The 7 Stages of Grieving

Scene 2

‘Grief … grieving … nothing, nothing, I feel nothing.’ Scene 2

Scene 4

‘My grandmother was a strong God-fearing woman who, at the age of sixty-two, was taken from us, passed away, moved on, gone to meet her maker, departed this world, slipped in to her eternal sleep, her final resting place, laid to rest.’ Scene 4

‘The whole family came together for meals.’ Scene 4

‘… gave her tithe to the church and was visibly nervous at the mention of “gubberment”.’ Scene 4

‘Sometimes you felt like crying …, and sometimes the joy of being there was enough to forget, even for the briefest moment, the reason.’ Scene 4

‘The neighbours would watch from the safety of their kitchen window.’ Scene 4

‘She took so many stories with her to the grave.’ Scene 4

Scene 5

‘The room is full of photographs … A testimony to good times, a constant reminder.’ Scene 5

‘With an unspoken gesture we remove the picture of my nana from her commanding position … and without a sound push her in to the shadow.’ Scene 5

‘Everything has its time.’ Scene 5

Scene 6

‘I’m trying to deal with Dad’s death. He hasn’t died yet.’ Scene 6

‘He hasn’t stopped fighting since ’67.’ Scene 6

‘The pain comes in here, I cry and cry until I can’t feel anymore. Numbed.’ Scene 6

‘It’s inevitable.’ Scene 6

‘The one thing that I find comforting about death is that other people die too.’ Scene 6

Scene 9

‘They come in the front door.’ Scene 9

‘I invited them in, they demanded respect.’ Scene 9

‘They sat in my father’s seat.’ Scene 9

‘Without warning.’ Scene 9

‘One took a handful of my hair and led my head to their knee … washed his face in my blood .. ploughed my feet. My feet.’ Scene 9

‘My children stolen away to a safe place.’ Scene 9

‘I lie painfully sleepless. In a landscape of things I know are sacred. Watching unsympathetic wanderings.’ Scene 9

Scene 10

‘You can’t park that there! You’re taking up the whole harbour. Go on, get!’ Scene 10

Scene 11

‘Have you ever been black? You know when you wake up one morning and you’re black?’ Scene 11

‘You get a lot of attention, special treatment from being black.’ Scene 11

‘Keep an eye on the nigger.’ Scene 11

‘… policemen, firemen, army, fucken UN and that same sniffer dog.’ Scene 11

‘Thinking that tomorrow will be a better day, I go to bed. … I wake up, looking in the mirror… I’m still black!’ Scene 11

Scene 12

‘She wasn’t going to stay with the rest of us. That was very clear.’ Scene 12

‘Dad said she was stuck up and wasn’t really family.’ Scene 12

‘She doesn’t have much luggage.’ Scene 12

The woman begins to fill the suitcase with red earth from the grave.
‘Crying, at last crying.’ Scene 12

Scene 13

‘The group was followed by Domrow and Harris … ‘ Scene 13

‘Harris made a series of calls on the police radio seeking assistance …’ Scene 13

The woman finally breaks out.
‘People called him Boonie!’ Scene 13

‘The people at the watch house didn’t know what to do so they called the ambulance.’ Scene 13

‘They took him to the Royal Brisbane Hospital pounding and pushing his limp body.’ Scene 13

Scene 14

‘Thousands … stretched out … Were not fighting, were grieving.’ Scene 14

‘If you feel like fighting, if you feel like yelling, grab it in your hand and show your grief, lift it up and show the world.’ Scene 14

‘We come from a long tradition of storytelling. Is this the only way we can get our story told?’ Scene 14

‘Don’t tell me we’re not fighting! Don’t tell me we don’t fight most of our lives.’ Scene 14

Scene 15

‘What is it worth?’ Scene 15

Scene 16

‘Now I want to tell you a story. Ill tell it how it was told to me.’ Scene 16

‘This pile here is the land, the source, the spirit, the core of everything. Are you with me on that?’ Scene 16

‘And this one here is about culture, family, song, tradition, dance. Have you got that?’ Scene 16

‘Now imagine when the children are taken away from this. Are you with me?’ Scene 16

The woman flays her arm through the remaining large pile and circle destroying it. (Scene 16)

Scene 17

‘… some other black lad had done something wrong … all them Murri boys look alike.’ Scene 17

‘So with my brother’s sense of justice… he pushed the police officer.’ Scene 17

‘Shame.’ Scene 17

‘They charged him – as if he wasn’t charged enough.’ Scene 17

‘But when Dad went to pick him up from the watchhouse in the middle of the night the shame was palpable.’ Scene 17

‘This is how it starts, the cycle.’ Scene 17

‘No matter how clean our clothes are. No matter how tidy we keep our house .. how hard we work … we are black.’ Scene 17

‘The story hasn’t finished yet.’ Scene 17

Scene 20

‘Boats ready for departure. If you don’t want to stay.’ Scene 20

‘My nation knows my identity. A sun, A land, A people, travelling.’ Scene 20

Scene 21

‘What does it mean when some people can even read or write the word?’ Scene 21

‘Everything has its time.’ Scene 21

Scene 22

‘You know there has always been this grieving.’ Scene 22

‘Grieving for our land, our families.’ Scene 22

‘I am scared my heart is hardening.’ Scene 22

‘These are my stories. These are my people’s stories. They need to be told.’ Scene 22

The woman places the suitcase down at the feet of the audience. (Scene 22)

Scene 23

‘Nothing. I feel nothing.’ Scene 23

The Longest Memory

Chapter 1 

..bags under his, eyes are sacs of worries, witnesses of dreams, nightmares and sleep from which a man should not be allowed to wake. (Whitechapel) Chapter  1

A simple lesson in obedience was all that my boy required. He needed to know his station sooner rather than too late. I believed some punishment would do him good because it would keep him alive by driving any notion of freedom from responsibility. (Whitechapel) Chapter 1

There is no way this nigger is not going to face the usual punishment for his crime. (Sanders Junior) Chapter 1

The first lash ripped a hole in my head and I screamed for my son, who fell silent as the grass and trees. (Whitechapel) Chapter 1

But he was gone halfway into it all. (Whitechapel) Chapter 1

Everyone without exception blames me for the death. (Whitechapel) Chapter 1

Chapter 2 

‘Did you think you were better schooled in the management of a slaveholding than I?’ (Mr Whitechapel to Sanders Junior) Chapter 2

‘Fatten up slaves too much with large regular meals and decent quarters.’ (Other plantation owners about Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 2

Such rough handling provides rougher responses. (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 2

First and foremost as subjects of God though blessed with lesser faculties. (Mr Whitechapel about slaves) Chapter 2

God should guide us in our dealings with slaves as he counsels us in everything else. (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 2

Chapter 3 

Wrong to look at a slave girl and feel like a man? (Sanders Senior) Chapter 3

The word of a white man is worth that of how many slaves? (Sanders Senior) Chapter 3

Cook is his wife, whatever the outcome, he loves her. (Whitechapel) Chapter 3

What good is a fat slave to anyone but himself … Cattle need fattening not slaves. (Sanders Senior) Chapter 3

Chapter 4 

After he laid his hands on me I wanted to die. (Cook) Chapter 4

A pure wife no longer pure. (Cook) Chapter 4

Chapter 5 

The words she sang them I heard a choir .. one day she stopped me and called out of the blue, now you can read you must learn to write too. (Chapel and Lydia) Chapter 5

The first learns from mistakes which earn him whip and fist, .. the second listens and what does not, then acts. (Whitechapel) Chapter 5

‘With her gone nothing could keep me there – father I am running I feel joy not fear.’ (Chapel) Chapter 5

Chapter 6 

‘Mock me all you want. It was a lesson that went wrong.’ (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 6

‘Give them your cruelty, and perhaps they’ll survive your whip.’ (Plantation owners) Chapter 6

‘Admit you felt alive for the first time in your life Whitechapel.’ (Plantation owners) Chapter 6

‘I treat my slaves with humanity.’ (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 6

‘I promote the teachings of Christ and practise slavery. I do not practice slavery and hide my beliefs.’ (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 6

‘We are all of us Christians of one sort or other. But you, Whitechapel, you promote the African at the expense of your own white Christian brother.’ (Plantation owners) Chapter 6

‘You can’t mix God with the slave business. God is for us, not them.’ (Plantation owners) Chapter 6

Chapter 7 

I take his hand, hop closer to him, .. and point his index finger to each word as I say it. (Lydia) Chapter 7

I recline in my chair and let his voice cascade over me. (Lydia) Chapter 7

‘W Your name begins with this letter, mine too.’ (Lydia) Chapter 7

Chapter 8 

All my life two pots are never empty …. I sometimes take from one to fill the other … My masters pot is full of the sweetest things … but I prefer my own. (Cook) Chapter 8

Inside is pride, not fear, not yet just pride swelling in my chest and filling my heart. (Cook) Chapter 8

… books and slaves to do not agree. (Cook on Whitechapel’s anticipated response), Chapter 8

Chapter 9 

In love with a slave. (Lydia) Chapter 9

‘Must never see the light of day together, must never read together, nor write, not sit together, … nor speak of these wicked secret meetings to anyone.’ (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 9

‘Might be possible in the future.’ (Mr Whitechapel) Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapel says nothing to me. Our hands explore each other in the dark. (Lydia) Chapter 10

I hold each of them up beside Chapel to see how they compare, no one has his wit, intelligence, charm and sensitive nature. Not one. (Lydia) Chapter 10

When it comes to the rights of slaves I part company with every one of them. (Lydia) Chapter 10

My pretty head shouldn’t be preoccupied with improving the lot of slaves. (Potential suitor to Lydia) Chapter 10

Chapter 11

‘Are we to attribute to slaves all the qualities we credit to ourselves as human beings? I think not.’ (The Virginian) Chapter 11

‘Slavery is a business. Christianity is a faith. Slavery answers to our physical and material wellbeing; Christianity looks after the hunger of the soul.’ (The Virginian) Chapter 11

‘Once we extend Christian values to include slaves we then throw into question the very basis of our forced enslavement of them.’ (The Virginian) Chapter 11

‘Too much attention is paid to the plantation owners and to the slaves at the expense of that level of poor whites who have to work for the former in close proximity to the latter.’ (The Virginian) Chapter 11

‘There is no sight more perfidious than that of a white woman with a black man.’ (The Virginian) Chapter 11

Chapter 12

He said what did I want to do something silly like dreaming about Africa for. (Whitechapel to great-granddaughter) Chapter 12

One day he was playing … next day he was marching… several days after that he was facing the sea. No one lifted a finger to help…. (Whitechapel to great-granddaughter) Chapter 12

‘You dream about something you don’t know make your dreams here.’ (Whitechapel to great-granddaughter) Chapter 12

We were all eager to go, not to watch a beating that should not be happening in the first place but to see the face of the old man who made it possible. (Great-granddaughter) Chapter 12

Chapter 13

‘He did not demonstrate an ounce of your common sense. His spirit was wild, you’re tame.’ (Sanders Junior to Whitechapel) Chapter 13

‘I see nothing of my father in him nor of myself.’ (Sanders Junior to Whitechapel) Chapter 13

‘What did you do wrong old man?’ (Sanders Junior to Whitechapel) Chapter 13

‘If you were white I would have wanted you as my father. The jacket is rightly yours.’ (Sanders Junior to Whitechapel) Chapter 13

Epilogue 

I am insufficient. (Whitechapel) Epilogue

Her name is a young man dreaming. (on Lydia, Whitechapel) Epilogue

I have been wrong all my days. (Whitechapel) Epilogue

Too much has happened to put right. I would need another life … to unravel this knotted mess. (Whitechapel) Epilogue

Nor can the master hope to rule the day and the night forever. (Whitechapel) Epilogue

Memory is pain trying to resurrect itself. (Whitechapel) Epilogue