They say you need a bushfire to create new life. That is what happened with my uncle and me.
It was years ago, my Dad’s family had a boat, a wooden thing called the Phoenix. Dad and his brother would sneak out onto it to drink and smoke. They were just kids really. One night my uncle passed out with his cigarette still lit.
Unlike bushfires, flame can only destroy so much of a boat before the water claims it.
The water claimed my uncle too.
The boat went down just off the dock in shallow water. My dad spent the next two days diving down to salvage fittings before the water ruined them. Deep breath, dive, hour after hour.
He took an ad out in the local rag, same day as the obituary, to sell everything he had saved. They had to pay for the funeral somehow.
Someone offered to buy the lot, so my dad took it round. He opened the door, this old bloke, and behind him stood his daughter.
Dad couldn’t keep his eyes off her, he says, my mother.
So the flame from the cigarette that took my uncle’s last breath gave me my first.
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