Never say of anything, “I have lost it,” but, “I have restored it.” Has your child died? They are restored. Has your wife died? She is restored.”
Enchiridion of Epictetus – Section XII
Has my father died? He has been restored to the place from which he came.
It is better for sons to bury fathers, than for fathers to bury sons.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus – Histories Book 1
I am honoured to have this privilege. I am proud to restore my father to the earth.
Everyone knew a different version of Peter, I am sure of it, so there could be no more fitting epitaph than for every single one of us to tell a story about him. I cannot hope to truly sum up the life of a seventy three year old man, so please forgive me if I emphasise some details, and omit others. This is a speech, not a biography.
I remember him singing in the morning over breakfast. I remember him singing in the kitchen over dinner. I remember the spoonerisms, and word games and camping in the backyard, camping in the bush, rifle shooting, bow shooting.
I remember the good and the bad.
I remember voicing a silent protest throughout my teens, confused and hurt by all I had seen during my parents divorce. I did not speak to him for, six years I think. Later, I remember him at my wedding day, proud as punch. I remember him when my son was born, beaming like the sun. I remember him when my marriage fell apart, he was solid as a rock and always ready with hot food and a glass of wine whenever I needed it. Through later breakdowns he gave my son and I a place in his home when we needed it.
He opened his home and his heart to us.
I remember his prejudices, and his foolish opinions, and his stubborn ideas, and I fought him on nearly every one, and still we found a way to listen to each other, to hear each other, and to offer respect instead of reproach. I saw him grow and change as a man, I saw him reliquish unjustifyable prejudices, I saw him soften with old age. I saw the relationship he built with his Grandson, Wren, a relationship that shaped and transformed both of them. He honoured the boy, conversed with him, offered advice and listened when it was given back. Wren dubbed him Dragon Pete, and for seven years the name has stuck. We three dined together, gardened together, watched a lot of movies together, we even travelled together to visit Philip and Sandra for Dad & Sandra's seventieth birthdays.
Half Man, Half Dragon. Everyone knew him differently, but there he was, living his life and blazing with a personal vigour that has inspired my own ceaseless efforts to live a life worth remembering. He believed in happiness, and despite struggling with crippling depression, was never one to dismiss an opportunity to enjoy life's grand and ordinary moments. His collection of Black Dog figurines was forever proudly on display, on the shelf that held all his books on mythology. There is no coincidence in this.
Not all my memories are complete, a lot are fragmentary. I remember Dad's suicide attempt, and his stay in hospital. I remember the terrible fights he had with mum, I remember the police being called, more than once, I remember being taken to the police station to get away, along with my sisters and my mother, more than once. I remember the night my parents marriage really ended. It was violent, confusing, noisy, frightening.
My memories are fragmentary just as our knowledge of Peter is fragmentary. I may be his son, but there are many who knew him far better than I, and for decades longer. I got to know him best in his last two decades. I witnessed his maturation into his twilight years. I got to know him as all his years of experience: trauma and love, came back to him, and I saw him trying to deal with everything that he was as a man. I saw him trying to reconcile his past, in himself. In his last year he really opened up to me, and as he remembered fragments of his childhood, he would share them with me. A lot of what came back to him were terrible memories, and I listened to him, just letting him get the stories out, but a lot more stories were joyful, or funny, or ordinary, and I would listen to him reminisce about his hunting days, or about the cars he had owned, the jobs he worked, or the places he had taught, or lectured, or sold books. We would look through old photo albums and he would tell me the exact model of camera he used for each era of photography, from his first Box Brownie, to his most modern digital cameras. His prized photographs still sit on bookshelves.
I remember the feasts, I remember him serving six different prawn dishes at one New Years eve party. There were gigantic bowls of salad, wine breathing in carafe's upon the mantle piece, whiskey in the freezer. Champagne for every toast. I remember his dark study with books lining every wall, and a cabinet with curiosities, like an antique store. He would smoke cigars and type, and I would sit beside him, just reading whatever he was writing. As a child I sat and watched him write his 'History of German U-Boat Warfare', and then in later years, I watched him write and publish the first edition of his food additives book, then I saw him publish the second edition.
I remember him with my Uncle Gabor (not a blood relative, but a relative by choice). They would eat weisswurst and polish sausage and salads,olives and fruit, and they would drink wine and talk and talk and talk and listen to music, and drink more wine and talk for days on end. I learned the art of friendship, watching them.
I remember the stories he told most often, the things from his life that he was most proud of:
Going through teachers college, studying field botany and writing his book about Folk Lore and the Weather. Many hunting stories, digging cars out of axle deep mud, shooting five goats with five bullets, or was it four bullets? His book tours and all the lectures he gave, the people he met and the lives he influenced. He was proud of teaching himself how to use the AUTOCAD architectural design program, and of his time at TAFE, teaching computing and welding. He had some complaints about his working life, but ultimately he was proud of everything he achieved. He lived to his own standard, to his own work ethic, and he was justified in his confidence. He was a capable man; capable of learning, and of perfecting his work. He worked with his hands and with his mind and with his voice, at each stage of his life applying himself wholly to whatever tasks he set for himself.
Sometimes I reflect that I only knew him a relatively short time, I didn't really know him, that my memories amount to very little : but then I recall his passion for Asian food, and the absolutely incendiary curries and stir fry's he would cook. I remember Dragon Pie, the shepherds pie he baked and then decorated with an incredibly detailed picture of a dragon, drawn dot by dot with peas and corn. I remember the concrete dragon he sculpted to sit atop the chimney of the brick BBQ he also built. I remember, as a kid, the tumble-dryer warmed blankets before bed, being tucked in like a sardine, wrapped up tight in a hot blanket. I remember the corn growing in the back yard, I remember the sugar cane he smuggled home from Queensland and which he planted in the garden at Murray Bridge, and I remember watching it take root and grow. I remember motorbike rides, I remember the sail boat, and crossing Lake Alexandrina with John Gill, and I remember the Kingswood station wagon, and every time we drove home from Adelaide, Dad would ask us kids if we wanted to take the free-way, or the old road to get home, and we would all sing that we wanted the old road, even though it was ten minutes longer.
I will not, however, paint only a glowing portrait of my father, making out that he was a creature of perfect kindness and virtue. I want to acknowledge that his life was marred by some poor decisions, and by aggression born of unprocessed trauma. Yet, amidst the frightful domestic violence of our disintegrating family, my childhood memories of Dad are coloured brightly with the love he showed us, with his humour and his silly songs, his piggy back rides and his bedtime stories. I cannot paint him all black because of his faults, just as I cannot paint him all white because of his virtues. He was a human being, I need say no more. We all knew him.
He was a multicultural man, an international gentleman of discerning taste and intense intellectual passions. His book collection is diverse and fascinating. His music is the same. His movie collection, and the actors and actors database that he spent two decades building is perhaps the great monument of the work of his retirement. These collections of his, his coins, his figurines, his posters, his cinema memorabilia, his photographs, his family history, his decks of playing cards with pictures of naked girls, his Marilyn Monroe pictures...these are the arranged imprints of his fingers in the dust of the world. These collections of his are the memories made real from his life of passion.
He told me often in the last few years that he could remember very little of his childhood, and he knew that it was better that way. These mementos that fill his home are the material evidence of his efforts to build, and to hold onto, all the joyful events of his life. To preserve that which was most precious to him, and to keep it always in view. This is perhaps illustrated no better than by his fabulous love of Peter Pan. Dad was a boy who was denied a childhood, and so as an adult, he found a way, through the medium of fairy stories and mythology, to preserve the childhood self he so desired.
Twenty eight years after his divorce, he still kept a single photo of Mum on his book shelf. A photo he took of her silhouette against an apocalyptic sky, churning with the smoke of Ash Wednesday. Perhaps there is some symbolism there, but ultimately it is a beautiful picture, a work of art, and he preserved it as a reminder.
How many of us can ever say that we truly understand ourselves? Though we strive to achieve this goal our entire lives, it seems that the mystery of Self, is never truly solved. Dad had his blind spots, and he had a way of dismissing the parts of his past that he did not wish to address, or discuss. This made it very difficult for those of us that he hurt, to find resolution, or a sense of closure. His refusal to confront the mistakes he made with his family ultimately kept all of us at arms length. We each had to make a choice to forgive and forget, or else be burdened by our memories. Some mistakes he made were beyond forgiveness, and I do not reproach those who could not forgive, or forget. I know that as his son, he treated me better than he treated many others, a kindness which he also extended to his grandson, Wren.
I feel perhaps a little guilty to have known him at his kindest, to have spent the last decade dining with him, drinking with him, watching movies with him, going to the central markets, riding on trains, playing with trains, going shopping, going to the hospital, going to the doctor, following the ambulance, going to the hospital again. As hard as his medical problems were, every moment being his son, having the opportunity, the willingness and the ability to help him gave me great pride. I am grateful that he let me get close enough to be able to help him. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to love him, and to be loved by him, and to be with him till his last day.
I could go on, telling you of the love I felt for my father, and of the gratitude I feel towards him for all that he gave me, spiritually, intellectually, and practically, but my eulogising must come to an end. I will conclude with this poem, written three weeks after his death.
For my father
August 2020
Mountains in the sky
the clouds make miniature
the earth beneath their shadow
You ride white horses across mountains in the sky
another ghost rider chasing dreams through drifting memory
all the world beneath your shadow
my tiny life
my little family
my grain of sand upon the ocean floor
while you
ride horses
across mountains
in the
sky
I
rise
to see
the sunlight
upon your mighty face
and I am blessed by the memory of your voice
in my ear,
and all your songs are
my songs
now
and I will sing them
to my son
and we will play games inside our memory of you
and tell stories
and tell others,
other people,
we will tell all about you
and your courageous, complicated life
while you ride horses
across mountains
while you ride motorbikes
and run through forests
and through streets
and through our veins
and I,
this tiny grain of sand
in your palm,
all your truth and consequence
made manifest,
I am miniature in your shadow,
all the world is made small
while you
and the mountains
grow tall
and I rise
each day
to see
the sun.
