Eulogy for dad

Eulogy for Lyle (with photos taken after the funeral)

I have a letter from dad, written back in 2003, that says: "Often I look around my trees and the sunset and say to myself 'how could I ever leave?'"

(dad's little house)

Old Toolamba was dad's home, always. As an adult he lived in other places as his work demanded but he always came back here for a month every summer, and as soon as he could he retired here permanently. He loved everything about it; the river, the trees, his family, his childhood memories. I don't think he was ever really happy anywhere else.

(the Goulburn river in dad's backyard)

Dad was always the fun parent. When I was very little dad would mow mazes in the back lawn so my brothers and I could run around in them. When we were a bit older and my parents were divorced, dad would take us out every second weekend to do fun things. Horse-riding was generally my choice, trail-bike riding was Darren's. Dad wouldn't ride but he would take long walks around the area while we tried not to fall off whatever we were riding.

Later dad bought us the Odyssey, a dune buggy; and then the Swordfish, a jet-ski bike. He was the one to organise all the paddock cricket where his tree farm is now, or treasure hunts down Cemetery Bend, following the clues. His idea of fun always seemed to include family. Dinner at a Chinese restaurant or an evening playing cards were all he asked for socially.

(my children playing paddock cricket with newly-discovered second-cousins)

He taught me to play cards early. 500 was the favourite, but we also played Hearts and ABC Poker. I spent many an evening playing cards with dad and Uncle Glenn and Aunty Helen. He also tried to teach me to play chess but I didn't enjoy that as much, even when he gave me a Queen head start. He would beat me every time no matter how many of his pieces he took off the board at the start. I could hold my own with 500.

Of course during the long hot summers he would take us to the sand-beds on the river. Growing up, that is what I thought a beach was. Mainly we went around to the Big Sand-bed, or sometimes just swam off the log down the back here. Dad taught me to swim here. He was always involved in any activity and organised inner-tube flotillas down the river, having as much fun as anyone and more than most.

He didn't take well to technology. When he moved back to Old Toolamba, he didn't have a phone of any kind for a long time. Only when his health demanded it did he buy a mobile phone so that he wouldn't be completely isolated. He had a TV for watching sport, but never owned a computer. If he wanted any information, like the starting time of the Stawell Gift, he would ring me in Canberra and ask me to look it up for him. He also asked me to join him up for a computer dating site on my computer, but I explained that it wouldn't be so practical for him to review the women and check all his hits with me and my computer so far away. He ended up sticking to advertising in local papers, and had no trouble getting plenty of dates.

Dad always bought his cars new. He said it didn't matter that a new car lost value as soon as you drove it away from the showroom, because he didn't intend to resell. He would drive it carefully and it would last at least ten years, even with the long trips between Toolamba and Sydney. He taught me to drive like I and my passengers were VIPs, very important people who you would never take risks about, and leave 2 seconds between me and the car in front.

I have two memories related to cars and dad. Dad taught me to drive, and I learned by sitting on his lap when I was too little to reach the pedals and steering as we drove around the streets of Beecroft. They wouldn't allow that nowadays! Then when I was a teenager I had full control of the car driving around the paddocks at Toolamba but dad forgot to tell me I needed to use the clutch when stopping. I had changing gears down fine but every stop was a serious of bunny hops until I worked it out for myself!

The other memory is that every time we arrived at Toolamba, dad would cut the engine at around the turn-off to the town and try to roll the rest of the way without power. He won the game if he could glide up into Nana's front yard and stop without having to use accelerator or brake. I think he managed it occasionally.

To nieces and nephews, he was "Uncle Carbuncle". To my children, he was "Grandad Stories". He made up weird and wonderful tales like "The Naughtiest Child Competition", starring a girl called Jasmine (but not this Jasmine!) and  a boy called Aiden (but not this Aiden!). Or sometimes it was a boy called Jasmine and a girl called Aiden.

He visited every school holidays except winter. I had to ban him from the house in winter, or rather I said he was welcome to come but he wasn't allowed to open the windows. His mania for fresh air when it was below zero outside was too much for me. But every other holidays he would visit for a few days and we would go to Canberra's flower festival Floriade or on a boat tour of the lake or to a lookout on top of one of the mountains. Always outdoors as much as possible, seeing nature.

As far as I am aware dad never went overseas to explore the world, and despite having been in the air force he never seemed to fly anywhere. He was perfectly happy driving from place to place within Australia, staying in cheap motels and enjoying the beauties of his own country.

Back at home, I encouraged him to have a proper garden and once gave him a lemon tree, which quickly died. But he preferred planting and nurturing his forest of gum trees. Each one is named after a family member, everyone has their own tree. We would go on trips down Cemetery Bend to find new seedlings of as many varieties of eucalypt as possible. He would always choose seedlings that wouldn't survive if left where they were, like in a dry billabong that would fill up in the rainy season.

 (the paddock beside dad's house, with his gum trees)

He designed and built this house himself, with some professional help, surrounded by all his trees and next to his beloved river. Old Toolamba is where he will stay.

(the coffin, at Old Toolamba cemetery)

Eulogy

[I've been meaning to type this out for a while, it is the eulogy I gave at my mother's funeral. I was cleaning out my desk drawers and some of mum's stuff I'd brought over from her house and found this:

 I had a hard time not crying over it. It will make sense when you read on.]

EULOGY FOR MY MOTHER

When I first visited mum in hospital, a few days before Christmas, I took in some mail and opened it for her. One of the items was this (held up):

It was the third time she'd done tertiary studies. She was determined to finish her degree before she died and she studied, one subject at a time, all through her illness. She graduated just two weeks before she died. [Several of the people she worked with came up to me after the funeral and told me how glad they were to hear she had finished.]

From my point of view, as her child, mum's life revolved around teaching, learning, and children.

After High School she went to Teachers' College and then taught Kindergarten. Then she got married and had her own children. Craig, Darren, Natalie and Michelle. It was a great tragedy of her life that two of those children died. My twin Michelle was unwell from birth and died at four months. Craig was ten when he was playing on railroad tracks and hit by a train and killed. Many years later, mum did a Creative Writing course specifically so that she could express herself better, so that she could write about Craig's death and let out some of that pain.

Through divorce and the deaths of Michelle and Craig; teaching, learning and children stayed central to her life. She became very involved in the Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia, now called the Australian Breastfeeding Association. At that time, in the 1960s, mothers had lost a lot of knowledge and power in regard to feeding their own children. Babies were generally kept in a different room in the hospital right from birth and fed on a rigid schedule, or else just given a bottle. Often never seeing anyone else breastfeed, a generation of women weren't sure how to do what should have come naturally.

The Nursing Mothers' Association was founded in Melbourne, where mum was living, in 1964 and she joined when it was still in its infancy - probably in 1965 when Craig was born. She moved to Sydney a few years later and helped expand the organisation into NSW. She gave advice to hundreds of mothers as a phone counsellor, trained innumerable other counsellors, ran meetings and organised conferences, and was eventually NSW Branch President. I spent a lot of my childhood folding newsletters and putting them in envelopes, and watching mum try to cook dinner while giving advice over the phone. She helped so many new mothers gain confidence in how, when and why to breastfeed their babies.

Mum read to us from an early age: I remember 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' and lots of Enid Blyton. When I was old enough I would read ahead by myself, but then still snuggle down with her in the big bed to hear it again. She instilled in me a love of reading that I think is one of the best gifts you can give anyone.

She was always reading to herself as well, on a wide range of subjects; historical, crime fiction, fantasy, textbooks, newspapers. Anything that interested her, and a lot of things did.

Mum loved Trivial Pursuit, cryptic crosswords, and took up Sudoku when it came to Australia. Whatever challenged her mind. She went on the TV show 'Sale of the Century'. She was too slow at pressing the buzzer to win, but she got two out of the three 'who am I' questions when she had enough time and it wasn't all about fast reflexes. I was in the live audience and I remember that every ad-break the make-up people would hurry over and put more shiny red lipstick on her, and as soon as they had gone she would blot it off.

When I was a teenager, mum went to Uni to do some media studies, as far as I am aware it was just for fun because learning is enjoyable and all knowledge is worth having. One of her projects involved interviewing Allan Pease who was a communication and body language expert whose books mum was interested in. She also did one year of Linguistics, the technical study of how language works. She didn't continue with that subject, but she made it sound so interesting that I took it when I went to Uni, setting me on the path of my eventual career as an editor.

Mum returned to full time work teaching adults how to work in Childcare. Yet again she devoted years to improving the lives of children by showing others how to look after them. And while doing so, she studied for her Bachelor of Education - which she didn't need to do - to keep her own knowledge and skills up to date so that she could be the best teacher possible, and because she loved learning for its own sake. She got excellent marks, too, even in her final year.

Mum was good at most subjects, but she told me she failed one unit back in Teachers' College. As a Kindergarten teacher, she had to be able to play simple tunes on the piano and lead the children in singing. Playing the piano was fine, but unfortunately mum was tone deaf and couldn't carry a tune. They failed her rendition of 'Happy Birthday'.

She was also terrible with technology. She went through a lot of mobile phones; lost or broken or so out of power that they could not be revived - but I think mainly she would give up on ever learning how to use the current one and go and buy whatever the salesman convinced her was the easiest and most basic model.

In her early years teaching TAFE, the students would do skits taking off the teachers' mannerisms. Mum told me about one they did of her trying to get the Video Player to work. Getting flustered, dropping papers, trying to work out why the video wasn't going yet, eventually getting a student to help her. Mum loved it. It was funny, true, and affectionate. [hence the 'where's the remote' award]

Nearly eleven years ago, mum got her first grandchild and she suddenly started visiting us a lot more often! It was a shame the my husband's work kept us in Canberra, but we visited back and forth frequently. Mum babysat Jasmine and later Aiden, read to them, did craft with them that always seemed to involve lots of flowers and leaves from the garden, took a million photos of them when she could get a camera working, and gave them endless cuddles. My husband's mother has also passed away and it is sad to know that from now on my children will miss all the benefits of having a loving grandmother.

I think my brother Darren will miss her most of all as he spent the most time with her throughout his life. She looked after him, and then he looked after her. With me so far away, he did everything and I thank him for that.

I had a wonderful mother and I was lucky to have her. But there are also hundreds or thousands of people out there who were lucky to have had her as a teacher: when they were in Kindergarten, maybe their first time away from their own mothers; when they were a new mother themselves and struggling with something they thought would be so easy; or as a young adult learning a new career and hoping to be as good at it as she was. We are all lucky to have known her.