I wrote this story after a friend told me about a funeral she had recently attended. It bears testament to the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction... though I have added a healthy helping of fiction!
The wall was splattered with brain matter, skull fragments, hair and blood, like an aura around where his head should have been. The religious symbolism was in stark contrast to the way he had lived his life.
Dave was a good mate of mine. I’d met him while barmaiding at The North Australian. He was charismatic and fun. During that year after I split from my husband we became very close. I’d needed to let my hair down and he was a party animal. We didn’t sleep together at first; we were just mates. We played pool, drank Jack Daniels and smoked cones.
The night he introduced me to hash he got me pregnant. The bastard was fertile as well as virile. I wasn’t going to be another woman bearing an illegitimate Zamel child so we agreed we were better as friends than lovers and I got rid of the baby.
That was 15 years ago. I had long ago got my act together and moved on. Now Dave had blown his brains all over the bedroom wall and I couldn’t understand why. I wondered whether he was in debt. But he earned well, working mines all over Australia. He was a womaniser, so perhaps some jealous husband had threatened him with an even worse fate. But Dave had squared up to more than a few jealous exes in his time. It wasn’t until the funeral that I found out he’d been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and was destined for an unpleasant and possibly protracted death. I probably would have blown my brains out too.
Dave’s daughter, Aimee, had decided that instead of the funeral being a formal service, people who loved Dave should just get up and say something about him. Given Dave’s colourful life, I thought such an ad hoc arrangement risky. At least she didn’t invite the God-botherers to play their part. That would have been the ultimate hypocrisy. She asked me to present Dave’s eulogy. I could easily do that. I loved the man. I had loved him almost from the time we met and I believe I always will. When we entered the funeral parlour I counted three other of Dave’s exes that I knew of.
Aimee put together a presentation of pictures from when he played fullback for Brothers, of him and Laura (the only woman he ever actually married) and the kids, Aimee, Cameron and Daniel, and the grandkids. She set the slide show to “Slippin’ Away”. This had been Dave’s and my karaoke song. When we were at The North Australian the kids always asked us to sing it for them and we always obliged. When we were off our faces we thought we were Sonny and Cher. I cried. I couldn’t help myself.
However, as the ‘service’ progressed it became more bizarre. I’d met Dave’s latest love when I arrived the day before the funeral. Her name was Suzanne. She was the one who had found him. She seemed lovely and I thought she didn’t deserve that.
Suzanne was just about to get up to speak of Dave when another woman rose to the podium. I looked at Aimee and she rolled her eyes. Laura looked puzzled. Suzanne shrugged and stayed put. Then it started. She described explicitly and graphically the sex that she and Dave had enjoyed. She told how his exploring tongue and dextrous fingers always brought her to multiple orgasms. They were soul mates who had found they could escape the stresses of daily life through their mutual physical attraction.
I looked at Aimee. She had bowed her head with her hand over her eyes. Her children, now well into their teens, looked agog at the woman speaking so candidly about their Grandfather. Cam had his hand over his mouth looking like he was stifling a laugh. Suzanne had gone pale. She concentrated on her tissue, hands in lap, twirling it around her fingers looking like she was holding back a torrent. It was almost like Faulty Towers where John Cleese’s behaviour is so inappropriate it is embarrassing to watch. Most of the women in the room were moving uncomfortably in their seats. Though, I must say, if half what she said was true, Dave hadn’t lost his touch. Nor, it would seem, his voracious appetite.
When she finally finished, between the sobs of the Doyen of Fellatio, I could hear stifled sniggers from the back of the room. Dave’s workmates had enjoyed the show. I guess he had earned some posthumous brownie points with the boys.
Suzanne didn’t bother to say her piece. I guess she didn’t think there was much more to say. So, I got up and rounded out the ‘ceremony’ by saying what a great mate Dave had been to me and what a wonderful person he was. I covered all the usual platitudes, but I meant every word I said. The coffin was wheeled into the furnace to the accompaniment of the Don Williams song “You’re my best friend”. It was Dave’s favourite song and I cried again.
With the debacle of the funeral over we moved on to the wake. Naturally, it was held at The North Australian. The North Oz, as it was commonly known, was a pub that on Friday nights had rocked with loud live music in the public bar. It was so loud and crowded that we barmaids used to lip-read the drink orders. When I wasn’t serving drinks I was on the other side of the bar with Dave. It had been our stomping ground for that year of partying.
I had long since given up drinking and wasn’t really in the mood for a bunch of drunken miners mourning their dead mate, but I felt obliged to stay and there were a few old acquaintances to catch up with. One of the Friday night strippers turned on a free show in Dave’s honour. She put on a good show, but thankfully, in good taste, didn’t do all the Friday night moves.
As she performed I remembered a Friday night years earlier when one of the titty girls was as flat as a board. She was a really nice lady and had a great smile, but I marvelled that a woman with no breasts could become a titty girl. She had asked Dave for five dollars for the junior rugby league. He had said he would give it to her if she put her top back on. I guess it was also a bit beyond Dave’s reckoning how a woman with no boobs becomes a titty girl.
I stayed long enough at the wake to be polite and then headed back to my parents’ place. I felt sad and empty and wished my new husband was there with me, and then I flew home the next day, leaving Dave and The North Oz behind yet again.
At the funeral I had asked Aimee where Danny was. Daniel was Dave’s youngest son. His mum was a Torres Strait Islander who had a taste for grog and gambling. Danny had had an extraordinary upbringing oscillating between his large extended Islander family and his white siblings depending on his mother’s mood. Over the years he had picked up the worst of his parents’ habits. I guess he was on a bender and couldn’t make it to the funeral. I was pleased he hadn’t come.
The West Australian daughter wasn’t there either. Dave had found out about her when a woman he had a fling with claimed maintenance payments some years after she returned to the west. I don’t think Dave ever met his second daughter and I wondered whether she even knew her dad was dead.
Aimee had told me that near Dave’s body they had found an unwitnessed will leaving half of everything to Suzanne and the rest to Aimee and Cam. I remember thinking that this could get messy and wondered what could be in his duly witnessed will. I found out a few months later when I received a request from Dave’s solicitor for a statutory declaration attesting to the fact that I had attended his funeral. Apparently Dave had bequeathed his entire estate in equal measure to every person who attended his funeral. I was stunned, and sickened.
I wondered about Suzanne. She had been through so much for him and I thought she deserved better than that. Even the kids should have had their share. I said as much in response to the solicitor’s request and rang Aimee to find out what was going on. Apparently, a few years earlier there had been a family disagreement regarding some woman Dave had gotten himself involved with. So Dave had drafted a new will cutting out everyone who didn’t attend his funeral. He and Aimee and Cam had long made up and the woman, discovering that big-spending Dave didn’t have as much money as she thought, left for easier pickings. But he had overlooked rewriting his will. In the meantime, Suzanne had come onto the scene and had been his constant companion for the three years before his death, except of course, when he was copulating with his paramour.
The kids and Suzanne had contested the will. Danny had also sniffed out the chance of some cash so he too had launched his own bid for the Zamel family fortune. However, Dave had left some big bills and most of what was left went on solicitor’s fees.
A year after Dave’s funeral I received a cheque for $259.76 being my 104th share of the estate of David Christopher John Paul Zamel. I toyed with the idea of signing the cheque over to Suzanne, but that would have been a futile gesture. I heard the boys were all putting theirs on the bar at The North Oz in Dave’s honour. I couldn’t stand reliving the wake again and The North Oz was once again firmly behind me.
Instead, I had been eyeing off a red nappa leather laptop bag to match the portfolio I used for work. I put my inheritance, along with another $40.23 towards the purchase of the laptop bag. Inside I put a photo of Dave. Now it too is a bit rough around the edges, but I still love it.
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