MY FATHER CRYING - WHAT COULD IT MEAN?

Seventy-one years ago today, my paternal Grandma died - at age Sixty - six years. Here is a Post from 2011 which relates what for Eight Years old me, was a sadly memorable event.

 My Dad John Joseph Dixon 

      at about the age I was that

morning 

                                                                      

His Mother Eleanor Margaret Dixon
  taken the same day as Dad above.

Friday, 20th August 1948:  I was asleep in my bed, just clear of the inward opening door of my bedroom at the front right-hand side (facing), of our two-bedroom timber cottage in Second Avenue Berala NSW. I was woken when the door opened hastily.

There stood my 41 years old Dad. A tumble of thoughts into my gathering consciousness: Dad doesn't wake me in the morning ( Shift work meant he was either at work or not long in from work and sleeping at this hour),  why was his hat crammed on his head in the house? and....... what! My Dad was crying..... what could this mean?  "You'd better get up quick Anth, Ma has died", and he sobbed even more. 

Turmoil. Mum was already up at Grandma's which was in Third avenue just behind us and a tad higher on the gentle hill. Up I got, dressed quickly, no breakfast and round the block we went. The 1900 vintage cream painted timber house, had originally been much smaller but had been added onto. Up the front steps into the hall and I was taken down to Mum who was busy holding the family together, consoling this one, calming that one, and meanwhile getting them fed. My maiden Aunt Nell who was a very good-hearted soul, but at that stage of her life very tense, afflicted with a bad stutter, suggested while Dad was there, that I should be taken into Grandma's room to see her body. 

You can perhaps imagine my horror - at eight years of age - at the suggestion. I had no experience of death and I had no desire to see the Grandma I loved so devotedly, and who loved me, in death. I would NOT go in.

 Dad was too absorbed in grief to intervene, but mercifully Mum came across, asked what the fuss was, saw my reaction and put an end to that idea. I can't remember the rest of the day.

The funeral was some days later leaving - after the Requiem Mass - from our Church-School - St. Peter Chanel's on the hill at Berala. My mind boggled at all the relatives and friends and fellow Parishioners - the Dixons were not the greatest Churchgoers( masterly understatement - I'm getting better at it!) , but in earlier times the wooden Church as well as the Convent, had been in Fourth Avenue behind Grandma's house  and there weren't many houses in those earlier days ,so " Mag. Dixon" was well known to the Nuns and to many Parishioners. That old wooden Church had been hauled up the hill to the new Parish location, by draught horses, sometime in the '20s or '30s, and was now the Parish Hall.

Grandma was 66 years old.

Dad's Father, Thomas James Dixon died on the 2nd August 1950. I had rarely seen him. He had left the family home many years before, had a major problem with drink, and was not a very endearing person (actually, I'm getting better at understatement !) He was 66 years old also - I had never realised the coincidence of their ages at death until a minute ago, when I came to write this!

Deaths in August were to become more common in the family for some reason as you will see if you bear with me.And, as it happened, when my dear Mum died in August 1971 she was also 66 years old.


Requiescant in Pace.