Month: January 2022

I have never been captured by the value of visiting a grave-site or memorial garden. Very old ones can be charming or have historical interest, but I have never felt the presence of a loved one in such a place. In any case, today is not the day to visit a grave yard.

Even so, I did lose almost the whole of myself on this day 23 years ago with the sudden passing of my husband, Michael. It had been a summer and a day much like this, with not a cloud in the sky. Laura was visiting her cousin in Brisbane, and Amy and I had been shopping for new bed linen and refurbishing Laura’s bedroom ahead of her return. Michael had been back at work that day, and was planning a dawn round of golf with his office team the next morning. But there was no next morning. The three of us ate dinner together, settled down to watch television, and then it was all over. Not everyone has a warning heart attack. Sometimes they just die.

What followed was horror and numbness, hardwork and loneliness. For the girls, I can barely say. They continued on with school and friends but their lives were changed in ways that I can only guess at now. To be honest, we seldom talk about it. They prefer other less subjective confidantes, and I understand that.

It has occurred to me many times over the years that I never really paid tribute to Michael. The funeral and the period leading up to it was my worst nightmare. I did not want to reflect and socialise. I wanted to get it over and be left alone with the children. I did not speak at the funeral because I feared I could not. I arrived at the moment the service was due to start and left immediately afterwards without talking to anyone. Only back at home, where most mourners followed me, could I breath enough to make conversation. But by then the time for speeches was past.

And in the days and weeks that followed, while I sat surrounded by flowers (in vases, buckets, pots, jam jars, whatever) and sifted through a mountain of cards and letters, I could not find the power to respond. All I could bring myself to focus on was what I had to do next – find a job, sell the house, buy a home closer to town (12 acres at Whitford was no longer manageable), get the house and garden up to scratch for marketing, suspend mortgage repayments, find a job, find a job, find a job.

I was doing Michael, and the many others who also lost him, a disservice.

Not only did his loss leave me shaken and numb and joyless – it also impacted the lives of many other people. His daughters, it goes without saying. His widowed mother and his family, who relied on him for support in a variety of ways. His peers and professional friends who lost a colleague. His work team that he had lead into unprecedented new territories, and especially those he had cajoled and pushed to take on new challenges in education and management roles. My father, who cried for perhaps the first time in his adult life when Michael died. My wider family, who lost a brother-in-law and uncle that took up a big space at the heart of our family.

We all lost the generous, expansive, straight-shooting, relentless achiever who never said an unkind word about anyone, and whose mantra was, “Let’s do it.”

He is gone, long gone, but never forgotten.

It is impossible to forget the man who hid behind a pillar to leap out and invite you to the school ball, and who could finish every sentence for you as you could for him. Michael always got what he wanted because he simply went out and got it. Once upon a time he must have wanted me. I am so glad, and now I am so sad just remembering.

I went on to work in a top six law firm, become a partner in another firm, and I am still practising law. I hope he would have been proud. His daughters have grown up beautiful and clever and as determined as him. I know he would have been proud. He has the most wonderful grandson ever. He would have been over the moon!

We survived, moved on, and eventually thrived. I know he would be happy for us because he loved us.

RIP Michael – we love you still.

“Around and around and around and around we gooooooooooo….”

That is what Chuck Berry sang back in 1958, on the ‘B’ side of the vastly better single, Johnny B Goode. But it is what is stuck on the loop track in my head at the moment as we tumble head-first into a new year.

Last night we went out to a party at the home of my sister, Jacqui. It was a bit of a waifs and strays evening, since all the smart people are off on holiday somewhere that is not Auckland. Indeed, of the adults there (half the gathering was my niece’s friends – ‘young adults’ you might say) Johan and I were the only couple not planning to take off elsewhere in the next few days. The grownups, as I like to call us, consisted of five couples, all of whom were closer to the century than not, but that is detail enough.

It was a pleasant evening, notwithstanding that we largely stuck to our tribes. That is to say the junior contingent took over one half of the courtyard, hoarded their drinks in chilli bins, and treated us with exaggerated politeness when forced to pass through our territory. We elders were also divided into the women’s group (seated, gossiping) and the men’s group (standing, drink in one hand, the other in a pocket, and discussing we know not what). If you are from NZ and have ever been to a party, I am pretty sure you can picture it perfectly.

The meld comes of course when food is served. Everyone wants food, and will mix and mingle to some extent to get it. That is the part of the evening where I get to exchange vaguely professional gossip with the men. I don’t know what they talk to the other women about. Maybe they flirt. Last night one young lady, on her way up the professional ladder, was kind enough to engage a couple of us in conversation where we felt vaguely like we may have been passing on useful information. I am pretty sure that she was in fact smarter than the lawyer, merchant banker and financier put together, but it was kind of her to talk to us. And I will look her up when I finally get to build a kitchen up at Pohuehue.

Crowds like that tend to fade early. I was shocked to hear that some of the people I was with have been known to sleep through the witching hour on NYE. Not me. I have often seen the new year in alone, but I have never failed to see it in. Anyway, it was getting on, and as we are getting on too, we were looking forward to singing Auld Lang Syne and buggering off home to bed. But in fact, we barely noticed the clock ticking over for the drama in the bathroom. Yes, the bathroom.

One of our number had a call of nature a little before midnight. Perhaps she anticipated there might be dancing and thought an empty bladder was called for. In any event, having done the necessary, she discovered that she could not open the bathroom door from the inside. Mind you, this should not entirely have been a surprise since the kitchen designer had been temporarily trapped in the same room earlier, and there was a large notice on the door suggesting the use of one of the other two bathrooms in the house. Even so, she was trapped. The door could not be opened from the outside either, and the minutes to midnight were ticking away.

This damsel, being a competent mature woman, was not distressed. She called for a glass of wine and a screwdriver to be passed to her through the bathroom window. Fortunately on the ground floor, but with one of those opening limiters to foil burghlers, and middle-aged women trying to get out of the bathroom. She then spent the next 10 minutes, including the Auld Lang Syne moment, chipping the pins out of the door hinges, until the door could be removed in its entirety. The youngsters, stunned at her ability to solve her own problems, were lined up in a half circle to applaud her escape. Well done that woman! She emerged with a smile and got on with her glass of wine. I can think of worse ways to end one year and start another.

At midnight I texted “happy new year” to my girls, and added that I had a pavlova, berries and cream if one of them wanted to have lunch or dinner today. Turns out they do – dinner at my place apparently. I was hoping to lounge about sipping champagne in one or the other’s garden while the male folk cooked on the barbecue. I do not have a garden, only a little deck. Johan will have to go out there and barbecue, and I have had to clean the house, shop for and prepare food. Not quite what I had in mind, but still nice to celebrate with my family.

Happy new year one and all!

Oh, and the loop? Well the thing is, something pretty much like this happens every year. And on we go. A week or two of long days in and out of the sun, then back to work. Same old, same old. Maybe – if we are lucky.