20160216 – Tuesday – My Dad’s hair

It is 1.30 am and I can’t sleep, so I do what I usually do when I can’t sleep. I get up and sit down at my trusty computer and “think out loud.”

Yesterday, as you know, I had my little “grizzle” on my web site and received lots of words of kindness and comfort and even phone calls from my friends. I received advice about my eyesight and my diet and how to control my diabetes. I felt really loved and comforted. Thank you all.

I spoke about my Dad and how he died and about how I love and miss him. Then to my mind came a story about my dad that I haven’t told too many people.

If any of you know Susie Johns and knew her Mum Marj Steele, you will know that whenever you talked to them whenever they talked about anything, even mundane things, they were funny. I have sat with them while mother and daughter chuckled about this and that. Everything was funny. For me, nothing that I did ever seemed to be funny because I didn’t seem to possess their quirky little sense of humour.

Another two people that I loved that seemed to have that same quirky sense of humour were Mary Ann and Forrest Brinkerhoff. I have sat in their lounge room with them, when we were all reading books in comfortable and companionable silence, except that every now and then, Forrest would make some little comment and Mary Ann would make a little joking reply, and I would sit there, reading, but chuckling at the two of them.

Another one who had this gift was Rob Thiele. He always made me laugh with his little one liners and humorous little insights into things that were happening around us. It is a gift and it is a gift that I don’t have. I am too serious by far.

Anyway I want to tell you a story about my Dad that I thought was funny. It was at a time when nothing SHOULD have been funny. My dad had died, and as I said before, I couldn’t grieve because I knew that my Dad was HAPPY to die, and I knew he would have been so happy and grateful to die the way he did.

His funeral had been arranged and the funeral parlour had told us all that we could visit the funeral parlour and view dad in his open coffin. Debbie, my eldest daughter and Judy my second daughter and Jesia my youngest went together to see Dad. We were ushered into a small room where Dad lay in his coffin and then were left alone in the room to view the coffin in privacy. We stood there looking at him. each coping with the multitude of conflicting feelings that we were experiencing.

I had asked Debbie if she would take a photo of him in his coffin, because I had taken a photo of Mum in hers and wanted one of Dad. Debbie wasn’t sure how she felt about this, but I was insistent. To get a photo from the right angle, Deb stood up on a chair and held up her camera to take the photo.

She paused and lowered the camera, paused and then lowered it again. “Take it Deb,” I said.

“I can’t take a photo of him like that,” said Deb.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, look at his hair.”

I looked and immediately saw what she meant. Someone had combed Dad’s hair up into a big puff on his head and it wasn’t the way Dad combed his hair at all.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it,” I said.”

“I’ve got some gel in my bag said Deb?”

We looked at each other and then looked at Dad.

“Ok, then, do it.”

Deb got down from the chair and took out a comb and some gel, and carefully combed dad’s hair into a more acceptable (to us) hair style. Then Deb got up on the chair again to take the photo.

At this point, the emotion of it was too much for Jesia. She gave a nervous giggle and then put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide in horror that she was laughing at such a time..

Then Deb also began to giggle nervously. Then we all began to laugh. It was terrible. We could not stop laughing and it was so inappropriate to do so, but impossible to stop once started.

There we were all three of us laughing uncontrollably,our laughter bordering on hysteria. We had to stop laughing in order to get out of the funeral parlor with some semblance of decorum!

Deb quickly took the photo and then  jumped down from the chair as we all struggled to control ourselves.

We would manage to stop laughing for a while, but then one of us would start laughing again.

It was dreadful and we didn’t think we would ever be able to get out of there past the front desk of the funeral parlor where the secretary would be standing and out onto the street and into the sunlight again.

We managed it in the end. We walked past the woman on the counter and said “thank you” and then escaped into the street.

Deb collapsed onto a bench and we all sat down together and laughed and laughed and laughed.

There is no worse feeling than laughing when you should not and being unable to stop.

In discussion later we all said the same thing.

Maynard O’Connor Fay’s dear Dad

“If dad had been alive, he would be laughing too.”

It was impossible for us to believe that Dad was dead.

He loved life so much and we knew that the only regret he would have would be that he couldn’t be with us and witness his own funeral, and hear all the nice things people would say about him.

Well, I am not Susie Johns, or Forrest and Mary Ann Brinkerhoff, or Rob Thiele, for that matter, with their particular quirky sense of humour, but I DID think that this incident was funny.

I hope you do too.