When a branch falls from the family tree

How the loss of a loved one makes room for new growth.

Four years ago today, my Dad died. Crash. A branch of my family tree, a branch that I had leaned on, was gone. Despite the shock of his absence, it wasn’t unexpected.  The branch had been weakening for some time. Dementia had taken hold, burrowing in and making him frail. No new foliage was growing, each leaf was just slowly changed colour and falling, never to be replaced.

This change of season wasn’t gradual, at least not for me. I would see it in bursts, on too infrequent visits back to see him that occurred in between a marriage, children and a divorce. I’d go back to find another part of him withering another bare twig. Another pile of leaves gathering, slowly being blown away, reclaimed by nature. And then, when the pandemic hit, I didn’t see the change at all. He remained that way, for me. Weak, but still holding on. I prayed, and wished and willed him to stay that way, just until the borders reopened.

I knew the final fall was coming, I knew it was inevitable from the calls I would get to update me on his decline, and I wanted to be there with him, and with my mum and sister, to bear witness to it. To be held, and to hold, through the shockwave his passing would create. The deafening sound of grief rushing in, that I was sure would knock us all off our feet.  But, as I tell my children, you don’t always get what you wish for.

Mum called me on this day four years ago, at 7pm, and asked if I wanted to speak to Dad. I spoke to him for the first time since my last visit home. He replied for the first time since dementia stole his voice. He said my name.

Then I heard the silent fall.

It echoed back in the sounds of my mum and sister’s tears. In the gentle voice of the nurse saying he’d gone. And in my mind, it echoed back as a question, in grief’s voice. How can he be gone, when the last time you saw him, he looked strong enough to stay, just a little longer?

And there, in that moment where I stood shakily holding my phone, the faint sound of a party happening on a boat in the harbour below me, my grief took me down a path different to the one my sister and mum were setting out on. On my path, grief was searching for loopholes, like a forager looking for mushrooms in the undergrowth. And it found one very quickly.

For my mum and sister, they lost Dad in a sunlit room, surrounded by peace and love. For me, I lost him in a darkened apartment, with the distant sound of a lockdown party, music and laughter unwantedly creeping into my ears. It seemed immediately strange to me, and to my grief, that he had died at different times. I realised I wouldn’t know what to tell people when they asked, when did he pass? So, my grief whispered, if you don’t really when he left, how can you be sure he did?

When a branch of our family trees fall, the funerals we hold for our loved ones are our way of acknowledging the loss and making it real. We are saying to ourselves and others, they are gone. Here they lie. We find comfort in hearing stories about them in eulogies and at wakes. It lets us extract nutrients from our loss, which lets us grow through and out of our grief.

But I couldn’t attend the funeral. I couldn’t leave Australia. So I watched my Dad’s funeral, happening on the other side of the world, on a phone. I listened to someone else read my eulogy and tell my anecdotes about Dad as if they were his own. I wasn’t at the wake to see the people whose lives my Dad had touched, to accept their condolences, to feel their hand on my back supporting me. This is too strange, my grief whispered, how can you not be at your own Dad’s funeral? If you aren’t there, then can he really be gone?

And so, for a long time, I was able to pretend that the branch hadn’t fallen. Grief was able to fool me that he was still there, still hanging on, waiting for me to get there. To be at his side when he finally fell. So he became a phantom branch. In my mind, still attached to my family tree. And that’s where he stayed. For a year.

For those 12 months, my grief could keep denying the facts, because I hadn’t experienced them. I hadn’t seen the gap where he once had been. I hadn’t seen him let go and leave us. I hadn’t witnessed others say goodbye. And so, my grief reasoned, he must still be there. Waiting to see me. During this in-between time, where my grief held me in this suspended state, I thought about him often, usually when I was washing my car. I’d talk to him about what was going on, ask for his advice. And I’d hear it. I’d feel his hand on my head telling me it would all be ok. I’d smile. See? my Grief would say, you can still feel him. You are still smiling. How can he be gone?

But then  the day came when I was finally able to get on a plane. Almost a year after he died, I was in Brisbane airport, shaking. Right up to take off, I found myself hoping the flight would be cancelled. Wished that I’d get Covid and not be able to go. I almost ran, a child dangling from each hand, right back through the departure gate. The only thing that stopped me was how desperately wanted to see my mum and sister. How much I needed to see them.

But I was scared. Because I knew in 25 hours, when I arrived at my mum and dad’s house, my grief-hazed season of denial was over. Reality would hit. I was scared the branch would crash down and crush me, and them too. They’d had a year to come to terms with the loss. To let the tears fall. To allow new growth to grow and seal their wounds. Now I was arriving in a house where, for the first time, he was not. It would cut me, leaving me raw. Would my unhealed grief somehow rip away their healing, and leave them exposed again?

This panic remained, right up to the point where I turned the handle to go into mum’s living room, where grief was still insisting he would be. I braced myself for the crash, for the deafening sound of sadness, but there was none. Instead there was the gentle sound of time moving by. A clock ticking. Children playing in the alley behind the fence. It was like walking through a wood when you are sad. The chirps and sounds of leaves blowing in the wind gently reminding you that despite what is going on within you, life is continuing around you.

Over the next few weeks, as my sister and mum held me and I held them, we shared stories about Dad. We poured over old photos. I held in my hand a leather bolo tie my dad had been given by an American he met while doing his National Service. In that little forest of memories they grew around me, I felt part of my network again, linked back in to my family tree. Reminded where my roots were. I found the sustenance I needed to grow through my grief.

I was finally able to accept that dad’s branch had fallen. And by doing so I was finally able to see that he wasn’t gone; his role he played in the family tree had just changed. Now, instead of being the strong one we leaned on, we would make ourselves strong by drawing on his memory, which continues to nourish our family tree.