We found him in the paddock, in the fading light, next to his upended bike, his head speared into the dirt, his eyes open. It was the worst thing you could ever dream up. You could pull my arm off with a tractor, and I would get over it. I will never get over this. We were everywhere on him, trying to resuscitate him, frantically pumping CPR, but he was already cold. Cold in your son’s skin: that is hell right there. I would kill myself rather than feel that again. Eighteen months, and the thought can have me back in those full-body sobs.

You never forget the eyes or the bike or the moment, no matter how much you wish to, and then you hate yourself for dishonouring your child’s death by the wishing.

But now, after all this time, and all this pain, I see him again, embarrassed by me, by the fact that I have given up. He was a spirited child, if nothing else. I hear him tossing a ball in the air, catching it, and asking ‘Why?’ ‘Why are you asleep on the couch, Dad? Why is the place a mess? Why don’t you do anything? Why is Mum gone?’ In my head I make the first steps towards resolving to do better.

Then I open another beer. I know I’m not capable of getting back to farm work. I can’t see the point. Farm work needs vision and goals for the future: meaningless abstracts, as far as I am concerned. So what if the fences fall down, or the oats and the wheat don’t get planted? I’ll just run fewer animals. I’ll run no animals. If the troughs and the tanks leak, there’s still water in the creek — for now anyway. Time has stood still for me for eighteen months. I have existed in a blurry dream world, wishing to go back and unable to go forward. The only thing that has made the clock move ahead is the boxes, and that is seriously weird.

I push the door to the laundry to where the boxes are. They sit under their sheet like any other piece of discarded furniture, past their time of usefulness. I quickly check that the money is there, as well as the ash, that I’m not imagining their existence, and then shut the door, pulling it tight. I leave my beer behind, walk out into the garden, and try to think. If the boxes are the only thing that gets me out of the house and away from the beer, then I need to think about boxes.