I still think that, sometimes, even though I know full well I am exemplifying the just-world fallacy, which is the erroneous belief that the world is fair. We are socialized to think that. It makes the world feel more predictable if we believe good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished. The problem is that we then subconsciously believe people who suffer must deserve it. It’s what allows us to look away, to turn the television off. People sometimes say that everything happens for a reason. No. No, it does not. There was no reason for these terrible things to happen together. No reason at all. They just did.
There was a big funeral in Hobart for Jill and Bert. I did not attend. It was the day after Ned’s funeral and I was still in Sydney with Hazel and Ned’s brother, Tony.
Jill and Bert’s middle daughter, the one they called “our smart one” because she was a lawyer, wrote a lovely sympathy card saying Ned had meant the world to her parents. I wrote and said Jill and Bert talked about her and her siblings and their new grandchild all the time, which was certainly true; sometimes we had to quite forcibly change the subject.
I went home after a week. I sold the house. I did an enormous clean-out and gave away all of Ned’s clothes to a local charity shop, as well as my first wedding dress, which I had pointlessly been keeping all these years. (For my second wedding, the one that mattered, the one to Ned, I just wore a nice blue sheath dress, which I wore to death and eventually threw away.)
I bought this house in Battery Point, sight unseen, from a buyer keen on a fast sale, and then I thought: Right. Let’s get this grief thing done. You’ve done it before. Do it again.
But experience makes no difference; you cannot project-manage grief.
I remembered how Mum and Grandma and Auntie Pat took care of me when I lost Jack. I took myself for long walks. I ran myself baths. Sometimes I ran a bath, sighed, and then pulled out the plug without getting in. I couldn’t rub my own back, so I booked myself in for a massage, but goodness, that was a mistake. I sobbed so hard I thought I’d be sick. So embarrassing. They didn’t want me to pay, but I insisted.
I remembered how Number 96 had been such a good distraction so I tried to find a new series, but it made me miss Ned too much. We loved so many series. “I wonder how Jackie is doing?” said Ned once, and I thought, Who do we know called Jackie? He meant Nurse Jackie.
I woke up crying, I went to bed crying, I cleaned my teeth crying. There were some days when the pain was so physical, I felt like I was being squeezed to death in some kind of medieval torture device. Then there were some days, normally after a big crying day, when I felt nothing at all, like I was fading slowly away.
Ivy kept calling from America, but I didn’t return her calls. She didn’t give up. She kept leaving messages, which was nice of her.
I know I didn’t drink enough water during this time and I take responsibility for that.
—
It is a strange experience leaving on holiday with your husband and returning with his ashes in a Styrofoam box. I didn’t pay for the fancy gold urn. I didn’t see the point. The plan was to scatter the ashes somewhere meaningful, but I couldn’t think of the right place. We had led such nomadic lives. Then Tony emailed and suggested a scenic lookout on the New South Wales south coast near the caravan park where he and Ned used to stay as children on summer holidays. I know Ned had (relatively) fond memories of those holidays. (He said he was often bored out of his mind, but Ned was easily bored.) So I agreed to fly to Sydney with the ashes and we set a date after Easter.
Hazel wanted me to spend Easter with them, but I said no thank you. I had plenty to do. When someone dies there is a mountain of paperwork. I was ruthless with it. “My husband has died,” I said coldly to various people in call centers, and I cut them right off when they offered condolences. “This is what I need you to do.”
However, I had great difficulty canceling Ned’s gym membership. They kept insisting the member needed to personally come into the gym. That was their “procedure.” When I patiently explained why this was literally impossible, they would promise to “look into it” and “get back to me,” but they never did, and they continued to charge membership fees to our credit card, and I got testier and testier each time I called and had to go through the whole rigmarole again.
The day before the flight I talked to yet another cheerful dimwit. “The member needs to come in personally to cancel their membership,” he said. “It’s right there in the terms and conditions.”
I lost patience. I grabbed the Styrofoam box. I drove to the gym, muttering like a madwoman the whole way.
“Here he is!” I shouted, and I slammed the box on the counter.
“I beg your pardon?” said the young receptionist.
I’m ashamed to say I shook the Styrofoam box in her face. “He’s here to cancel his membership! As per procedure!”
She peered at the box and then she saw the small gold plaque on the lid: Edward Patrick Lockwood.
“Wait, is that Ned?” she said, and she lost all color in her face. “You don’t mean Ned Lockwood died?”
“Yes!” I shouted. “That’s what I’ve been telling you people for weeks on end! He died! So he doesn’t need his goddamned gym membership anymore!”
Isn’t that dreadful? The swearing, I mean. My grandfather would be rolling in his grave.
She burst into tears. Then an overly muscled young man came over to see what was going on and when he found out about Ned, he cried! I thought, For goodness’ sake.
It turned out nearly everyone at the gym that day knew and loved Ned. He’d been helping the muscly guy with his math subjects for his university degree. The people I had been speaking to on the phone had all been at a central call center and had nothing to do with this local branch where Ned was a beloved member.
Anyhow, they canceled his membership, so at least I could check that off my list.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I left the ashes on the passenger seat.
“You stay there,” I said.
I went into the grocery store and filled my basket, but then, when I was at the checkout, I realized I had bought pistachios. I do not like pistachios. I only ever bought them for Ned.
“Oh,” I said. “I don’t need those. Sorry.”
The young girl sighed and huffed and reversed the transaction, as if it were the biggest inconvenience of her short life to date. She tossed the pistachios into a basket at her feet in an unnecessarily aggressive manner.
The next item on the counter was Monte Carlo biscuits, and I thought of the day Bert bit through both layers and said, “I like to live dangerously, Cherry,” and I recalled that was the same day Jill and I tried to do the sit-to-stand longevity test.
“Guess we’re dying young,” said Jill.
“Too late for that,” said Bert, and Jill threw a cushion at him, which he caught one-handed.
“Forget it,” I said to the checkout girl.
She held up the biscuits. “You changed your mind on these too?”
“Just—forget it.”
I left the grocery store. I ate nothing that night and I think it’s possible I didn’t drink any water at all, except perhaps when I cleaned my teeth, which I definitely did. I continue to clean my teeth each time my world crashes to pieces.
The next day I took a taxi to the airport.
