We are at the funeral. I insist on being a pallbearer. Kevin, Eamonn, Dad, Gary’s best friends Andrew and Luis and I carry the coffin to the music of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. I am in the middle; the men take the weight of the casket. I felt that I carried my brother in his life, so I would absolutely carry him out.
Before we arrive at the chapel, we are at my parents’ home. I am blown away by how many people are here. My parents live two hours from Sydney. Kevin’s friends arrive and Gary’s friends from school, whom I hadn’t seen for years. Kevin’s pilot friends, whom I don’t personally know, are here. People are everywhere. There is a huge crowd of people gathered all around our property. We Doran’s are popular folk, it seems.
The hearse arrives. My Dad insisted that we escort it to the chapel, which is about a 40-minute drive.
I am outside watching with everyone else. Andrew, Gary’s friend, is next to me. It feels surreal here. I don’t feel that this is really happening.
“Is this for real? Is my brother in that dark hearse that I am watching driving up the road? No, that can’t be him in that coffin. Yes, it is him. I saw him lying in his coffin yesterday.”
The previous day I escorted my mother for the viewing. We both were gently ushered into the viewing room. Mum could not stay with me, so she went back outside to the reception and spoke with one of the staff whilst I stayed.
I stared at my dead brother. I wanted to lash out and tear the funeral home to pieces. I put the letter I wrote him a few days before into his shirt. I do not recall what I wrote. Later I would wish I had kept a copy of it.
“Why is his hair so neat and tidy? I can’t stand that, he never looked like that.” I mess up his hair. “That’s better.” I have never seen my brother look so smartly dressed. It is bizarre to see Gary dressed in a business shirt and nice slacks. What really broke my heart was that he was wearing the clothes that my mother had bought for him for Christmas; she decided to have the morticians dress him in his Christmas presents.
I stay for a while. I don’t feel his presence. I watch him. “Why does he look so young? He only looks about 24. He looks very peaceful.”
He has had an autopsy. I hate that so much. The thought wants to make me scream. “Don’t think about it!” I don’t like the lid of the coffin standing up against the wall like that. It pisses me off. I think about his body, cut up from the autopsy. That was the worst thing, the autopsy. “How dare those fucking idiots insist on cutting up my brother!” I hated them. All of them.
”Now I remember, yes same coffin. My brother is in that hearse, in that coffin…I want to scream. How strange that I am watching this from the air. I am not in my body, I am floating above. I can see the hearse coming but I’m above, I’m both, I am in my body and I am watching from above. Surely I am going insane.
“Those tears in my eyes are as a big as horses’ tears, I remember. How can anyone have such big tears? I wonder for the second time. This isn’t happening. No. I remember seeing him in the morgue. Very scruffy then, and I felt him, cold, so cold.
“Oh, God, why am I so freaked out? She, the expert on death. She, who loves to talk about near-death experiences. She, the Miss NDE expert, the death expert. Thank God I understand some of this. If I hadn’t experienced and researched near-death experiences like I have, I don’t think I could do this.
“Wait, Debbie, be still. Shut up! He is happy now. You know that he is OK, life goes on after this. Shut Up! Shut Up! I know but I don’t care, I want him back. Give him back, God! I said Give Him Back! How dare you take him from me! HOW DARE YOU!”
We follow the big black hearse to the gravesite. Three cars chasing the hearse. When it pulled up on to the ground, Eamonn lined up our cars behind it, three in total. I was with Andrew and Kevin. Eamonn was with his partner at the time. Dad and Mum and the four grandchildren were in another car. These kids were all that could hold Mother together.
The funeral director warned us that once we had slowly driven down the country roads and hit the highway, he would go fast. Andrew had a lot of trouble keeping up. Later, we joked about how the three cars were having trouble keeping up the big, black hearse with a V8-engine. We thought Gary would have found that rather amusing.
Many cars were following us. I remember how one car, coming from the opposite direction, pulled over as a sign of respect.
We pulled up near the crematorium. People are everywhere; some must have gone before us. The funeral director was nervous that I was a pallbearer, but my Dad and brothers made sure I didn’t have to carry any weight. I was surrounded by my men. Not my husband, though.
We delivered my brother to the altar and the funeral directors took the casket from us and laid it down. We then sat down.
My time came to read the eulogy. I stood there, as composed as I could be. I drew from my inner strength. I vowed to myself that the congregation would hear the words I wrote about my brother, and that they would understand what a good person he was. These are the words that I spoke:
Thank you all for coming today to help us not mourn the death of Gary, but to celebrate his life, short as it was.
As I was writing this, the thought crossed my mind, that when we are upset with a loved one, if we were to think about what we would write as a Tribute for that person, it would bring back to us how precious every minute spent with the people we love is.
Gaz was a bit of a lost soul who didn’t feel that he had to conform to what society expected. Political correctness was definitely not a high priority for him. Nor was he ever worried about what other people thought of him. He couldn’t be bothered with gossip and he accepted people for who they were.
Gary was an incredibly talented person. His artwork was amazing. I was always mesmerized with the colours he was able to create. He told me he would see these colours in his dreams. These colours would manifest in his artwork and especially in the children’s book he was trying to get published. I promise you, sweet brother, I will finish that book for you and it will be published. Gaz was also a very talented musician and we are fortunate that he has left us tapes of him jamming sessions.
Gary often had troubled times, but he was fortunate that he had a family who loved and accepted him for who he was. A special mention here must go to my Mother, who cared and helped him so much. She was always careful never to over-step the boundaries by interfering with his life. On behalf of Gary, I thank you, Mum.
He was also fortunate to have Dad and Eamonn, who would try and give him employment whenever he needed it. His brother, Kevin, was there for him if he needed to have someone to talk to, regardless of the time.
I held a special bond with my brother. We would spend hours discussing the meaning of life and what happens when we die. We both believe that we move on to a far grander place than this after death. I guess Gary knows all the answers now and his search is over.
If we could see Gary’s spirit standing with us here, he would be telling us not to mourn for him but to be happy for him, because now, he resides in peaceful bliss.
I love you Gaz, we all do.
I then placed a copy of this eulogy on his coffin.
I watched as my father broke down when he tried to read his tribute. Eamonn and Kevin had to go up to the altar and bring him back down, sobbing. I had never once seen my father cry in all his life. I had never once seen him not cope with something, until now.
When the service was over and the curtains closed, The Journey by Tommy Emmanuelle was played. I lost my mind. I screamed hysterically. Finally, my husband decided to sit next to me -- when his mother told him to.
Our marriage failed a few years later.
# # #
It is the day before Gary’s body was discovered. My mother rang me. She is always fussing over us, even though we are grown up. She called me in a panic because she hadn’t heard from Gary for a few days. I got a bit short with her and told her to stop her worrying. I had only spoken to him the day before, and he was unusually happy. “I’m sure he’s fine, Mum,” I told her.
Actually, he was not fine. He was dead.
Mum rang him and got no answer, so she went to his flat and knocked. No answer at the door. She felt uneasy but returned home. Then something told her to go back to the flat. His shoes were still outside the door. Still no answer. For some reason she felt the urge to open his garage, something she would never normally do.
There he was. Her son, lifeless, cold, twisted. “Wake up, Gary, wake up, don’t do this, wake up!” A friend of hers who lived in the same complex drove in at that precise moment. She helped comfort my mother.
The police and ambulance were called. My father was called and arrived at Gary’s flat. It was then that he picked up the telephone to tell me something that was to change my life forever.
Gary died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The car doors were open. The engine was switched on, but the car had run out of petrol. His body was found around the back right-hand wheel, behind the car, where he had finally collapsed. It looked as though he had perhaps changed his mind and was trying to escape. But it was too late; the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning slow down the body. The mind remains alert for a while, but the body becomes paralysed. He died in the car that I had been driving for a year, which he had leant to me when he lost his driver’s license.
I believe Gary tried to change his mind but God (creation, or whatever you want to call this great energy) said, “No, son, you have suffered enough, come home now.” I truly believe this. The autopsy results revealed that he had a very excessive amount of alcohol in his bloodstream, as well.
The following day, Kevin, Dad, Eamonn, Andrew, and I sorted out Gary’s flat. It was an absolute pigsty. People who suffer from very deep depression really don’t care about hygiene and tidiness. We dumped most of his things, but some items like his artwork, guitar, and cartoons, we kept.
Mum couldn’t help; she was too distraught. We tried to protect her from all this. When the flat was just about cleaned and emptied, she came over with her friend, Val. We left her and Val there, as we were goingback to the morgue. I was angry. I had just had an argument with the nurse at the morgue. I wanted to see him again, and she had refused. I hit the roof but got my own way. I told her to have him ready for viewing in 10 minutes.
Kevin, Eamonn and I visited the morgue for a second time. It was a small, grey Besser brick building. To me, it looked like the outside toilets of the hospital. We walked up to the ‘toilet block’ arm in arm, supporting each other, although we were all still in denial.
We three siblings walked in, holding each other up. I’ll never forget Kevin saying, “He’s slipping a bit, doesn’t look so good today.” Such denial. Gary’s lips where cherry red, the effects of the carbon monoxide. I watched, waiting, aching for him to move and be alive. I prayed that his spirit would come and tell me he was happy. I was terribly afraid that he may not be happy wherever he was; that was the worst thing for me. All I wanted was for him to be at peace and happy -– at last.
I remember looking down at my brother and touching his face. He was so cold. I was in total disbelief that it was Gary lying down, lifeless and cold. I thought that any minute he would open his eyes, that he wasn’t really dead.
I wondered if he was watching us, the three of us so distressed and grief-stricken. I wondered then, if he was watching, if he could see us, how would he feel?
In the meantime, my mother was leaving the flat and was at the front door when she said to Val, “One minute.” She says she doesn’t know why she did this; something just urged her to. She went over to my brother’s dual cassette player and opened the first one. Nothing. She opened the second one and took the tape out and put it in her pocket. Val asked her why she did that, and she simply replied, “I don’t know.”
Later that night, Kevin and I went back to my house and proceeded to get very drunk. My father called us at 10.30 p.m. He said, “Debbie, listen to this.” Kevin and I shared the phone and held each other tightly as Dad played the tape to us that my mother had taken. She hadn’t listened to it yet. On the tape, Gary was playing his guitar and singing.
On the second side of the tape, Gary started to talk. He talked about his life. Kevin and I stood there listening closely as my Dad played the tape to us. We hear Gary’s voice.
Gary is saying, “If there is a God, well fuck him, the cunt, he didn’t give a fuck about me.”
The tape is full of such words, but three things he said still stick in my mind: “Debbie, if it wasn’t for you, I would have been gone from here a long time ago, I’m sorry for this, I’m sorry for you, too, Mum, I am sorry for all of you.”
The tape continues. We hear Gary speaking again. “A fly has more meaning to life than me. I don’t belong here.” As I listened, I remembered that he used those very words to tell me how he felt so often: “I don’t belong here, I don’t fit in.”
He continues on about how he was stepped on world by the ”fucks of the world” and how he was a decent, honest guy who just couldn’t get a break.
At the end of the tape he says, “Well I guess that’s it, that’s all I have to say, I’m out of here.”
