The Long Swim

He called me a week before it happened. It was one of those awkward unavoidable calls you only ever have with family. It was a nice day, I was sitting outside my flat, I probably smoked a cigarette after the call; to alleviate some stress. It wasn’t a stressful time in my life so much as it was a strange one. The liminal space between happy and sad that comes with freedom and loss. My flat was cute, a slightly overpriced townhouse. It was near the beach, and I had a neighbor who hated that I was younger and not saddled up with a baby. Anyway, I didn’t know he was going to kill himself.

My dad later succinctly referred to it as ‘the long swim’. He didn’t sound so great over the phone, still a strong steady voice though. I could tell the man he was couldn’t be contained in a decaying and decrepit body. He had always been a drifter, a vagabond man. He always said he wanted to go at sea, or just suddenly go missing, and so; he did.

Long gone were the days sitting in his bus listening to his stories. He was a living history book: a man born when fridges were a hole in the dirt and who died after the release of the iPhone 10. He came from the streets of Sydney in the great depression and he washed up on the shores of the Sunshine Coast. You never hear about bodies washing up on the news, or found splattered on the rocks. You never hear about the suicides; it’s bad for tourism.

Anyway, the call – it was awkward. We talked about why he didn’t come to mum’s funeral, he wanted to make me understand. The man gave me plenty reasons to be angry with him, but that wasn’t one of them. Looking back at it now, I suppose I should have known. The call was so conclusive, a signed and sealed admission.

I was sitting there in the sun, blissfully unaware and relieved we had a little chat and the call was over. A week later I got another call. This time it was my dad. He told me the news. They’d found his body, washed ashore, he’d been in the water a while and eventually washed up with the tide. They found his walking stick a few kilometers down the beach – the long swim.

I think it was the next day that the check came in the mail, tucked inside a brown paper envelope. The return address read ‘Vic’s place Cloud 9’. Inside was a brief note that said ‘have a wonderful life faith’ and a check of $999. ‘Vic’s place Cloud 9’, that made me smile, my Grandpa had a dark sense of humor till the end.

My mum’s name was Vicki. She died a few months earlier, hence me being in a strange place between freedom and loss. Losing a parent is freeing; no one to be beholden to, no one to disappoint, but it also means no one to be proud of you, no one to love you.

I don’t really remember anything more about that day, I remember smiling, maybe a tear coming to my eye. It wasn’t shocking and it didn’t rock me to my core or anything. I made a post on Instagram about it, I didn’t say my Grandpa killed himself.

There wasn’t really a funeral. His sons had a little wake, and if mum was still alive I’m sure I would have been invited, but she isn’t and I wasn’t. I’m sure it was very sad for them: his sons. They’re orphans now, but they’re not that young and I’m not going to feel bad for them. I know I’ll be an orphan before their age.

Anyway, the long swim gave me a newfound respect for the man. No one wants to die in a stale room; fluorescent light beating down on you, with staff that aren’t really paid enough to give a shit. After those calls nothing really changed. The cliché that life goes on is an abundantly accurate one.

I can’t say that I love phone calls though. I know I don’t want to die in a nursing home or a hospital bed. The thought couldn’t be less appealing. That’s how mum went, in a hospital bed. Under those fluorescent lights, the beep of monitors, the stench of sanitizer, the clean, crisp, impersonal bottom line. I know those ICU wards well, the polished floors leading to death. No thank you.

We crawled out the sea as creatures and so we should return to it.

Maybe one day I’ll take a long swim.