Frank's, David's and my last day together

This short story about Frank isn't to mark an anniversary or anything – you all know his birthday was in November and he died in very early January. Something's just had me thinking about it a bit lately. Maybe because my own birthday's coming up I'm thinking about how time passes and how our relationships to those around us and those we've said goodbye to change as we age.

But while it might seem like the story of how he died, it's actually the story of his last trip. He'd been in Canterbury hospital for most of the preceding November and celebrated his 79th birthday there.

David had told me he was pretty sick and I should go over the Sydney in case the worst happened. I came for a week and a half or so but couldn't stay much longer, I had work and my own family to look after at home, and against all the odds the chest infection he'd been put in with had started to clear up.

He hadn't come completely good though and never would again. Somehow amongst it all he'd lost the ability to swallow and he never got it back again. It was pretty heartbreaking how many times he said he'd love a glass of water because of how dry and thirsty he was, and to this day my two beers every year are for him because he couldn't drink them towards the end and if he'd been able to have a beer I think he might have drifted off then and there, quite content. For the last month and a bit he was fed through a tube down his throat.

So I told him I had to go home again and he was perfectly okay with it. I kissed the top of his head, gave him a hug, said goodbye and left. It was about November 17th or something.

The next month was a bit distressing. He evidently didn't really remember or know what the tube was doing in him and he pulled it out a few times, maybe because he was disoriented because of it or he just had the shits with it being there. But every time he did they had to take him back to hospital because they weren't qualified to put it back in at the nursing home.

I got the impression he was disoriented or just grumpy about it because the few times it happened they had to call David (or me if they couldn't get hold of him) and have us explain to him that he had to have the tube in because he couldn't eat. The once or twice I got on the phone to explain it to him I told him it wasn't for long, just until he got better. I felt dreadfully guilty doing it because someone at hospital had already said it probably wouldn't improve.

It was also hard to get any sense out of him during those last few phone calls – he'd become harder to communicate with over the phone during the last year or 18 months anyway because he had a bad habit of interrupting you, and he now had a tube down his throat and might not have remembered why it was there, which was undoubtedly uncomfortable for him.

Plus I felt awful that I wasn't there and he had typical care facility staff who got paid $20 an hour and barely spoke English to try to comfort him if he was upset or disoriented about it. I was starting to think I should have stayed there or at least gone back to Sydney in case he was going through a lot of distress.

I still wish when he'd said he was putting himself into the home I'd told him to come and live with us in Perth – Wendy's parents built a very comfortable granny flat at our place and he would have really liked it. He probably never would have come because he couldn't get out of his own way, but still...

Anyway, when I called him on the evening of the 2nd to wish him a happy new year I just missed him – he'd died about half an hour before. And aside from the shock and numbness (and my abusing the poor Asian nurse guy who told me like he was telling me it was raining outside, then abusing the guy he gave me to, then finally getting some sympathy out of the senior nurse on duty), I also felt glad he didn't have to lie there thirsty with a tube down his throat anymore. He was somewhere else in the universe with a beer in his hand again.

After the funeral David and I got the urn with some of his ashes. Some of them are now in the basement level of St James Church alongside Jim, but it was David's idea to take the rest to his favourite places. I also bought two little glass jars so we could keep some of him each, and he's still up on the shelf of my front room/office along with the printout of the funeral service, his army medals and the plastic nameplate off the front of the urn ('Leslie Turney').

After that we took a long drive. First stop was Mum and Dad's house in Annandale. David was born there and I think Elaine and Les lived there with them before that while they helped them remodel it (but I might have that wrong), before they ever moved to Queensland. I can never remember the number or even the street because it was before my era. By the time I came along they'd moved to Gymea.

But we didn't tip Frank's ashes on some poor person's front garden bed, we put them on the little garden surrounding one of the trees on the outside footpath. By the look of the photo I have of the front of house and the corner of the tree on the street it's a red bottlebrush.

Next we went all the way down to Boomerang Golf Course. The area's called Madden's Plains, which I never new – I always thought it was Stanwell Park – but we put a bit more of him on a little garden surrounding two trees not far from the carpark. Bob would be happy knowing he was there and he'd probably be there a little bit in spirit too. They played a lot of strokes together there.

Then we drove back up Kurnell and tipped the last little bit of him into the water where he used to swim along the front at Silver Beach, where all the rock groynes are.

The funny thing is it wasn't a particularly sad day for me, up until then at least. It'd felt like we were taking him for a drive, showing him all his old haunts and favourite places, and that he was happy we were doing it together.

I took a picture of the rock wall we were standing on, the ash floating away from the rocks with the movement of the waves and the view out to the shark net and Hurstville/Kogarah on the horizon.

But that was the last bit of him we had with us. We each had a little bit in our jars, but while we were driving all over Sydney tipping him out at his favourite places I was telling him I hoped he had a good time there and while it wasn't exactly joyous, there was an air of celebration about it.

But when we tipped the last of the ashes in the water I seemed to suddenly realise that was the last of him I'd ever see or have with me. When I'd given him a hug in the hospital about two months before it had been the last time I'd ever talk to him or touch him. As he floated away into Botany Bay it felt like the last chance I had to say goodbye to him.

I don't spend a real lot of time with my brother – we have very different paths in life and anyone who knows us knows we're not very similar.

But we drove from the city to Annandale to Stanwell Tops (or whatever they want to call it) to Kurnell and back home) talking about families and telling stupid jokes and getting along fine, and I like to think if Frank was looking down on us from somewhere he'd have been overjoyed that we were there, not just because he did half the job bringing us into the world but because we were together because of him.