1
The phone rang at quarter to seven in the morning. Adam crawled out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen.
‘Hello?’
On the other end of the line he heard the distressed, crying voice of his mother.
‘Darling, it’s your father … I can’t wake him … he’s so cold and pale …’
She began to cry uncontrollably as Adam, who felt that he had to sit down straight away as his legs turned to jelly, instructed her to call an ambulance.
‘I’m coming straight over, mum. I’m leaving now.’
His head spun with concern as he drove across town to his parents’ home. Crawling from traffic light to traffic light, he became acutely aware that this drive, although the same as hundreds of others, was different. This was the first of a new kind of drive, where there wouldn’t be the same happiness waiting for him at the other end. He sensed the imminent arrival of a new aloneness and a new uncertainty about his future.
As he drove up to his parents’ house, he noticed that the front door was wide open.
He ran inside and up the stairs to the bedroom where he found his mother lying on top of his father’s body, crying hysterically. He attempted to console her and tried to pull her off his father, but to no avail. She clung to him like a barnacle to a rock.
Within a few minutes, the ambulance arrived. The ambulance men assessed the situation, helped Adam take his mother out of the bedroom and called the police.
‘It’s routine, sir,’ they told Adam. ‘Could you ask your mum to call the family doctor.
He will need to sign a certificate.’
The ambulance men left as the police arrived. The doctor arrived soon after and sat with Adam’s dad for nearly an hour. When he came out, he said,
‘He passed away very peacefully, in his sleep. His heart just stopped beating. I’m sorry.’
Adam’s mum commented between sobs,
‘He seemed so normal last night. He had a big dinner and enjoyed a delicious apple strudel for dessert. We watched a movie and went to bed and when I woke up this morning …’
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She couldn’t continue. She just began to cry. Adam put his arms around her and didn’t leave her side for the rest of the day.
The doctor called the morticians and they all had a cup of coffee while they waited for them to arrive.
Adam took a little time and looked at his father’s body through the bedroom door.
How peaceful he looked. There was not much indication that he wasn’t actually there, except for the pale colour of his face. Adam flashed over the years that he knew him and the happy times they had together. He remembered their trip to Noosa, way back in ’65.
He now thought that it was probably the best two weeks that he ever spent with him. He looked at his body lying there as though he was just asleep and thought to himself, ‘I can’t believe in this, this death thing. He must have taken off into a new reality, like Nancy used to say. He took off the old coat and let it fall away. And we’re all part of his old coat. Now he’ll go and grow a new one, like a palm grows a new leaf. His new body will be the inner lining and the rest of the coat will be his new universe, and his old universe, which he had departed from, will slowly decay and disintegrate, like a palm leaf that has fallen to the ground. That’s nothing to be sad about.’
The last thing he saw of his dad was a body bag being carried out of the house on a stretcher.
About a week later, they had to restrain his mother from attempting to jump into her husband’s grave as they lowered the coffin into the ground.
Two days after that, Adam made his usual early-morning call to his mum, however on this day there was no answer. As it turned out, she passed out of this life in her sleep as well, undoubtedly, Adam thought, ‘chasing after the love of her life’. He thought, ‘I wonder if he waited for her? I wonder if they travel through eternity together, like best mates, sometimes being siblings, sometimes lovers. Who knows? But the thought is wonderful and God knows, crazier things have happened.’
One thing was for sure, Adam just couldn’t conceive of them being dead, whatever that meant. He accepted that the fleshy construction of them was gone, but he couldn’t make himself feel that they were gone from all existence. They had just dissolved away leaving everything behind, including the memories of the lives they had just lived. He smiled as he thought, ‘and if they were to meet in a new time and a new place, as new people, they might meet as young strangers and fall in love again, perhaps thinking to themselves how strange it was that they felt so much like kindred spirits.’
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2
Adam’s parents passed away in August, 1998. Up to that point he had lived a simple, solitary life. He enjoyed his three and a half days a week of work and he had nearly completed three years of heavy, manual labour landscaping every square foot of yard around his house. He chose to do the whole project manually, using only a pick, shovel and wheelbarrow. He had decided to refrain from using any power tools of any kind. He wanted to feel the energy that it took to transform his property and he also wanted to strengthen his body in the process. The project included creating level areas in front and in the back of the house. This involved moving more than twenty tons of dirt from the back of the house to the front. He lay down over seventy square metres of beautiful cobblestone paving, completely encircling the house. He planted over twenty, large palm trees, strategically placed all around the house. He did all the digging manually. The average hole took him five hours to dig and it took him another three hours to plant the tree. He did all the work alone and derived great pleasure from the heavy, physical exertion.
When his parents died, Adam was forced to concentrate on sorting out their affairs.
As he was the only child, everything they owned became his. He became wealthy overnight. As a result of that, he became aware of the fact that he would not need to work for money for much longer. He finished all the landscaping work by the beginning of 1999
and put the house and the surgery on the market that autumn. They both sold within the month. The house sold for a record price for Stanwell Park, making a rich man even richer.
Part of his inheritance included a number of quality rental properties, all situated near the centre of Sydney. They were always rented and were collecting a comfortable income for him.
After everything was sold, he bought some more properties in the inner Eastern Suburbs and moved into a small, two-bedroom unit in Double Bay while he figured out the next move in his life.
During this time, he took a few rides on the Watson’s Bay ferry and enjoyed some long conversations with Bob, washed down with some of the best coffee he’d ever tasted.
‘I’ve got a couple of weeks off next February, Adam. I’m booked into a real nice caravan park in Noosa. It’s right on the river at Munna Point. Why don’t you meet me up there and we can do some fishing together. What do you say?’
‘It’s been a while since I’ve been to Noosa, more than ten years.’
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‘Oh, it’s changed, mate, you won’t recognise the place, but it’s still a picture.’
Adam booked himself a holiday unit for a month. He stayed right on the main beach, right in the middle of Hastings Street. During the two weeks that Bob was there, he spent many happy hours in his company. He also bought himself a new surfboard on that trip.
The salesman in the surf shop convinced him to buy a nine-foot Mal. He said that it would be perfect for the summer waves on the points.
His first attempts at riding his new surfboard took him back to his early days with Liberty. He remembered his clumsy attempts at surfing with her and how she helped and inspired him. It was similar now, but not quite as difficult. The new surfboard was stable and easy to ride in the perfect, walling waves of Noosa. He spent nearly all his time surfing in Teatree Bay. He loved that place. He remembered the many long days he spent there with his beautiful Libby. Ten years had passed since she disappeared, yet it felt like yesterday. The memories all came flooding back. He still felt her presence in his heart in the evenings, especially when he sat on the same rock that he sat on with her, at National Park. And as he watched the clean barrels break along the point, he let his emotions run free and allowed himself to cry, for a while, for the happiness that he had lost.
Another thing began to happen to him as he surfed in the crescent bay of Teatree. It was the emergence of a new feeling within him, within his heart. As he sat on his surfboard, in the middle of the bay, admiring the beauty of the natural setting, he began to feel that a mother, a huge mother, was embracing him. It was weird, but it felt so real.
She was invisible and her arms were as big as the whole bay. He felt her hug him and welcome him there, and he thought that he could hear her speak to him.
‘You are my child and I have set this place aside for you. Come, come and live here, right here within my embrace where I can love and nurture you.’
The memory of that feeling stayed with him for the rest of his days and he felt it every time he entered the water of those beautiful bays. Finally, it was that experience that convinced him to move to Noosa and seriously focus his life into surfing her magnificent points.
…….
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