From under the doona I scramble out of a deep fog of sleep and sit up in bed. My phone won’t stop ringing. It’s 3am — ice pierces my heart. Calls in the middle of the night are never good.

“Peita? Peit, it’s Donna.” My sister’s urgent voice. “It’s—” 

She keeps speaking but I can’t take in her words. I’m sure she’s saying Jeff, her husband Jeff.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say. “Jeff? He’s gone?”

“No. No. No.” Her voice is insistent. “It’s Dad. Dad. Dad has just died.”

My brain can’t compute. Jeff has been very ill for fourteen months. Brain tumours, two operations, relentless deterioration. He’s been full of grace and dignity through it all, and we’ve been waiting these last weeks on tenterhooks. But Dad? 

We jump in the car and head up to Ballina to be with Mum.

A few days later, Jeff dies, too. Shockingly, my mother and sister are widows — one married sixty years, the other left alone too soon. They support each other with a quiet strength. The family rallies. Meanwhile, I wrestle with the guilt that I should have seen how ill my father was. He’d been deteriorating too, but Jeff had been our focus. In his prime, Dad was big and tall, barrel-chested. But the photos prior to his death show a pale, fragile old man, leaning on Mum, legs thin as match sticks.

I am so glad that my last phone call with my father was special. His deep voice sounded youthful, despite his eighty-four years. Having just arrived in Perth from Africa, en route to Sydney, I’d called him.

“So, how was Malawi?” he asked.

“Amazing. So much to tell. But hold on —did you say you’re in hospital?”

His laugh was rueful. “Yes. Turns out I’m not bullet-proof.”

We chatted affectionately, and his unexpected vulnerability was endearing as he shared a worrying diagnosis from the doctor. Still, we believed Dad had lots of time left.

Two weeks after my sister’s call, our family farewells both men in a double memorial, a celebration of each life. As I gaze over Lighthouse Beach at Ballina, I imagine them together, crossing the waves.