Unmarked grave for Joan Kathleen O'Brien, East Lismore Cemetery

I went in search today of details about the still-born child my mum and dad had back in 1953. As with many things in my family, it wasn’t something that was talked about. Indeed, when I mentioned it to one of my older sisters, and showed her the record from the online historical indexes of the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, she seemed genuinely surprised.

Although unnamed on the BDM records, a visit to the Lismore Lawn Cemetery revealed she was buried on July 10, 1953 and that her name was Joan Kathleen O’Brien (named after an aunt). With a map in hand, I set off to the East Lismore Cemetery to find her, which I eventually did in an unmarked grave in the midst of another of other infant deaths. Although she doesn’t have a headstone, there’s a lovely tree overlooking her grave.

Grave for James O'Brien and Lena Noonan at East Lismore Cemetery

She’s also buried not far from my dad’s parents, James and Lena who died in 1944 and 1953, respectively. I was pleased to discover their previously unmarked grave also now had a heastone. I assume it must have been erected by the children/grandchildren of their son Matthew (known as Robert or Bob), who also now has a headstone. Perhaps it’s time for one for little Joan too?

Aside from a visit to my aunt – the one little Joan was named after – it was a day back at work for me. Although I’ve been doing lots of work over the last few days via the mobile and the netbook, I needed to go in today to sign a few things, make a few longer calls and so on.

And then tonight I went to the Tropical Fruits Film Festival at the Star Court Theatre. The Star Court was the cinema I used to go to most weeks as a child. Although a few things have changed, it remains relatively unchanged from the early to mid 80s renovation that occured. It was funny to hear the Film Festival spokesperson refer to it as an “old cinema”, as it seemed still modern in comparison with what I remembered as a child.

The films? There were a couple of good short films. My favourites were “Last Call” (about a bloke whose relationship with Mark failed because of his alcohol problem, who wants to get back with him, but who realises things have changed), “Oscars First Kiss” (about a male uni student chatting up a female class mate on a tram, but who ends up with an unexpected same-sex first kiss), and “Hens and Chicks” (about a lesbian couple with an eight year old daughter who need to have “the conversation”). All three were very enjoyable.

Less enjoyable was the longer featured called “Flow Affair”. It’s a fascinating story about “flagging” in the gay and lesbian communities of New York. “Flagging” is an art-form which involves a lot of twirling flags around in dance clubs, pride parades and so on. It’s quite an interesting story. It’s such a shame it was told so badly with almost no narrative evident. The film needed a damn good editor to chop at least 30 minutes out of it and to give it some structure, IMHO. It’s not enough to have a series of vignettes where a group of people keep saying over and over again little more than, “I like flagging. It makes me feel great”. Boring.

The main feature was a film from Romania called “Trip” about a group of twenty-somethings living in a share house of sorts who take drugs, have sex, and generally hang out in a pretty wild post-communist kinda way. It’s a pretty out there film, but I enjoyed it very much.

On the way home I called in to The Civic for a post film drink. It was pretty amusing to see a pretty average working class bar in my home town overtaken by the Sydney and Brisbane gays who’ve arrived for tomorrow night’s New Years Eve Party.

“You planning to have a bet”?, the barmaid asked me as she collected up the TAB information cards. “I think you’re safe to put them away”, I told her with a smile.

Waif-like teenage James

Although I was a reasonably fat as a baby and I’m reasonably fat right now, there was a time from about 1980 to 1990 when I was actually quite thin. In fact, you might say I was waif-like in this particular photograph taken in about 1982. Any wonder my mum kept trying to feed me :)

I discovered this photograph which I’d long forgotten while going through some family albums with my sister tonight. The imperative for this particular bout of nostalgic activity was my purchase for her of an electronic photo frame for Christmas. I pre-loaded for her about 50 older and more recent family photographs, mindful that she had a lot of photographs I don’t have copy of. The quid pro quo was that I got copies of lots of photographs, and she got someone to load some more photographs into the frame.

We had a pretty good production line going on. My sister went through the albums identifying suitable photographs for scanning and carefully removing them from the albums, I scanned them and did the appropriate photo-shop work, and my nephew replaced the photographs in the albums. It took us maybe a couple of hours to scan and edit about a hundred photographs. Along the way there was a lot of laughter.

Here’s a couple of favourites from tonight’s activities First a photograph of my dad taken in about 1980 I think. As we lived on the outskirts of town, we often had wildlife come into the backyard. Mostly it was cattle from the neighbouring property… or snakes… but on this occasion it was a kangaroo or a wallaby (I can’t tell from the photograph).

My dad and the marsupial

And I love this one taken at my sister’s wedding in 1968 featuring my dad, my mum and my granny. It’s odd to think I’ll be the same age next year as my mum was in this photograph. Dad looks like me may have enjoyed a drink or two. Granny looks grumpy…

Dad, mum and granny at a family wedding

And then all of a sudden she asked me if I had Skype.

It was not the kind of conversation I expected to have with her. As I’ve mentioned previously, in my family I’ve tended to be the “tech guy”.

About ten years ago when UHF television was introduced on the North Coast, I spent at least two days of my Christmas holiday on the rooftops of various family members doing antenna installations. And then about two years ago, when digital set-top boxes became all the rage, at least half a dozen of them sat in cardboard boxes until I was home for Christmas and able to do the very basic installations. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it, and in the midst of a family of carpenters, cooks, sewers, plumbers and mechanics, it’s good to know I have an important role: “the tech guy”.

When I accidentally discovered Skype HQ in Stockholm in March this year

But tonight, as we chatted, Pat told me her daughter had recently bought her a laptop, and although she doesn’t know how to connect to the internet yet, she’s seen Skype work and would like to try it out with me.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It seems my monopoly on all things technical might be coming to an end.

If family members can now connect to the internet and chat to me on Skype, what role will I have this summer when I go home for Christmas? I can’t just sit around and do nothing. Well, actually for much of summer, I’ll be working from our office on the North Coast. But in between, what will I do?

I’ve booked a ticket for Tropical Fruits NYE, but that’s just one day. I’ll go out for lunch and dinner with friends, of course. But what will I do in the meantime, if my family no longer has need for “the tech guy”? I’m feeling slightly redundant to my own existence :(

Anyway, Pat and I are planning a Skype conversation for Saturday afternoon which, I guess, means I need to tidy up the lounge room before then.

PS. I tried out the re-opened Charcoal Chicken Shop tonight. As I expected, it’s a little more “upmarket” these days, specialising in Portuguese Chicken – the flattened type with chili sauce – which was very, very, tasty.

Me and my dad, probably some time in 1966.

You know how sometimes you wake up in the middle of a bad dream? Well, this morning I woke up in the middle of a good dream. It would have been nice to go back to sleep and continue the dream, though of course that wasn’t possible. It was a dream about my dad.

I was 16 (twenty-eight yeas ago) when he died from an awful condition called Multiple Myeloma (a plasma cell cancer). With the passing of time, sometimes it’s hard to remember some things about both mum and dad. And yet this morning’s dream was incredibly vivid.

Oddly enough, it had a Swedish connection. Yes, really. In the dream my dad and I were travelling in a car in the countryside. He was driving and I was using my mobile phone to take some video of us together to send back to my mum.

Minutes later we were climbing a snow-capped mountain in Sweden, and somehow we were strong enough to be dragging the car behind us.

It was an obviously very modern dream. And yet I as had the dream, I could almost feel my dad next to me. He was happy and healthy – pre-cancer – and we were having a wonderful time together.

The last time I had such a vivid dream about my dad was several days after he died. Both my sister and I had similar dreams that night, and we had compared notes.

Throughout the day I’ve been thinking about what the dream meant, and why I had the dream right now. The conclusion I’ve come to is that it has something to do with my “wanderlust” at the moment with three overseas trips in two years. I can’t help but wonder how mum and dad would have felt, since they both lived most of their lives in Lismore, and only ever left Lismore to visit family and friends in neighbouring towns and cities. Or perhaps it’s not that literal? Perhaps there’s a deeper meaning?

As I came home this afternoon, I went online to find out what dreaming about your father meant, I found these possible explanations here…

(1) For men, father may be a conscience figure. If this is the case, bear in mind that your father’s prohibitions and commands will probably represent either conventional moral options which may have no relevance to your true nature or ‘destiny’, or irrational fears and feelings of guilt that began to take shape in you in earlychildhood.

(2) For a woman, father may figure in a dream as one who generates affection.

(3) The presence of your father may be a straightforward representation of him, or of the way you see/remember him (which may owe more to your subjective distortions than to what your father actually is or was). In any case, the reason for your father appearing in the dream will be shown by the part he plays in the dream story.

(4) If your father features in the dream as a protector, it may be that you need to ‘grow up’ and rely on your own resources. After all, life can hurt you only if you let it, only if you identify with your emotional self instead of with that deep layer of yourself that is immune to life’s pains and perils.

(5) Father may be an animus figure (see Glossary of Jungian Termnology), representing a woman’s (unconscious) masculine qualities. In this case, the dream may be suggesting that she should cultivate this countrasexual side of her nature.

(6) Frequent appearances by either parent, or both, in dreams may be a sign that you have not thrown off an infantile over-dependence on them. Jung cites a young man’s dream in which the man’s father appeared as a drunken driver, smashing his car into a wall. This is the exact opposite of the real father, who was a most respectable person, rightly – but too too much – respected by the son. What the unconscious was doing through the dream was dethroning the father in order to enable the son to achieve a proper sense of himself as a person in his own right, with his own unique destiny and values.

I’m sure there are lots of other explanations.

Whatever the deeper psychological meaning, I just know it was a lovely dream about my dad, and one that made me feel good as I woke this morning.

Cyclamen

It’s amazing the number of people who come in to my office and comment on my new cyclamen. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?

A couple of friends gave it to me a few weeks ago when Gloria died. At the time, many of the buds had not opened. Since then, with steady watering and just about the right amount of filtered light, it’s gone from strength to strength. It’s a wonderful, joyous thing to keep me company throughout the day.

And I needed a bit of company today, as the mid-winter flu/cough/cold thing which affected me last week continues to affect some of my colleagues.

It’s a weird one this year. I had a day in bed, and since then have been “just a little bit sick”. A bit of a snotty nose, that’s all. In contrast, a colleague has had most of the last week in bed with a fever, aches and pains. “I was on the phone to my mum crying at how sick I was”, she told me today.

On arriving home tonight I made a pretty simple pasta dish, using probably too much sour cream, and hit the couch. Media Watch, Q&A… that’s about it. That’s my Monday.

Gloria Pepper, James O'Brien

About this time last week Grant, Graeme and I were watching the Eurovision Song Contest.

In the midst of all the frivolity, I got one of “those” phone calls. It was a phone call telling me that my sister Gloria was close to death, and wasn’t expected to survive the night.

Gloria had been in a nursing home for about three or four years, living with a combination of Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease. The phrase “full of life” was a phrase that you would use, without resorting to cliche, to describe Gloria. These conditions, however, had combined in an incredibly cruel manner. She was only 64 years old.

I knew the phone call would eventually come to say her life was over, but it still hasn’t been easy.

I went to work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and came every night and sobbed.

Late on Thursday night, I got a phone call from Gloria’s daughter, Sharon to tell me Gloria had died about thirty minutes earlier.

The last few days have been difficult. I’ve come to realise sleeping is my main coping mechanism for grief. I think I’ve slept maybe two-thirds of every day since.

I wandered out today for a while, as Colin had invited me over for lunch which was a welcome relief.

Through it all I’ve felt incredibly supported by family and friends. I feel very lucky in that regard.

Today and tonight I’ve pretty much finished writing the eulogy which I’m to deliver on Wednesday.

Trying to make sure you do justice to someone’s life is so incredibly hard. In the end all you can do is be honest and pray that what you say gives comfort to those left behind.

This was before I started school, as we were still living in Kyogle Street. I'm guessing I was about 4-5 years old.

I played football or catchies or a combination of both with my five year old nephew this afternoon.

Well, I threw it to him so that he could catch it. And then he threw or kicked it back to me, which meant I had to run half-way around the yard as some of his hand-eye co-ordination skills are still developing.

He’s going to kindergarten at the moment, ahead of starting school next year. And thus, he still has the great innocence and joy of youth. He’s passed the terrible twos, but hasn’t reached the cynical sixes yet :)

Did I feel in any way clucky? Nah, as he’s quite the chatter-box. Believe me, a small amount of a five year old goes a long way.

I love his honesty though. My family have started to calling me “James” instead of Jimmy, which I’ve been known by for almost all of my adult life. “It’s Jimmy, not James” he keeps reminding them.

I guess they’ve come to a collective decision you can’t be a “Jimmy” when you’re 44 years old. I quite like, however, having a name that my family calls me that no one else does, except perhaps when they’re being sarcastic.

It’s part of that bond you have with your family, but not your friends. And equally you have a bond with your friends that you don’t have with your family.

So today, we just hung out. We watched some television. We went to the supermarket. I renewed my Worker’s Club Membership, we visited some relatives. Nothing much in particular, but rich in many ways.

Bertha O'Brien (Dunn), James O'Brien, Bertha Dunn (Rixon)

“Wow, I havent seen many photos with granny in them”, one of them wrote, while the other added, “oh my god. i can’t remember granny when she could walk around. I remember your mum but not as good as i thought. they look so much like nan. i cant believe it”.

They’re my second cousins. Their mother Julie was my elder first cousin with whom I grew up, and I remember when they were born. I was also page-boy at their mother’s first wedding. And now they’re in their twenties (thirties?) with children of their own.

Both comments, as well as some recent events in the family, have been a reminder I’m no longer “the younger one” in my family. Suddenly I’m the grown up who the younger ones look up to (kinda), and who the older ones rely upon (kinda).

At the funeral of my similarly-aged nephew, last year, for example, I found myself moving between the generation I grew up with, and the remains of the older generation who I used to look up to. Of my mum and dad’s brother’s and sister’s (a total of 10), there’s only two left.

“Who’s that?”, I was asked by my ageing aunt at one point, telling her it was the husband or child of “such and such”.

In each family, of course, there’s always someone who is the lynch-pin who keeps everyone in contact. In my family I guess it was my mum and my granny. And when they both died, and there was no longer a house on which to focus the family connection, a lot of us lost contact. I have cousins, for example, who I haven’t seen for maybe twenty years. I have no idea, for example, where my cousin Lorna is, these days. Her mum died in 1978 and I can’t recall the last time I saw her.

I always thought it was odd when a long lost aunt or cousin or whatever would suddenly turn up at our house when I was a child, and it was revealed my mum or dad hadn’t seen them for twenty years. And now, of course, I know exactly how it happens.

Most of my family have stayed in either Lismore or Brisbane, but having been away from my hometown for such a long time, I’ve missed out on seeing the extended younger generation growing up. Of course I know my immediate, immediate family, but it’s the children of the extended family that I’m only just coming to learn about. It’s odd though, since I know their parents very well. And of course we share the same DNA. An interesting, kinda odd, feeling in many ways.

I’m sure one day the information we’re sharing with Facebook will come back to bite us on the bums, but in the meantime it’s been wonderful to reacquaint myself with my extended family. And, as is the style of Facebook, it’s been fun to see photos of them acting like idiots!! :)

Yes, we defnitely have the same DNA! No doubt about that…

“Who cares? Why do you do it?”, my friend Graeme asked me the other week, “what’s the point of it all?”.

On a personal and often intimate level, I guess it helped me go some way in understanding the way in which my parents, grandparents etc have reacted to many of life’s events. And then on a broader level, I guess it’s partly because I’ve spent so much of my life working as a journalist. There’s nothing quite like chasing a good story you actually have a real connection with.

And there are some great stories (in no-particular order)…

10. WAR RECORDS: Mostly, it seems, my family hasn’t been one for going off to war, with one or two notable exceptions, including my maternal grandfather, Charles Henry Dunn. During the First World War, he enlisted as an adult, went to war on the Western Front, was injured a few times and then returned home. I never knew him, but I knew his wife and children, and so I think that personal connection has helped me understand a little more of the individual circumstance of people who fought in World War I.

9 TOWAMBA: I’m absolutely fascinated by the small village of Towamba, near Eden in southern NSW. Quite a few of my ancestors come from the town, a beautiful little village in a very remote location. At the time they were living there, however, it was real “Deliverance Country” with first-cousins getting married and a bizarre shooting over a cricket match.

8 ACCIDENTS AND MURDERS: Ancestors were there for the discovery of the body of the man who became known as Fischer’s Ghost; the accidental shooting on a young man in a remote location; and the sudden death of someone at the workplace. There’s lots of other odd tales too.

7 NOT AN ATTRACTIVE BUNCH: My ancestors weren’t a pretty bunch. Perhaps the best example of this is Mary Ann Goward, my dad’s grandmother.

6. NON-ENGLISH SPEAKERS: The shipping records for Allan McLean and Janet McFarlane who came form the Inner Hebrides in Scotland in 1838, confirm English wasn’t their first language. They confirm that although some of the family, including Allan, could read and write English, they were, for the most part, speakers of Scottish Gaelic.

5. CONVICTS: My convict ancestry includes the following : James Rixon; Amelia Goodwin; John Hoare; Robert Higgins; Anne Owen; James Laing; and Mary Fitzgerald. They were mostly sent to Australia due to crimes of poverty, but there were a couple who were also rebellious Irishmen.

4. THE REBELS: John Hoare, who came originally from Wexford, was a member of the British navy who was transported to Australia over his involvement in “The Great Mutiny” of 1797. At the time, Hoare was on board the aptly-named HMS Defiance and was a member of the United Irishmen, who were lobbying for Irish independence. Another, Robert Higgins was sent to Australia after being court-martialled during “The Walcheren Expedition” (July 30 – December 10, 1809), a very large British military operation (and failure) during the Napoleonic Wars.

3. LOST FORTUNES: John Love came to Australia on the Third Fleet as a member of the NSW Corps whose role was to supervise the convicts. In common with other members of the NSW Corps, John was “given” considerable land-holdings. However, he was also involved in the illegal production of rum, stole cattle, and illegally employed a bushranger. The result of all this was the loss of all of the land he was given and the last years of his life spent as a convict himself.

2. ROOTING AROUND: There’s a LOT of shot gun weddings, and also some occasions where they never married at all, including one where the male went off and started another family. The death record for the aforementioned Robert Higgins also notes he and his wife separated (as early as the 1820s) over an extramarital relationship.

1. WILLIAM AND ELLEN: The most fascinating tale I’ve uncovered concerns the story of my maternal grandmother’s parents, William Rixon and Ellen Laing. They were actually first cousins who had four children together (my grandmother was their second child) in a very small community half-way between Eden and Bombala in Southern NSW. About two years after the birth of the fourth child, he married another woman and moved to a nearby town over the border in Victoria where he died in 1929. Ellen spent most of her adult life living with other family members, including her two daughters, at locations including Bombala, Lismore and Sydney. Ellen spent the end of her life at Newinton State Hospital and Home which had a history of providing support for destitute or aged women.

So yes, lots of fascinating stories which probably also go some way in explaning a bit about me.

Sydney Mint

I suspect it’s because I don’t have kids that I can lead the lifestyle that I do. Sometimes I’m incredibly busy; other times I’m incredibly lazy. I suspect that if I had kids I would need to lead a more regular, more ordered lifestyle which may or may not be a good thing.

This thought occurred to me earlier tonight at Grumpy Old Women at the Capitol Theatre, the stage show based on the BBC television series of the same name. In their midst of their very funny “schtich” about getting older, menopause, having sex and so on, their were a couple of genuinely tender moments, as they reflected on their fears of death and the joy that came from children. “I worry about dying and leaving my children behind”, Linda Robson said, “Because no one will ever genuinely love them as much as I do”.

Of course, you may recall that I met Linda Robson last Friday night at the Crystal Palace Hotel. On a whim, a colleague and I went to the pub on Friday night, only to have Linda sit down next to us. I instantly recognised Linda because she played Tracey on the BBC series, Birds Of A Feather, and after a polite enough interlude I asked her for a photograph. She was sitting there with her daughter, I suspect, and her grand-kids, and, as granny, she was for a moment anxious to make sure the grandkids could happily and legally sit outside the bar, asking me if it was okay. “Sure” I said, totally unaware if it was or not.

Of course, that wasn’t an issue for Martin and I. We just sat down and did it. We didn’t have to think about it. We didn’t have to plan. We just did. It’s been pretty much the same over the last week.

Last Thursday night, for example, I left work at a time that suited (I have a healthy work ethic and do more than my my fair share of hours) to head off to the Sydney Mint, for the launch of this year’s Writer’s Festival. Having arrived right on time, maybe a little early, I found myself a little “Nigel No-friends” for a while. There was a speedy resolution as two older women (no, not Grumpy Old Women), both with an interest in writing and history, brefriended me. We chatted about history, politics, the media, and numerous other topics ahead of the official launch. The only thing they were grumpy about, by the way, was the Howard Government, and “we voted for him” (they told me).

But yes, like much in my life, it was something I could do without having to think too much about others.

The same was true on Saturday night when I caught up with Mark who has just moved back to Sydney. “Feel like a beer?”, he said. No consultation, no one else to tell, no baby-sitters to organise. It will be the same catching up with some other bloggers next week at The Sydney Weblogger April Meetup. Just make a commitment to myself to go and do it.

Even tonight, on the way out of work, on a whim I asked Miss Andrea if she’d like to join me for a meal in Chinatown, ahead of going to see “Grumpy Old Women”. Although she’d already made plans, they were quickly modified and we had an enjoyable meal at BBQ King.

Tonight’s show, by the way, was great fun. With many memorable moments of “observational comedy” (which I normally don’t like). Most memorable was the Jenny Eclair monologue, when she related the embarrassment of farting during a massage, and then wanting to giggle so much she was afraid she’d wet herself as well. Also memorable was the monologue about how life for “women of a certain age” is full of various bags.

And then afterwards, I came home to surf the net and watch television and so on. And it occurred to me, ahead of writing this blog, this freedom comes from not having children. Of course, when I was in a relationship a few years ago I had to think about someone else. No, I didn’t HAVE to think about someone else, I WANTED to think about someone else.

But now I can be as spontaneous as I want to be. For example, I can spend Good Friday doing absolutely nothing except watching television. I can make those decisions to go out to dinner on a whim.

And does it make me happy or unhappy? Well, I suspect you’re thinking I’m gonna say no, and how I really want kids, and I really want a family and a relationship… and my life is empty without those things. But I don’t actually think it is. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a relationship.

But it’s also quite okay to live alone, to be spontaneous, to do things on a whim etc. Maybe when I’m 10 years older I’ll regret this feeling, that I haven’t made those “relationship plans” for the future, and I suppose if that occurs I’ll be able to look back on the folly of my forties with regret. But at the moment, it’s okay that I don’t have kids.

P.S. On Monday I had amusing moment when I received a work-related phone call from blogger, Harley. “Oh hello”, I said, recognising his name, “I know you, I read your blog”. Hehheheheh, he laughed in recognition. “I don’t know why I came through to you”. “Because I’m the boss”, I joked. “You haven’t been blogging much lately”, I told him. It was rather amusing to hear a real live voice on the phone from someone who I was partially convinced did not actually exist in “real life”. But yes, he does exist, dear reader, but his voice wasn’t as I imagined it might be.