A Clean, Empty House

The man pointed at me, not in an unfriendly way, as I approached the bar of the country pub near my home.

“You were at my aunt’s funeral,” he said.

I had taken off my tie and suit jacket but I still looked like an undertaker’s assistant in my long-sleeved white shirt, grey trousers and polished black shoes. In mid-summer, the full suit was uncomfortably hot; it was an invitation to dehydration.

“I was, I was working,” I said. “And we both had the same good idea: a beer to cool down in this heat.”

He too had taken off his tie, and untucked his shirt for good measure. He was near my age, I guessed, mid-fifties, and he was carrying probably twenty kilos around his chest and belly that it would be healthier to lose. His round face was red, his grey hair was very close-cropped, lending him a slightly aggressive look. He seemed a little steamed up.

I ordered a schooner and took it to sit near him. To stay aloof in a nearly empty bar would have been rude.

“I was standing by when you signed the guest book but I don’t recall your name,” I said after introducing myself.

“Craig,” he said, and we shook hands. “Aunty Mary was my mum’s sister. She was the last of the siblings. Mum, Uncle Bill, Aunty Mary: they’re all gone now.”

“The service seemed to go well,” I said. “She was obviously a much-loved lady from what was said in the eulogy.”

I’d taken a seat, with my boss, at the back of the crematorium’s chapel. We had roles before, at the start and at the close of the service but a competent civil celebrant took charge of most of what happened in the chapel. The deceased woman’s two adult children, smartly dressed and obviously well-educated, took turns to read lengthy paragraphs from a carefully composed summary of their mother’s life, achievements, interests, character and loving commitment to her family and neighbours.

“What was said was okay; it was what wasn’t said that upset me,” Craig replied in a terse tone that immediately made me wary. It wasn’t just the heat and humidity that had him steamed up. And wherever the rest of the family had gathered after the funeral, he wasn’t there. I’d need to be careful what I said—and maybe not stay beyond one beer, because possibly he’d already had three or four.

“Ah,” I said, but I offered nothing more. I thought of the visual eulogy; it conformed to the common style: a slide-show of photographs of the deceased from childhood through to courtship and marriage, children and family life, then to retirement, travel, widowhood and the final years in a nursing home. Nothing unusual there. And I couldn’t recall anybody being particularly upset beyond the normal stifled sobs and the dabbing of noses and eyes with tissues.

Craig turned to face me, as if to challenge me. “What’s wrong with at least mentioning that Aunty Mary went to Mass three times a week, played organ at the Saturday Vigil, and even in the nursing home never missed a day of obligation?”

It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I’d learned that people at funerals got distressed or angry or sometimes amused at the oddest things. “That’s hardly a skeleton best left in the closet,” I said.

“I’m not a practising Catholic, but I still think her faith and beliefs should’ve at least been mentioned.”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe it was a time thing. You can’t include everything in a eulogy.”

“Nah. I’ll bet my balls it was deliberate. Dom and Christine are anti-religion; they would’ve left it out on purpose, their own mother’s funeral. And I bet Aunty Mary would’ve wanted a funeral Mass and to be buried rather than cremated.”

I wasn’t involved in any of the discussions with the family about the arrangements so I couldn’t comment on how or why the decisions had been made. I knew his aunt had died suddenly. I also knew many people died without discussing the details of their final wishes with their family.

“What was said was very complimentary so at least the quality of her character and the genuineness of her love came across,” I ventured.

He turned back to face the bar. “Hmph.” He had his story and he was going to stick to it.

And, possibly, he was right. I remembered when I lived in an even smaller country town and my neighbour for most of the ten years I was there was an elderly widow, Mrs Dawes. She had been the local postmistress for decades and was a popular figure in the area. When she died, aged eighty-eight, after a brief illness, I was sure her funeral service would be held in nearby Saint Jude’s Anglican church where she had been a regular for all the years I had known her. But her only child, her daughter, arranged a service at the crematorium—sixty kilometres away—conducted by a civil celebrant. I attended: Mrs Dawes was a great neighbour who brought me soups and casseroles whenever I had a cold or the flu, and she always remembered my birthday with a specially-made fruit-cake. I sat next to the minister and his wife from Saint Jude’s, who had no role in the service but still attended the funeral of a long-term parishioner. Sitting next to them made me notice that there was no mention at all of Mrs Dawes’s church connection.

Afterwards, I spoke with the minister about the surprising—even odd, it seemed to me—choice of a civil celebrant and crematorium chapel service. He said, and I noticed his voice was crisp with the effort of self-restraint, that when he went to the house to meet Mrs Dawes’s daughter to offer his condolences and his church for the funeral, she thanked him but told him that neither he nor his church would be required. The meeting was over in two minutes.

“I was sort of sent packing,” he said. “It was made plain I was not welcome for some reason.”

As he spoke his wife stroked his forearm in a consoling and perhaps a settling manner. His usual cheerful smile was noticeably absent. The excision of the faith of one of his parishioners from her own funeral service must have rankled him.

A week later, a lengthy obituary of Mrs Dawes, written by her daughter, appeared in the local newspaper. It was excellent. I learned Mrs Dawes had been a WAAF, and her husband a Mosquito pathfinder pilot, in the Second World War; that they had had a son who died aged fifteen in a farm accident; that on their grazing property they had pioneered the use of a crop-duster to sow and fertilise pasture-improving clover varieties in hilly areas, and that they had been the first in the district to build contour-banks across their paddocks to minimise erosion and conserve moisture. But there was nothing about her piety or faith. It was as if her daughter was offended—or embarrassed—by what seemed to me to be a core part of her mother’s life. I imagined the minister, when he read the obituary, gave a pew a good kicking, wishing it was the daughter’s backside.

Over the next month Mrs Dawes’s house was emptied and cleaned and made ready to sell, and when I saw the “For Sale” sale I was despondent because it was very unlikely I’d get a neighbour as kind as she had been. I didn’t; a few weeks later my new neighbour moved in. He was a pleasant enough bloke if I ignored his Sunday morning hard-rock broadcasts and the parade of shrieking, tattooed girlfriends passing through. He wasn’t a patch on Mrs Dawes.

Craig had finished his beer. “You having another?” he said, and gestured toward my nearly empty glass.

“No, thanks. I’m feeling cooler now so I might move on. Where are you heading?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t about to tackle a long drive home.

“I’m not going to say anything to the family. There’s no point—the funeral’s over.”

He must have thought I was wondering if he was going to give his cousins an ear-bashing.

“Yeah, that might be best. Anyway, safe travels, Craig.”

I drove home. When I stopped at the lights at the corner of my street and the main road, I noticed that the adjacent Uniting church—a modest red-brick building with a steeply-pitched roof—finally had “Sold!” emblazoned across the real estate agent’s sign. The local gossip was that a flash cafe was coming. My neighbours would be pleased: an empty building attracted vandals, and another eatery was always welcome.

Gary Furnell, who lives in rural New South Wales, is a frequent contributor of prose fiction and non-fiction. His most recent story was “Coffee with Augustine”, in the June issue.