I don't know who they are talking about. Am I at the right funeral? There's a box up the front and a couple of people I know in the crowd but who the hell are they talking about?
A great friend! Always there when you needed a shoulder to cry on! Generous beyond his means! Reliable and trustworthy!
Now I know I'm at the wrong bloody funeral!
He was a good bloke that had a great sense of humour! Always a joke to tell! The sort of man who was respected by his peers and someone you could depend on!
I can't breathe. I feel like the room is closing in.
Would his son like to say a few words? Who me? Am I this person's son? I don't know who the hell you people are talking about. I feel like an illegal alien that stowed away on some ship and I've been discovered.
My Mother is gently squeezing my knee and nodding her head in the direction of the pulpit thing beyond the coffin. I can't breathe. Its hot. And fucken uncomfortable.
They're all looking at me hopefully. Hopeful that I will get up and say, "He was a good father. He looked after me. He was my best mate." He wasn't.
He was a neglectful, deadbeat dad! A fucken alcoholic! A philandering whore of a man who thought more about his penis than his own child!!

Theres part of me that wants to get up and say a few words. An angry, bitter child in pain screams for recognition.
'Let me say a few fucken words! Let me tell you what sort of a shithead lies in this fucken coffin! Please! You just move this body up to the pulpit and I will take care of the rest!'
I can't move. Won't let the child have its say. Its too angry. Even I'm scared of it. They'll put me away if I say what I want to.

My more demure self is trying to get some control. It's respectful of the circumstances.
'I would love to say a few words about your dear departed friend but I don't have any idea of who the man you're talking about, is.'
'All I can say is if this is the man who filled the space intended for my father then, to me, he was like a ghost. A phantom. He had no interest in me. I eventually had no interest in him. I was completely neglected by him. He didn't pay his child support for me, that at the time, was the princely sum of five dollars a week. Was never reliable. I couldn't trust his word because he never fulfilled his promises to me or my mother.'
'He was a two timing, lying, unfaithful husband and a lousy father. That's who your mate was!' God, even my demure self is pissed off.
'He used to leave me outside the pub while all of you were inside having a great time. Sometimes without any money for food. One time for four and a half hours. Then he would drive home drunk with me in the car. If he had taken the time to think of me, he would dump me at the other end of the island while he drank or had sex with one of any number of women he was fucking on the island.'
That's who your mate was.
He was embarrassed he had a girlie little boy as a son. Amazingly, I would have been less girlie if he had actually spent some time with me. My Stepfather taught me that. He was my DAD. Not this lump in the coffin.
As soon as I actually had a male role model, my campness waned. I was still camp but I became more comfortable about being a boy. I went from thinking I needed to become a woman to thinking I just needed others like myself.
I never got to tell him I was gay, the man in the coffin. Really, it was always bloody obvious that I was a complete and utter poof. There was no need to confirm the inevitable. By the time I had worked it out for myself, I wasn't speaking to him.

"I can't, I'm too emotional," I lie. They're all nodding in agreement.
"Ok," my Mother whispers as she squeezes my knee again; with more delicacy this time.
I can't wait for this ordeal to be over. I overhear one of his friends, a woman who had spoken so kindly about him, say to her friend, "His son is such a beautiful young man." She has tears in her eyes and in her voice.
All I can think are mean thoughts. 'Did he root you too?', 'Alcoholic Bitch!'
My wounds are deep and sore and gangrenous. They hurt in an old, aching, almost numbingly painful way.
My heart, left in the cold, numb for so long had seemed to my mind like it was healed. Over it. Moved on. But no. The ice it's incased in, is made up of tears cried for over fifteen years and pain built up like plaque so thick, it's concrete.
Nothing funny in this tragedy, just a wasted opportunity.
'So, he was a good man was he? What makes a good man? I never knew the good man that these people have come to mourn.'


"Your dad was a bloody idiot!" My Mother has just pronounced this out of the blue.
We are walking to the Ferry Wharf on Waiheke Island. I am about to return to my life in Australia after three months of looking after my parents; specifically my mother. She has Alzheimer's disease.
Getting her this far has been incredibly stressful. Only two hours before, we were screaming at each other, uncontrollably, at the top of our lungs; and we're a loud family.
Her, in stubbornly unaware self righteousness; me, with all my maternal issues having come vomiting out of my soul. I thought we had sorted those out but I am obviously still angry.
Angry at her, for her legal and financial mismanagement that has left my siblings and I in the mess that we are in. Angry at life for making me have to look after her when I can barely look after myself. Angry at myself for getting angry at her when I know perfectly well, its the disease that's talking. Angry at god for taking the Mother I love away in the sickest way possible, after all the work we had done to build a great relationship. Angry at the loss of one of my best friends, who some days can't even remember my name.
The argument has long since been forgotten by her; the disease's one redeeming point. I'm still embarrassed by it so am trying to forget it. A couple of my aunts were witness to our stupid, irrational ranting. Really painfully embarrassing, and I still feel ghastly.
My mother in the midst of it asking me in a most un-Alzheimer's kind of way, "So its alright to speak to me in such a disrespectful way, in front of my sister and my friend? Did I bring up my children to disrespect and embarrass me?" I cried as I whimpered, "No" and, "I'm sorry" and we both burst into tears and hugged each other tight like we were both holding our breath, and it was over.

We made up and sent my aunts off on an earlier boat. We have had a lovely lunch, cappucino's and cakes in her favourite cafe on the island. We are now walking along the footpath, every now and then, holding hands. She's like a three year old, every now and then getting distracted by things along the way. The bird. The tree. The glamourous house on the hill.
"Why do you think Bob was a bloody idiot, Mum?" Her pronouncement has come as a surprise because in the past she's been very diplomatic about him and his faults. Her diplomacy used to annoy me because it was like she was on his side. That whatever he did could be excused by his dreadful upbringing. "He loves you in his own way, you know. His mother put him in a home when he was four. He was a good man, a good father that lost his way." Blah, blah, blah, Bah!

"What?"
"Why do you think Bob was a bloody idiot, Mum?"
"Oh... Because he missed out on knowing you! Bloody fool! Didn't know what he had right in front of him. He's a bloody idiot to miss out on getting to know you!"
My tears are welling up. I feel embarrassed and touched and sad and joyous. My Mum was never really one to show her pride.
"But what about our fight before? That wasn't so wonderful was it?"
"That doesn't matter, you're a wonderful son for looking after Jim and I. I'm very proud of you, you know. I'm going to miss you son."
I'm in tears as I hug her to my side; she's completely distracted by something else again. I think she's gone but her hand squeezes mine lovingly.
Then her eyes are on the glamourous house again, like she's three, "Gosh, isn't that lovely! Wouldn't mind living up there, ay, son?"
"Yeah, one day, ay, Mum."
"Yeah, one day."