pregnant within the month. His family was Jewish, practicing Jews. I keep shaking my head but up the back of Sheffield in the seventies there was a strange mixture of folk. T hey took Baxter's daughter into their home and the child too when he was born.
After two years when Baxter's daughter was sixteen she took her child and asked for help. The Government housed her in a unit amongst a set of twelve units, which were all occupied by single older women. It was right on a major arterial road into the town and had no fence or barrier between the front door and the road. The Jewish family got as far as the Family Court in an attempt to gain custody of the child but found they had failed to register his birth. Baxter's daughter was fined $60.
Jessie was blonde, blue eyed and bright. In fact he was a child who sparkled. His mother adored him and cuddled him continuously. She said she had never been cuddled as a child. She was hoping Baxter would come down to the shanty for Christmas but she had not heard from her for years. She gathered around her the lost and forlorn. I remember a small weedy lad of fourteen who had never known his mother being cuddled and comforted by her. She was generous with what she had, both materially and emotionally. And all the kids that gathered around her loved Jessie.
When he was killed by a car after running on to the road one evening, the police wanted to charge Baxter's daughter with negligence. They knew it would not stick but they thought it would teach her a lesson. Baxter's daughter and the kids around managed the funeral as best they could. They bought new clothes for him and asked me to dress him for his funeral.
Jessie had been dead for a week and he was badly injured in the accident. The undertakers had requested a closed coffin but Baxter had arrived from Sydney and wanted to see the grandson she had never known. Baxter was the first person I met who had one name only. She said she saw it on a bill board one night and it seemed anonymous enough, even for her.
When we had finished dressing Jessie and wrapped him in a blanket Baxter nursed her daughter who in turn nursed her son Jessie. They were crying and Baxter's daughter said to me, look Nessa. Mummy is cuddling me and I am cuddling Jessie. We are all cuddling each other.
At the grave side the people from the American church sang there is a place for little children beyond the bright blue sky. The grey sky drove rain needles into our eyes. The older women from the other units shivered apart in their cardigans and tut tutted to each other. All the kids and Baxter were crying. With all their hearts they wanted to believe there was a place – a somewhere beyond the bright blue sky. They were children themselves.
It was a bleak scene from Wuthering Hights on a bleak hillside with no head stones, no crosses, no memorials - only small dull plaques in the grass.
Like everything else Baxter's daughter moved on. She was already pregnant again, with a daughter, and Baxter took her home to Sydney.
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After the funeral for Hamish the families went home, and Lesley and I waited another two days for his ashes. On the evening that he was cremated Lesley and I went for a long walk along the river. As the tide turned, a soft breeze talked itself through the wattle trees along the banks and blew softly in our faces. This was about the time Hamish's spirit had been released. Later when I felt the soft easterly breeze tossing my paper lanterns in the hall I said to myself, Hi Hamish.
On Saturday morning we drove to the funeral parlour in Lesley's car, a small beat up Gemini, to collect Hamish's ashes. I can remember feeling relief, an unexpected feeling. Relief that we had Hamish back and knew where he was, with us. After all those days of having been without him.
The car was packed full with cribs and prams and baby gear and Lesley's friend and Lesley’s friend’s baby in the back. Lesley sat in the front with the small plastic box of Hamish on her knee and I said be careful. I drove with the seat jammed forward and my knees jammed against the dashboard for four long hours. I was worried about an accident and I have no recall of any detail of that long trip home.
We took the plastic box apart and Hamish went into a Chinese pot, like the grandmothers in the novels. For a while he sat beside my bed and then he travelled with Lesley on her trips away. For a long time he sat on the wooden cupboard in the dining room and during the Saturday morning housework I would sometimes lift the little china lid and say Hi Hamish.
Before Lesley left for England we walked to the cliffs and tossed his ashes into a wild cove where the sea drives in fiercely from the south. Lesley kept some ashes to scatter in England but returned -with them intact and her dreams in tatters. We returned to the same spot and scattered the rest into the same wild sea, green and deep with foam cascading down the cliffs as each wave withdrew. I said to Lesley, look. As each wave breaks into the cove there is a small but perfect rainbow. Where, she said disbelieving. Then we watched as the pure winter sunshine worked its magic.
I sometimes miss having his ashes around. I go down to the cliffs and watch the ocean and look at the wildflowers and marvel a little at how inevitable everything is. One day I took my eldest grandson down there and we saw an albatross and a sea hawk over the ocean as we sat on the edge of a cliff eating fish and chips. There were brilliant flashes of kingfishers in the banksias. A day of magic.
My grandson said, gee Nan this would be a great track for my motorbike. Dad said if I could find a track I could bring it down and he and I could go together. I’ll bring it down next time and we can do wheelies all up this track. And I said yes.
Felicity will have collected Jack, her father's ashes by now. Western society is not tolerant of ritual outside the norm. Where do you put your Dad when you pick him up in a beautifully hand made wooden box? Do you put the seatbelt on? Could you put it in the boot? Or on the back seat?
I can remember travelling with Father Casey once when Marnie was a baby to see an old woman near Sheffield, to give her holy communion. Father Casey was Irish, loved golf and women and drink, and was a notoriously bad driver. As we went round a bend things slid off the back seat and he said, oh sorry Lord. Mary can you pick our Lord up and put Him back on the seat? And he was perfectly serious.
Felicity says she will scatter Jack's ashes in the garden at Elliott and across the winning tine of the Burnie Gift, as Jack was a famous trainer of runners. She will have to do this at night as the scattering of ashes in a public place is an offence.
It is the habit for humans to return. To my grandmother's grave to find grape hyacinths still flowering half a century later. To the wild edge of the Somerset cemetery where heaths and daisies hide the space where my father lies. To the green green grass where a small plaque says my mother lies deep and deeply buried. To the cliffs.
I have this vision of Felicity and me, making the trip, sitting alone in the great grandstand at West Park in our old age, in our warm woollen overcoats. We will make a toast to the sometime and the somewhere, and cheer Jack over the finishing line.
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