Father.
Builder. My hero
This was
my Eulogy to Frank Fitzmaurice, grandfather of my daughter Jessica and my mate.
He passed away mercifully at home in 2005 with his family - well overdue, given his latter
ailments. He went with grace and dignity at the age of 87.
Frank came with my marriage to his youngest daughter Caroline Mary,
who I knew for some years and married in 1982. She came to live with me in 1980
with her beautiful daughter Sarah Jane, Frank’s second grandchild. We were
together for 20 years.
The
first impression I had of Frank was that he accepted me, despite that I came on
top of a divorce from Caroline’s first husband. I fast gleaned that Frank and
Monica were devout Catholics, and I tried to learn more of what that meant.
Caroline filled me in.
Cas and
I had success and bought a place at Lindfield. Frank had already transmitted
through Monica that he would help all his six kids equally, and in our case this
meant putting in a French window at our house. He came, he did the work all in
one day, it was great! We had excellent doors opening onto our new pool.
Later I
moved the family to the country, and when he heard I planned to build a house,
he graciously offered to help. Praise God he did! Frank was a builder by trade.
BUILDING
THINGS
If Frank
hadn’t been there, I would have messed up.
He came
and showed me how to measure out the house footings. How to do a 3 - 4 - 5
triangular measurement and make it square. How to dig a pad, cement it, and
make a brick pier on top. Then how to mark out endless numbers of them, so they
were aligned.
There
were road trips west, one of them without the girls - and we were done at days
end so a trip to the pub was in order. Frank’s drinking days were mainly done,
he was 70 and on doctor’s orders. But we drove the dirt roads to O’Connell and
on the way I saw a culvert pipe.
’Hey
Frank, that’d be great for Jess (then a 2 year old) to crawl through – let’s
load it in the van on the way back’, I yelled.
’Nup’ he
said - and that was that.
At the
pub, as I had a second schooner and he nursed a shandy, I ventured the lesson.
‘I know your faith, and I’m sorry - I was wrong to suggest we steal that pipe
from its random abandonment beside the road and take it home.’
Frank
looked over and put me straight.
’Bugger
that. I don’t want to do my back loading it into the van’, he said.
Turns
out his back was injured in the war in a flogging from his jailors. I never
knew this because he didn’t venture much. I found things out through his life
and they always amazed me.
His kids
knew some of it, but they were also learning parts as they came out. What
happened in the Second World War sets the scene for people like me who are born
afterwards.
PRISONER
The back
injury came from when his Japanese jailor beat him with a lump of wood after he
decked a guard who spat at him.
Frank
was posted to Timor, and was captured then transported - the Japanese boat was
sunk and he spent too much time in cold water. He told me he had another,
earlier, sinking in warmer water along the way, and spent some time with
sharks.
Eventually
he was put to work at Mitsubishi in Nagasaki and was in the brick outhouse the
morning the atomic bomb was dropped. He woke up after being knocked out,
covered in bricks and staggered about, temporarily blind.
The
story came out in bits. He didn’t like to talk about it when I met him, but was
more released as the years went by.
In the
mid 1990’s Frank and a mate were taken back to Nagasaki by a TV network for the
50th anniversary of the bombing. We saw the documentary, and
understood more.
He was
taken up into the hills by an old Japanese lady, and eventually rescued by the
allies. He’s never talked about what he saw amongst the death and the dying.
It’s a
significant miracle he emerged unscathed and had no radiation exposure. He went
on to breed six extremely healthy children, whose 13 offspring are all similarly
unaffected. As are their children.
FATHER
I heard
he was really busy, and away a lot when his kids were young. His loving and
devoted wife Monica was and is to me the kind of wife and mum that any girl
should aspire to be.
Frank
had just retired when we met; and that meant still keeping his hand in. He was
still finishing the retirement house at Tea Gardens which seems to have been
built from ‘scoreage’, which is builder talk for what is left over on a job.
I saw
his HX Holden wagon struggle up Hermington street with a stack on the roof
rack, and a load in the trailer. They would add in a car load of grand
children, and make it all look impossibly easy to deal with. Sure thing, take
the kids, take half a ton of building materials, work all weekend. That was
easy for Frank and Monica!
Cas
loved her dad (and her mum) heaps, but she had trouble being ‘seen’ as the
second youngest of six kids, especially since the beloved last kid was a boy. I
think any ‘5th out of 6th’ is always going to feel slightly out of the loop.
She had firm and supportive relationships with her older siblings.
Life for
the Fitzy kids wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t too tough either. Monica kept them
insulated from the gritty side of going broke and having a dad who was forced
to work out around Dubbo, building fibro project houses – one a week. He worked
like a man possessed. His son Tony carries on the tradition. They were tough as
nails.
Frank
was delightfully old fashioned. He wouldn’t let anyone swear in front of his
women. He decked a guy at the pub for doing that. One time he and Tony came
home from the pub; got changed, and went back. For a stoush.
Life was
home, family, church, and school. The kids were all raised through the Catholic
system and all have stories to tell about how tough that was. I still don’t
‘get’ why the Marist Brothers and the nuns were so tough – or cruel, depending
on your outlook.
“They
used to flog me every morning because I never did my homework” Frank told me of
his school days around Strathfield. When I reacted to that, and said how bad
they were, he bounced straight back: “Oh no, they were good blokes, I used to
play football with them after school”.
AND THEN:
I did the unspeakable, and exited the family. No one has done that, which is a big strength
of the Fitzmaurice’s. At least, none of the other 5 siblings lost a partner - the core of the family
is together, and they stay together.
We would gather every Christmas and Easter, and be a big family. Mon cooked a big roast,
and always made sure I didn’t get peas because I hate them. She never forgot.
I really missed it when I left, and probably unrealistically I pined for some kind of inclusion.
It came eventually, Mon wrote to me, and I bumped into a bunch of Fitzys - especially Frank
and Mon - at a Chinese restaurant. They were gracious, and Frank was warm to me.
As if nothing had happened. It lifted my heart, and I left smiling.
The next time I saw Frank was at his funeral.
Father Kevin rightly said that Frank was sentimental. He got the following poem out of his
wallet before he died, and gave it to his first born, Tony.
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room
Why cry for a soul set free
Miss me a little – but not for long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love that we once shared
Miss me – but let me go
After, I walked alone and slowly to the front of the Tea Gardens Catholic Church as the
crowd filed out behind the family. There was a photo of Frank taken just weeks earlier at Anzac Day.
He was in the top frame, looking proud and happy and frail, wearing his medals.
In the bottom frame he is sitting in an MG sportscar before the little Tea Gardens march.
He is smiling beatifically. He made it. My tears smudged the glass.
Footnote
I got a lot of joy and comfort from my daughter’s relationship with her grand dad.
Jess and Nathan visited him, prayed over him, and were there on Anzac day.
Their connection reached out and was part of me.
