In The Name Of My Father Chapter: 38
En Route to France and a healing holiday
Sara boarded the plane, beyond excited. For no reason that she could put her finger on, she had a feeling that the best moments of her life were yet to take place. Who could blame her?
She and Richard had never traveled far from home, always assuring each other that there was so much beauty and contrast in Australia to satisfy their needs. And to a large extent that was true. Every state and territory was unique, so that they were drawn back more times than not.
They avoided expensive hotels, their belief being that you met the best of people in holiday parks. A shared bottle of wine, with simple food cooked over a BBQ, were the best ways to meet real, sometime forever-friends, they felt.
Traveling across the vast landscape of Australia had become a bit of an obsession with them, and had made each of them realize how tiny and insignificant as humans, each of us is, and yet, how amazingly able we are to absorb so much wonder and awe, and recharge our lives through breathtaking experiences.
This trip? It had come as a total surprise, one designed to cheer Sara up after her father’s passing. Accepting his wishes was one thing, but not having him around had challenged her sometimes in the smallest of ways, when she needed something fixed, or some advice on a matter.
Living without him had also reminded her of the void she’d felt when her brother Alistair had died.
From one day to another she struggled to find light in her living, so that gone was the happy-go-lucky, effervescent Sara. It was so unlike her.
“You’re going to love it,” Richard assured her.
“I’m sure I will, but it sounds too expensive.”
“There are no pockets in a shroud,” he answered, wrapping a reassuring hug protectively around her.
SHROUD…what was he thinking? Richard wanted to kick himself, to try to stuff the words back into his mouth. How could he have been so stupid?
“We just want the happy you back, the one who is always making life beautiful for others. We’ve been worried about you darling,” he added quickly, almost too quickly! “Just plan to go with the flow and have fun.”
And with that they boarded the plane.
A Gite in a Monet-Style Garden…
A gîte is a furnished holiday house, often found in rural areas of France. Theirs was one of four, set in a delightful Monet-style garden, complete with lily ponds, and a replica of the green Japanese bridge often depicted in his paintings.
Flowers grew everywhere it seemed, dazzling drifts of color, including borders of flowering all-white agapanthus, with small carpets of white azaleas nestled in between. The white worked perfectly as a contrast to the surrounding colors.
And just directly behind this was the surrounding scrub, the commons as it would have been called in England, compagne in France, which had the effect of keeping the area super-quiet, and hidden.
The overall effect was that they felt miles away from civilization, yet they were assured by David, the owner, that it was a mere ten-minute walk to the nearby town of Roquefort Les Pins, situated between Nice and Grasse, where they could easily offload all their money in a very short space of time!
These were two places that offerred an exciting selection of groceries, bakeries and very affordable, quality wine, they were assured. In his opinion the town had everything anyone might need, without the incessant busyness of the more popular tourist spots around.
“We might not be at the top of the popularity list,” he had smiled, ‘but we have a wealth of international visitors that recognize a good thing when they see it. And because we enjoy so much sunshine and a temperate climate, many of them now spend more than half of every year, calling this place home.”
“And that would be you too I suppose?” Richard suggested.
“Guilty as charged! I still have a huge extended family back in England and Wales, and I make sure we go back a couple of times a year. BUT, make no mistake about it. This is my preferred home, not France generally, but right here. I don’t have to go far to buy everything I need, fish, meat, bread, and wine for my day-to-day living. I like the simple life.”
“Sounds good to us…we try to avoid the touristy places if we can. We’ve traveled all over Australia, but these days we love to get off the beaten track and find little hamlets that are impressively welcoming and beautiful. But for our children and grandchildren, we’d happily uproot ourselves and spend a few years living and volunteering within some of these communities.”
“Well you know what they say…you only live once! I have met so many people who have sold up and embraced the nomadic lifestyle, and many swear they will never return to their old ways.
“But I so envy you. One of these days I’ll get to Australia, and I think I may take a leaf out of your books. Freedom is everything. Hotel life has little appeal for me, so a motor home it will be…or something like that.
“By the way, when you go shopping, watch out for the newest boulangerie, if you value your waistline! Everything in that shop is delicious. A few weeks ago, just before a long weekend, my wife had to queue up for half an hour to buy supplies for a camping trip. That’s how popular they are!”
“But you’d recommend a taste at least?”
“Oh you have to give it a go, but I warn you. Step inside and you’ll be hooked.”
“I haven’t got such a sweet tooth, but I know somebody who does,” Richard answered, nudging Sara who responded with a look that suggested that he was not exactly telling the truth.”
“We could go further afield to shop,” David continued,” but we’re pretty well-catered-for here, for clothes, if ever we buy them, and food. We’re contented souls in this part. I think you will be too.”
“Now I just can’t wait to go into town,” Sara added. “And I’m glad you mentioned that we can buy clothes, if all you tell me about the boulangerie is correct.”
“The secret is to walk it off. Indulge yourself Sara. That’s what holidays are all about. Eating, and sampling our delicious wines, and seeing the many nearby hill villages. Some are pretty steep to access, but others are relatively easy.
“If you like I can take you to one of my favorites that I never tire of visiting. It’s a place that is practically carved out of rock, an amazing feat of architecture if ever I saw one. Have you ever heard of André Le Nôtre?
“I’m guessing not,” he answered quickly. “He was a famous French landscape architect, and there is a garden there that was designed by the man himself. I love to take my guests there, and I insist that I photograph them at one particular spot.”
“Insist! That’s a very strong word. Sounds a little devious if you don’t mind my saying so,” Richard laughed.
“Oh you’re right! It’s totally deliberate, the reason being that it always highlights the precarious nature of the place.”
“Are our wills up to date?” Sara asked, teeth clenched, her eyes dramatically wide open.
“Don’t worry Sara. I haven’t lost a guest so far,” David smiled impishly, “but I guess there’s always a first time. You’d better behave yourself while you’re here.”
Roquefort Les Pins, was everything David had described and more, a place where tourists were spoilt for choice. It seemed that wherever they chose to go there were so many assistants eager and willing to help them select enough food to tide them over for a few months, some cheeses from the region, a dinner sampling of prepared boeuf bourguignon, something Sara would never have agreed to back home, but somehow it was so much easier to trust the quality here in France.
And after a few hours of deliberating about just how much they needed, they set off back to their gîte, confident that they could enjoy a fine meal, with wine, minus the rigors of cooking. This was, after all, a holiday.
Over the next few days they lazed around by the pool after breakfast, walked into town for lunch, and generally took in the local places suggested by David. It was proving to be the perfect, restful holiday that they both needed.
On one day their host took them to Vielle Ville (old town), in Nice, where they were blown away by the quaintness of everything, the narrow, cobblestone streets, colorfully-painted buildings, the amazing markets and wealth of wine bars, that won their hearts. So different to Australia!
Arriving back to their gîte, they were delighted to find they had company.
“Bonjour!” they greeted them.
“Bonjour! Ça va?” Sara answered.
“Hope you speak English because that’s a large percentage of our current French vocabulary, ” winked a man with an English accent.
“If you accept Aussie English, yes we do,” Richard answered, reaching out to shake hands.
“I’m Richard and this is my wife Sara. It’s actually nice to have some neighbors. We were running out of things to talk to each other about.”
“Speak for yourself!” Sara replied, threatening to topple him into the pool. “So where are you all from?”
“We’re from Yorkshire,” a blond woman sipping on a tall beer offered, looking toward her partner, a tall, dark man in his mid fifties. “Can’t you tell?”
“We’re not exactly seasoned travelers. I knew you were English, but that’s about all. But now that you mention it, we used to have a neighbor from Yorkshire and he’d often say to me, shaking his head, ee ba gum lass. I had no idea what it meant…still don’t.”
“It tends to be used when you don’t want to swear, but you still want to show your disappointment or difference about something. You know when… sometimes there isn’t a correct translation? This would be one of them! I’m Mike by the way.
“I’m from Wales originally. I’m a detective and was posted to Bowral in New South Wales to train some of your folk, some twenty years ago. Kath,” he said, indicating a petite dark woman, “fell in love with the place, and just didn’t want to go back home, so we stayed. We love it.”
“You’d enjoy the four seasons I suppose.”
“We certainly do, and if the winter weather gets to us, we just hop on a plane to Portugal and enjoy an injection of sunshine. That’s where we are supposed to be right now, but a friend of ours had booked a holiday here and then they had a family emergency, and we offered to take his booking, and here we are! Would you like to join us for a drink?”
“Did somebody mention name cards?” It was David striding purposefully towards them. “I always hope that people will get together and for that reason, I try to have name cards printed just in case. I find it helps to break the ice.
“Now by the end of the night you will probably feel you’ve known each other forever, but right now, these will help. Also, Annie’s put together this grazing platter,” he said putting down an amazing selection of tempting morsels. “The canapés are all home-made, and I can vouch for my wife’s culinary skills,” he laughed, indicating a few kilos that he held proudly around his middle. “Enjoy.”
The cards lay untouched for a while, as people chatted lazily, and so eventually Sara picked them up, found her own, and then began to call the surnames of the group.
“Aha! This one might be a relative of mine. Do we have a Paul O’Grady in the house?”
“You wouldn’t expect to get too many of those around these parts,” the tall, dark man said as he reached for his card. “And why, might I ask, do you think we might be related?”
“My maiden name was O’Grady…still is I suppose. My dad was Irish and my mother Scottish, but their children are all Australian-born.”
“Both my parents were Irish, but they migrated to Adelaide just after they married, so that makes us all Aussies too. Tell me. Did your parents ever get over leaving their homeland behind?”
“It’s hard to say. They made a decision and stuck by it, and for their era, I suppose they did very well. Still they went back home every second year, and Dad wanted his remains scattered in Donegal Bay.”
“And did that happen?”
“We actually have them with us. I’m amazed at how heavy a person’s ashes can be.”
“But lighter than a corpse.”
Sara’s eyes filled with tears.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “My father chose to die.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry.”
“He had dementia…not advanced, but he’d watched a friend die of the disease, and he vowed he would not be a burden on any of us. My parents made a joint decision to leave this world on their terms, and on the same day.”
“You know,” Paul said, looking at her intently, “I don’t blame them for that. What is the point of just limping along in life, knowing that what you face is not so good. I don’t blame them at all. So what happened to your mother’s remains?”
“She…my goodness I can’t believe I’m telling a perfect stranger my story when I haven’t even been able to talk about it to friends.”
“You don’t have to,” Paul said gently. “But you know, sometimes it helps to get it out of your system.”
“My parents were in their late eighties and had had a really good life, give or take one really sad incident. They had done well in life, raised four kids, and they enjoyed a busy social life. That all went belly-up when Dad was diagnosed. They didn’t need their journey to be spelt out to them. They were pretty stoic and accepted the diagnosis, but they were determined not to become reliant on us.
“We’d noticed that they were becoming forgetful, especially Dad, but we didn’t give it much thought. I mean…so close to ninety, what else? Besides, we all live pretty close to each other, so we made sure they were fine.
“Their plan came as an absolute shock to us. We had no idea. They asked us all to pop over one night, and that’s when Dad told us, first of his diagnosis, and secondly of what they wanted to do when the timing was right.”
Sara’s lips trembled as she tried to find the appropriate words, but she continued on determinedly.
“I mean, these were our parents. We adored them, and life without them was going to be bleak. They explained that they wanted to host a family dinner party, to hire some fabulous caterers to come and cook for them, and drink some of the best wines from Dad’s cellar, wines to match each course, ones he’d been keeping for what he called, ‘a special occasion’!
“A pretty special one!”
“The idea was to share in this sumptuous meal and make the last hours of their lives memorable. One caveat was that we were banned from going near their house the next day, in case we’d be charged with colluding in their deaths.”
“Oh my goodness…I can only imagine how hard that must have been. You could write a play on that one.”
“It was a challenge, but we had time to accept their wishes. It wasn’t something that would happen in a week or two. We spent many hours talking things over with them, and with each other, weighing up their blessings, and putting ourselves in the situation.
“The conclusion was that we all wanted to remember them as they were, rather than how they might end up, and that helped. Dad insisted that dinner was to be a walk down Memory Lane, with lots of fun, and definitely no tears.”
“Easier said, than done I’d imagine!”
“Absolutely! My sisters and I wept buckets of those before the actual get-together, as we went over a thousand times, the what-ifs of their plan. At the end of the day we decided we had no option but to support them.”
“So…no brothers in your family?”
“Only one, but he died many years ago. They never really got over that.”
“And you all stuck to the plan?”
“We did.”
“And the dinner?”
“It was wonderful. And Dad’s wine was amazing. The caterers took care of everything, even the setting up of the dining room, the flowers, and all those little details that we were not in the right framework for thinking about. All we had to do was turn up determined to have a great time.”
“And you did?”
“We could have won an Oscar for our performances! We laughed and teased, we hugged, and reminisced…we did whatever it took to make things perfect. We all danced our hearts out, took photos, sang, and just had the best time, give or take the hangover the next day.
“Looking back we were all amazed by our collective tenacity. Stoic to the end, it took a long time for us all to say our goodbyes, after which, we gathered in our home — back to reality and rivers of tears.”
“So, dare I ask what happened next, or would you rather keep that to yourself?”
“The next day was horrendous to put it mildly. We waited the requisite twenty-four hours before calling home, and then contacted the police. That’s something that we all regretted, because though Dad did actually die, they found Mum still clinging to life. She survived, and to this day, blames herself for that.”
“And what happened as far as the law is concerned?”
“Dad had left a signed and sealed letter with a doctor friend. It explained everything. We had stayed away from their property as requested, so they couldn’t charge us with a crime. There was no court case.”
“And now you have the task of scattering your father’s ashes.”
“I’m trying not to think too much about it. I would like to have brought Mum with us. She’s Scottish and we could easily have ducked over there so she could fulfill a romantic desire she’s always had, but she’s a bit frail these days…not physically frail, but emotionally. We have to keep assuring her that the plans they made together were what Dad wanted.
“Look, she keeps herself busy, but, you know how it is. Some of the light has gone out of her life, and mine too…I suppose it went out all those years ago when my brother died. Dad’s passing was an elimination of both males in the family.
“I’m so sorry! What on earth am I thinking? This is the first time I’ve really opened up about things. It’s why we’re here…the holiday…it was a total surprise from Richard and the kids.”
“Well it’s clearly done you good. You’re relaxed enough to tell a perfect stranger your story.”
“But I thought you were a relative!” she laughed, as she dabbed delicately at her eyes.
“And I might well be. We’re a bloody big family, our O’Grady bunch. We’re in every corner of the globe. At least that’s how it feels! Funnily enough, a friend of mine sent me a message the other day. Somebody on Facebook was looking for an O’Grady family.
“Kathryn,” he called to his wife. “Where did that O’Grady family hail from, you know, the one that had three sisters, and a brother who was a priest?”
“What?”
“You know, the message Jo forwarded to you on Facebook?”
“Oh yes. Victoria, I think,” she called back, returning her attention to Richard, whose attention was suddenly drawn to Sara.
Their eyes held each other for what seemed an eternity, and suddenly he was by her side, arms protectively around his wife.
“Oh goodness, did I say something wrong? It wouldn’t be a first for me.”
“Sara’s family is made up of three girls and…”
“And a brother who died…damn! I’m sorry Sara. Give me a few glasses of wine and the motor mouth takes over.”
“It IS a bit of a coincidence, but not entirely unusual I suppose. What were they asking about?” Richard asked.
“Look there wasn’t much detail. From memory the person just asked if anyone knew a family by the name of O’Grady, and mentioned the siblings. I kept the link. You just never know in this mad, shrinking world of ours. Look at today. Of all the names in the world, what are the chances of two of the O’Grady bunch catching up, on a holiday in France, in gîtes located right next to each other?”
“A few generations ago, when the world seemed so much larger, it would have been considered a huge coincidence. These days I’m not so sure,” Richard said, and then deliberately throwing a segue, he said, “I was just thinking Sara, all the food that we couldn’t resist buying, and now I’m stuffed with Annie’s platter. What do you think? Shall we call it a day?”
As Paul had warned, the detail on the Facebook message was scant. They could so easily have ignored it, but then Sara remembered the feeling that she’d had on the plane, that her life could change with this one trip. She’d put that down to the precious load she was carrying, but maybe it was more than that. She had read a quote in recent times where the Dalai Lama had suggested that if we choose to do something, we can change our future.
If they didn’t follow through with this lead, then they would spend the rest of their lives wondering, and maybe regretful about a missed opportunity. If they pursued the lead, who knows?
Hot Croissants…and a sheepish Paul…
“A bit of a sleepless night?” Paul asked.
“It could easily have been, Paul, but you know what? We decided to check your lead, and after that, I don’t know, a kind of peace swept over us both and sleep came easily.”
“So you slept and I didn’t…hardly a fair deal,” he answered. “Seriously though, I feel much better for knowing my blabber mouth didn’t ruin your holiday.”
“We’re on the horns of a dilemma though. We’re tempted to follow the lead, but at the same time, it seems too far-fetched…and I might end up more disappointed than ever.”
“That ball’s fairly and squarely in your court, Sara. Maybe a distant relative’s won the lottery and wants to share it.”
“Hah! We should be so lucky!” Richard laughed. “BUT, it’s a great thought…better than a skeleton escaping from a cupboard.”
“Come on! We’re talking Facebook here. Surely that could never happen!” Paul mocked. “Let’s have breakfast…our shout,” and he ushered them over to the tables where an not so petit-déjeuner had been set up…warm croissants, home-made jams, cheeses, and fresh fruit.
“To make up for last night,” Paul said bashfully.
