JOHN'S AT THE DOOR

The night my uncle John died he called out to my mother, his sister. He had been in Wolston Park, a large mental health hospital in Brisbane. He had been discharged the day before despite my mums’ reservations. In the early hours of the morning he died my mother woke my father up & told him to “go & get the door” because she had heard someone calling out to her. My dad went to the door but no one was there. My mum heard it again, this time recognising the voice to be her brother John, to which her response was “something’s happened, something’s happened to John”. Later that morning they were notified of his death by the police. He had been found in a public toilet at Shorncliffe (he lived in Brisbane), he had died of acute alcohol poisoning. It is believed that he had caught the last train the night before to go to Sandgate but got off at the wrong train station. He had been heading towards Redcliffe, to where my mother lived…to where his little sister Mary lived.