Death is no stranger. I’ve had my own brushes with mortality. And during my fifties and sixties, several family members and friends died: Frances, Geraldine, Maureen, Maire, Lily, Lynne and Marilyn. Each person was a treasured part of my life, irreplaceable, and sorely missed. Yet the timing of their deaths allowed some graciousness and space to grieve each of them.
Maureen
| Born two months apart, and fast friends for life, we thought we'd grow old together. Happy 70th birthday! The only promise made there/ was a promise that we'd grow. 'Song for Liana', Erik Christensen | | Death will teach you perspective if you let it, but never as you might expect you must be willing to spend time, suspend disbelief and all else for that matter compels your full spirit and if you give it you will be changed. from 'In the Time of the Jacarandas' Blooming' |
Kathleen
A couple of years before I would attain my allotted three-score-and-ten in 2025 (I had the hubris to presume I would make it that far), I hatched a plot for some significant festivities. By the time I reached 2025 I was harrowed by the unexpected illness and recent death of my darling friend Kathleen. She was nine years younger than me, and the oncologist remarked that hers was “the thinnest medical file I’ve ever seen”. Kathleen was the queen of festivities and the patron saint of craic. I understood for the first time the nature of denial. How it becomes possible to simultaneously know the full medical truth and yet find it irreconcilable with the sheer exuberance of the woman before you. She was perhaps the most fully alive person I have ever known. And my absolute rock. Her belief in me kept me alive through many dark days.
Dee
Kathleen died on November 17th 2024, ten days before her 63rd birthday. A week later my lifelong friend, Dee, let me know of a cancer diagnosis. How glad I am we fulfilled a dream deferred from our youth by travelling together to Cambodia earlier that year. In early 2025 I was with her at Royal Perth, when she was told that her condition was untreatable, and palliative care was offered. Dee asked about the necessary protocols for VAD. In the end it was not required. I saw her late one afternoon and massaged her feet. The cancer had all but taken her voice, but she whispered a request for some good news, an uncharacteristic question. Dee was whip-smart and no stranger to the dark. This was not a Helen Steiner Rice moment. What could I say? It took me a moment, but then I recalled her longstanding support of the American Indian cause and had my answer. “After 49 years in prison AIM leader Leonard Peltier has at last been freed”. Early the next morning I had news of her death, four months after Kathleen’s.
Tess
I have known and loved my friend Tess since I met her in the postgraduate lounge at WAIT in 1979. It would be fair to say that Tess possessed the “fattest medical file” anybody has ever seen. Over the decades of our friendship, she defied the odds so many times it was tempting to believe she was invincible. Tess’ intellect was legendary, her strength unmatched, her creativity burned like fire. Her soul was founded on love for whoever and whatever was vulnerable. She supported me through my grieving for Kathleen and for Dee.
I had never seen her defeated until the day I sat with a mutual friend by her dialysis bed, after a series of catastrophic medical crises. She told us she’d ‘had enough’ and was going to refuse dialysis. She told me in particular that it was time to join Kathleen and Dee. It was a moment of truth, and yet it was typical of Tess’ extraordinary life force that she navigated beyond this, and for a golden period of five weeks had safe harbour in our home, during which time we celebrated her 71st birthday, had film festivals, practised calligraphy, wrote and talked of writing. Four months after Dee’s death, Tess died. She left behind two sons, two novels, and an unfinished memoir. Her friends are bereft.
I had never seen her defeated until the day I sat with a mutual friend by her dialysis bed, after a series of catastrophic medical crises. She told us she’d ‘had enough’ and was going to refuse dialysis. She told me in particular that it was time to join Kathleen and Dee. It was a moment of truth, and yet it was typical of Tess’ extraordinary life force that she navigated beyond this, and for a golden period of five weeks had safe harbour in our home, during which time we celebrated her 71st birthday, had film festivals, practised calligraphy, wrote and talked of writing. Four months after Dee’s death, Tess died. She left behind two sons, two novels, and an unfinished memoir. Her friends are bereft.
Yet there have still been joys, fierce and cherished. The plot I hatched for my first seventieth celebration? Well, that came to pass. I spent a week in Bali with my beloved nieces in February, and it exceeded all my hopes for family bonding and fun. And in June, the day Tess came home to us from hospital, I had an early morning phone call from the editor at Fremantle Press, offering to publish my poetry collection. It was glorious news and fabulous to be able to share it with Tess. It was painful, indeed, not to be able to tell Kathleen, who was the most stalwart fan of my writing. But if Joan Didion could allow herself a year of magical thinking, then perhaps I can be forgiven a moment’s indulgence? The sharp pain of not being able to tell Kathleen was swiftly followed by a quick glance upwards and the stray thought that perhaps she was “rearranging the furniture upstairs”.
She always was a mover and a shaker.
She always was a mover and a shaker.
The year I turned seventy I acquired doctoral level skills in triage. I have plotted my course carefully. My activism has, for the time being, been put on hold. Having long nourished the hope that I would be dancing on the stage of the Crown Theatre as a seventy-year-old, I chose to focus what remained of my energy towards this end. It became my de facto birthday party. Bittersweet for knowing Kathleen and Tess would not be cheering me on from the audience. Yet so many friends and family members did come, many for the first time. And that gave me great delight.
During this shipwrecked, storm-blinded, catastrophic time I have clung to the mast of my own life as best I could. It is not possible to survive the losses I’ve sustained this year without the love and support of others. The conversations, the meals, the garden tending, the flowers have been a life line. Friendship and family are without doubt, the most important things in my life.
During this shipwrecked, storm-blinded, catastrophic time I have clung to the mast of my own life as best I could. It is not possible to survive the losses I’ve sustained this year without the love and support of others. The conversations, the meals, the garden tending, the flowers have been a life line. Friendship and family are without doubt, the most important things in my life.
Being the person most likely, I created the ceremonies, the eulogies, and delivered the funeral services for both Dee and Tess. I did this in close consultation with their respective families and friends, striving always to do as Emily Dickinson advised, “tell the truth, but tell it slant”. It took everything I had in me to do this.
Jude
I was not there to farewell Jude, who left us in October. But by all accounts, the ceremonies surrounding her passing were sublime, and she rests now in the ground of her cherished home in North Carolina. Already a Boddhisatva and ordained minister, she was honoured with the name of teacher, an elevated rank in her Buddhist tradition. My great good fortune was to encounter a bunch of Buddhist nuns who had alighted at Manna, as unlikely as a flock of flamingos. I spoke with them and the senior woman said she had visited Asheville and done several retreats at Black Mountain. They left me with the assurance that monasteries around the world would include Judy in their meditations for the following 49 days.
And now I am trusting that those who love me will understand my next course of action. On December 6th, Larry and I are attending the Crowded House concert at Sandalford Winery, a 70th birthday gift from my beloved brother Carl. We will park our van in a paddock, attend the concert, stay the night, and then on Sunday 7th, head off for a four-month road trip, destination uncertain. It’s a seventies thing. And the communication style will be similar. Very intermittent. Maybe the occasional postcard, maybe the occasional post.
I am in dire need of rest, and have chosen this side quest. My grief needs ample, unhurried time; my soul craves the open road and the solace of Country. It’s hard stepping out of ordinary life for a time, but essential. It is, I hope, a temporary absence, not the permanent one that I know too well will come to us all sooner or later. I will carry your love with me, and know that my love remains with you.
I am in dire need of rest, and have chosen this side quest. My grief needs ample, unhurried time; my soul craves the open road and the solace of Country. It’s hard stepping out of ordinary life for a time, but essential. It is, I hope, a temporary absence, not the permanent one that I know too well will come to us all sooner or later. I will carry your love with me, and know that my love remains with you.
Ménage à Trois
Not traditional vows, ours.
By a winter-mirrored lake we said we’d take each other.
Before our kin gathered by a bird-haunted lake we took each other,
and vowed to stay true in the infinite tense of the present breath.
Then — deep breath — we went and set up house
with death,
who proved to be a better mate than you might imagine.
When we exhale our exultation,
little death comes, too .
Teases— then withdraws those icy feet, discreetly whispers ‘later’ .
We know we must obey when big death comes trailing lakewater
to stake a claim on this all-purpose bed and we are unwed.
In the stark mercy of the absent breath birds still sing.
Not traditional vows, ours.
By a winter-mirrored lake we said we’d take each other.
Before our kin gathered by a bird-haunted lake we took each other,
and vowed to stay true in the infinite tense of the present breath.
Then — deep breath — we went and set up house
with death,
who proved to be a better mate than you might imagine.
When we exhale our exultation,
little death comes, too .
Teases— then withdraws those icy feet, discreetly whispers ‘later’ .
We know we must obey when big death comes trailing lakewater
to stake a claim on this all-purpose bed and we are unwed.
In the stark mercy of the absent breath birds still sing.
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