So, Doris and Zak had visited every morning around 10 a.m. for about an hour, tops. That’s when they could keep their promise and, to their credit, they never broke it. Hope was sorry that she couldn’t rely on her mum and dad for babysitting or for any support outside this one daily hour, but, for Minnie’s sake, she recognized what a giant effort it was for them both to stick to the agreement, and they all chugged on, doing their best within it.
Zak had seemed relatively steady as summer approached. If you’d seen him, you would have thought he was a lethargic sixty-seven-year-old. He wasn’t. He was forty-seven, with a stealthy blood clot pumping its way around his body, waiting for him to be inert enough for it to invade his lungs. The mixture of that lethal clot and his whole respiratory drive shutting down while he gouched out meant, on that fateful night, that his body simply forgot to breathe.
Forgot to fight the clot.
Forgot to fight.
Forgot he was loved. Forgot his wife. Forgot his kids.
Forgot to live.
He simply stopped dead, and when Doris woke from her inebriated slumber, he was cold and slumped next to her on their sofa, with his ‘horse’ box of gear and accoutrements on the table in front of him. She took him in her arms and rocked him, gently encouraging him to wake up, for two hours before she called anyone. She called Hope first, of course.
‘Umm, Daddy’s asleep, Hope. I cyan wake ’im. He’s really really sleepin’. I think you should come,’ she said and put the phone down.
Hope knew. She’d been awaiting this phone call since she could remember. In some awful, truthful way, it was a relief.
The funeral was small and sad and full of loud music, just as he would’ve wanted. Some of his old band members were there. Two were already dead, and the ones who turned up could’ve been. All but one of them appeared to be husks of people, as ravaged by their various substance-use as Zak had been. Somehow, when musicians are at the funerals of their chums’ untimely deaths, it’s a sorrier sight, as if they uniquely should remain forever young or forever rebellious or forever glamorous, as if they owe us that. We want them stuck in amber and ageless. We don’t want to see them as haggard spectres gathered in gloomy groups, smoking vapes and wearing black coats from the back of the wardrobe which hang loosely on their diminished bodies, awkwardly not knowing what to say. People who don’t talk much because they prefer to play, having to find some words.
Clumsy or not, they all found kind words for Doris, whom they loved very much. They also found hip flasks of courage-giving brandy that they shared with her, which wasn’t Hope’s favourite sight of the day. Sandwiching their mother between them, Hope and Glory walked Doris up the aisle at the grim crematorium and sat in the front row, Zak’s four girls together, including little Minnie who sat on Hope’s lap and was sheer sunlight on a very dark day.
As far as Minnie was concerned, this was a fantastic play date. There was music, so that meant fun. However much the celebrant tried to keep the ceremony focused and serious, Minnie’s delighted squeals and clapping hands couldn’t fail to lift everyone’s spirits. When a happy child laughs, everyone laughs. A ripple effect. Minnie had been an oasis of joy for Zak, so it was fitting that she was at the centre of that day, uniting them all, when everyone present wanted to remember the best of him. There was plenty of wonderful about Zak to celebrate …
… and that’s what Hope wanted to remind her mum of now, on this day, while Minnie was enjoying her birthday.
‘Mum …’ Hope took her mother’s face in her hands, the face she’d looked into and loved her whole life, the face that was now the tiredest it had ever been. ‘I know you miss him, we all do, but you do times a million. He was your true love – you always said that – and he still is. No one can ever take that from you. That’s yours forever, isn’t it? The love doesn’t die, does it, Mum? You still love Nanna Bev and she’s gone, but … you said she lives in you. And that’s what I think about Dad; he lives in me and Glory and Minnie and you – and in Princess too now. The best of him. We won’t forget him, ever ever ever.’
‘Well, no, that’s right,’ Doris agreed slowly. ‘Mind you, there’s some bits we don’t mind forgetting, eh?’ She even managed half a smile.
‘Yes, Mum. True dat, but listen to me now … Dad was Dad. He wasn’t that greedy drug. It stole him from us sometimes, but he was still there, wasn’t he? I refuse to let that bloody gear nick all my good memories of my dad, and you mustn’t either, otherwise it’ll be like that’s all he was. Dad was a poet, and a clown, and a mechanic, and a drummer. His whole life was about different beats, and smack was just one of them. Let’s please remember ALL the drumbeats, yeah? Otherwise it’s not proper music, is it?’
‘No, no, you speak sense,’ Doris admitted, taking comfort from everything her clever daughter was saying, allowing herself the salve of the soothing words.
‘And y’know the best thing of all, Mum? He’s free from it now, and so are you. Free from the grip of it. Like Mark
