Sarah Myles - Towards the Mountain: A story of grief and hope forty years on from Erebus

This book was written with the support of the Mentor Programme run by the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) and sponsored by Creative New Zealand.

First published in 2019

Text Sarah Myles, 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The poem Erebus Voices by Bill Manhire, which appears , is reproduced with permission.

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Allen & Unwin

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

ISBN 978 1 98854 726 8

eISBN 978 1 76087 280 9

Design by Megan van Staden

Cover photograph: Jane Ussher

For Frank and Eileen

For Scott and our girls

For Erebus x

IT IS 2 MARCH 2016, AND MY GRANDMOTHER EILEEN has just died.

As my family and I load the car and hit the road from Napier to New Plymouth, I still have no details of the funeral. I call my mother, Raewyn, to see how shes doing, to find out if she knows anything. She informs me that the family is having trouble pinning down a date, and that Eileen is lying at the family undertakers.

Trust my mother to die during Lent. Mum sighs.

All of the churches are booked out, including Eileens local parish of over 60 years. If my grandmother ever got wind of this, she would turn in her well.

Mum keeps talking, but I no longer hear what she is saying. My mind is stuck on her comment about the family undertaker. We have a family funeral director? Did my grandmother have some sort of account there? But nobodys died since

Oh.

Nobody has died since Frank.

The biggest thing to have happened to my grandmother in her 83 years of lifeindeed, the biggest thing to have happened to my familyhas once again set a place at our table. My family already has a protocol for who takes care of us when we die, and Franks funeral arrangements have predetermined my grandmothers. His plot was her plot, and, for my mother and her siblings, the traumatic loss of their father all those years ago has once again come hurtling to the fore.

Funeral arrangements are soon made. Our family gathers. The night before the funeral, I help carry Eileen into the same church where Franks service was held 37 years earlier. Even as I write this, three years later, I still remember the weight of the coffin, the weight of my grief as my cousins and I guided our grandmothers body into the church. I still recall the memories I shared then of this formidable woman, of her devotion, her temper, her love.

After the funeral the next day, we head to Eileens for a meal and a drink, and I spend that night reconnecting with my cousins. We cry together, and then we laugh so hard we come full circle and start crying all over again. Sometimes family is the best medicine.

On the third day, we bury Eileen in the same plot as her beloved Frank, under the watchful gaze of Taranaki. At one stage, my young daughter steps forward to read the inscription on Franks headstone: Died as a result of air accident at Mount Erebus, Antarctica. As we bow our heads to pray for Eileens soul, my daughter points at Taranaki in the distance, her voice cutting through the silence.

Is that the mountain Great Poppa died on?

Some stifle laughs, others clear their throats in disbelief. I choke on my words, struggling to maintain my composure, but it is too late. All the pain, all the anxiety of my childhood comes rushing back, pressing on my chest and rising up my throat. Doesnt she know we dont talk about that in public? Ever since I was three and a quarter years old, I have learned to keep quiet about Erebus. Its a topic of conversation that never goes well. When I was young, if I ever said anything like my poppa died in the Erebus Disaster, it was usually met with wide-eyed shock, sometimes even embarrassment. Some people would try to ignore the fact I had spoken altogether, while others might offer a smile-of-pity and a well-meaning pat on the head as they gingerly sidestepped both me and the conversation. I always felt quite proud of Pops, but these awkward moments taught me that shame surrounded Erebus. So I learned to tread carefully, to make myself invisible whenever Erebus showed itself.

My husband takes my daughters hand and says something quietly to her.

I have forgotten how to become invisible.

My family lives with a hole at its centre, a giant crater rimmed with jagged rocks, scorched earth and difficult terrain. There are no flowers growing there, only wild tussock and spindly pine, buffeted by a tempest of our own making. There is nothing beautiful about this hole, but it calls to me like the peak summons the climber.

At the centre of this hole, I find the source of my familys pain, our loss and our loneliness. In this place lies my grandfather, buried under a foot of snow. As I gaze over the craters rim, I am captured by a benevolent trick of the light. In the darkness burns a torch, a beacon of hope that beckons to methis wayand lights the pathway through our pain.

Erebus Erebus Erebus

The word is enmeshed in my DNA.

Scott Base. McMurdo Sound. Lewis Bay.

The language of Antarctica has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. The place names repeat, forming tissue and sinew and grey matter, shaping the memories I have of my grandfather.

28 November 1979. A date forever etched on my heart.

Frank Christmas is the folk hero of our family, fondly remembered. He was a much-admired working-class hero, but for me he became as hazy and out of focus as the photographs he so carefully composed during his lifetime. He was always referred to in vague, romantic undertonesWe never speak ill of the dead, Sarahand, for a while, Erebus became the only thing that he was known for. It completely overshadowed any goodness in his life.

Trying to describe the lovable man I hardly knew is like trying to grasp a flyaway strand from a silken cocoon. Ever since I was a little girl, I have seen these silken strands dancing on the air currents of familial life, floating freely, waiting for a seamstress and a loom. Until recently, these strands were at the mercy of the memories and goodwill of others, likely to slip away at any moment. One strand by itself is delicate and vulnerable to break, but I know that by spinning these strands together they will form a stronger, more tangible thread.

Early in 2017, I decided to head west again but this time I went alone. It wasnt until I arrived in New Plymouth that I realised it was the eve of Eileens first anniversary. In the morning, I would visit Eileens gravesite for the first time since her funeral. I would also meet with the first of many people who would eventually appear in this book.

In the year following Eileens death, I found myself pestered by a quiet but persistent thought. Now that Eileen is dead, can we finally talk freely about Frank?