Dream Small

Then one Sunday after our family meal, she announced something that made me very happy. "Doctor Bernard has the results of the ultrasound. It is the tiniest thing now and much smaller again than last time. He also says that non-penetrative sex would be possible."

"Oh... Well, the ultrasound is good news."

"He is an idiot. How would he know. There is nothing wrong with my vagin. It is my chest. He does not even have a vagin. Come to bed."

I complied eagerly and despite her worry for her appearance, her emaciated body and itchy skin, I assured her as thoroughly as I could at sixty-six that I still found her attractive and enjoyed her body very much. Just the once for me, but the time apart had indeed made her eager and I was not counting but she rode me through two of her 'little deaths' as she called them at least, before I filled her body.

It was a turning point. Our walks became longer. Our love-making more frequent. Her meals more hearty and her body responded quickly. The weather was warming, and Doctor Bernard insisted on sunshine and fresh air so our afternoons included journeys in the little boat, some fishing for me and some reading for her.

In no time at all it was mid-March and our family gathered in the centuries old Saint-Philibert church. Renny couldn't attend as she and Ben were having some unspecified trouble, but Sasha flew with Gabriel and was my wife's bridesmaid along with Clarice. Jean Paul and Louis stood beside me and we said some pretty words and later drank and ate like returning heroes.

Renee glowed. She was healthier looking than ever I had seen her since finding her again and our honeymoon in Spain was a waste of money. We seldom left our room to explore. I can tell you no tourist information on Ibiza apart from where to buy cigarettes closest to the Pikes Hotel. My honeymoon with Lorna was vigorous but I was not yet thirty then. This holiday left me wondering if perhaps Renee would ride me to the grave before even she succumbed.

"I have a little dream, mon eperviere."

"Just a little one?"

"I dream of Australia. I want to know your places like you know mine so well."

"That is a big dream, my angel of mercy. You can't fly. Your lung."

"My lung is well. I am getting the very good sex and walking a lot. I am very well. I want to know your places."

"Well. I'd best call home and-"

"It is already done." She giggles like a young bride. "Clarice and Jean and Renny... They made another joke."

~*~

It was a very good joke indeed. It lasted for two years that joke. We watched Gabriel complete his master's in communication studies and marry young Sasha, before returning home with his bride, my granddaughter to France. She too had graduated university and was a nurse. "Like Jeanie." She beamed at me.

I showed Renee my old barber shop. Her hair had grown back curly and with enough length to it now for me to plait it on the steps as we shared an 'absolutely horrible' coffee. I showed her the cattle farm. I showed her my house and she was so terribly thankful for the pool to escape our heat.

There were nasty punchlines to that joke. Ben had been having an affair and Renny's marriage fell apart. Drake had also broken with his wife and contacted me for the first time in many years. Renee encouraged the relationship but ultimately it failed as he could not accept my stories and my new wife.

In late nineteen ninety-two, we lay beside the pool at my home in Brisbane and Renee told me, "I need to go home."

"France?"

"Yes. I am going to die." She had been seeing a local doctor about some headaches recently and been for a scan.

"Your lung?"

"My brain."

"The headaches?"

"Yes. Not now. Not tomorrow, but it is time. I have had many wonderful small victories, my husband. Take me home."

Not long after Sasha and Gabriel's son was born, Renee lay in her hospital bed snuggling the infant and told me, "I am going to have a really, very big dream soon. In it, my family will live in times of peace and health. It has already started, and you will all be in it."

That night her machines fell silent and I called the nurse. In the moonlight, Renee was smiling, and she looked so peaceful. Like she was indeed having one last really big dream.

Renny, Jean, Clarice and all of our family lay Renee's ashes under the walnut tree where once I'd fallen, where once she'd buried her infant son Henry. The same tree in the same house yard, that her last will and testament said belonged to me. The same tree she wanted me to join her under one day.

As a final joke, 'a very good one', as Jean would say, I reached for her bible after her cremation to find a much-needed cigarette after a terrible day and found a folded note. It was sealed with a little section of tape and a red lipstick kiss.

~*~

My dearest Clarence,

My Samuel was a very wealthy man. He was also very old and very distant. He was wonderful to our children and kind to me as well. He bought me the home I am leaving you; the one built on the site of the old farmhouse, as a wedding present. I would have left you the big house, but it is too large for a grumpy and fussy old man like you to look after. Please do not be embarrassed by my wishes. Our children are both independently wealthy and I want you to use the money I have left you to stay in the lives of the family we made. If I can ask just one thing of you, it is to keep the walnut tree within our family. Spread my ashes there. Join me one day after you have lived long and happily enough. I am already missing you terribly. Fill the little house that is built there now, with happy memories and take your grandchildren fishing often. Tell them our stories until their ears bleed. In English! I beg you!

I love you and I let you go once. I am so glad my little sparrowhawk flew home to me. If just for a few short seasons. Now you must let me go. It is my turn to fly.

Please make sure our great grandchildren know that life is far too short for lazy lovers and shitty coffee.

Goodnight mon epervier. I will see you forever in my dreams.

Yours eternally,

Renee Arielle GRACE.

~*~

April four, two thousand and two.

To my dear family,

A few short notes. I found this handwritten account of those times in the army boot locker that granddad kept in his garden shed in Rouen. Alongside it were the tapes from back then, his uniform and pistol, photographs that were important to him, paperwork, deeds, Grandma Renee's wedding dress and some photo albums.

My daughter Elodie is eight now and when I shared this account with her, she had many questions but foremost was, "He wasn't that short and why didn't he finish it?"

She insisted that it was sad left like that, and that her Great Grandad had not been a sad man.

He died peacefully, after Christmas lunch two thousand and one. Standing from the table he announced to his family, "I'm probably going home."

We laughed. He had been getting a little forgetful coming up to his eightieth birthday. He picked up his pipe and tobacco and carried his scotch out to the squatter's chair that sat beneath the walnut tree and joined Grandma Renee in dreams. We found him an hour or so later with his pipe unlit and his eyes wide open watching the sky.

His ashes rest beneath the tree.

At Elodie's insistence, I've digitised his handwritten account and copied the tapes to cd so that we all have our own copy.

He has left a lot of untidy ends, so I'll briefly tidy them up.

Firstly Mum, Renee junior, divorced dad and it was not as sad as he made it sound. It was the beginning of a whole new Mum. She moved to France and lived with Grandad for a short while. While she was over here, she travelled and during those travels she met Jonas, a lovely German man a little younger than her. She has been enjoying the adage, 'life is too short for lazy lovers', but prefers a glass of chardonnay over the usual coffee.

Secondly, as Elodie insists, Grandad was not a sad man. He lived another very full ten years after Grandma Renee's death. He had many local friends and many abroad back in Australia. He was constantly busy with family and travel. His little modern house in Rouen, the one with the walnut tree, was always full of laughter and family. His little boat was seldom moored and between you and I, he even kept a few very discreet lovers.

He loved nothing more than listening to our stories. He seldom told his own which is why this account of it is so very precious to us. He knew every moment in his children's, grandchildren's, and great grandchildren's lives. He never missed a birthday or occasion. He was not a sad man in any way.

"Sasha," He told me once when I brought him a scotch and took my son, Liam who is ten now, off his lap, "I have lived through so much violence and sickness, but I have always been so very loved. More than I think I deserve sometimes. I have no idea how I deserved it all."

He kissed little Liam on the cheek and gave him to me for changing.

I live in that little house now. Gabriel and I moved into it after Grandad died. He left it to me in his will along with the strict instructions that, "You started this whole show young lady, you can bloody well keep it running."

Uncle Jean's family is visiting on Sunday as usual. Aunty Clarice cannot make it as Louis has important diplomatic responsibilities. Mum is coming and it will be a fine time to tell them my latest news. Gabriel and I are having baby number three. Liam is almost ten now and I am thirty, we want to add a couple more to our family yet. It will be a very good joke, as Uncle Jean would say.

I was going to tidy up Grandad's French. It is deplorable. The kids always said he sounded like a robot and laughed at when he got words in the wrong order or used completely the wrong words altogether. But that was who he was and part of why we all loved him for trying.

I can only hope I lead a life filled with the love he knew and in times that were Grandma's final dream.

In any case. It's time to go and keep writing our own stories, my family. Write them well and remember, "Life is too short for lazy lovers and shitty coffee."

He was five foot-two. It was the biggest body that God could fit a heart that big in and still fit into a spitfire cockpit.

Dream small and may you celebrate many small victories.

Sasha Jean Bisset.