For Rita Moclair: 'She had to ride 64 miles on the back of the postman’s bike to fetch water from the nearest well', by son John Kelly - 2022

15th February, 2022, St Mary’s Catholic Church, Dunolly., Victoria, Australia

Rita Monica Moclair was the youngest of nine. She grew up in rural Galway in the West of Ireland in the 40’s and 50’s. She and her siblings lived in the toe of an old boot on the side of a boreen. She had to ride 64 miles on the back of the postman’s bike to fetch water from the nearest well and she walked barefoot to school every day in snowdrifts neck deep.

She was doted on as the youngest and loved her siblings fiercely in return. She missed them terribly when she moved to Australia. She is survived by her brother Joe and sister Angela.

Despite obtaining her GCE in Ireland, she returned to high school in Mildura as a mother of 8 and enrolled in a number of HSC subjects, excelling in Australian History which she read avidly up until the time she died.

She worked in London in the 50’s but her work there is still so controversial and sensitive that legislation prevents me from identifying it because- even at a remove of 60 years- Empires could be undone if it were to be revealed.

The 60’s were spent raising the first 6 of her 8 children in Belfast, Athlone and Killarney before moving to Mildura in January 1973 where Joe and Romy were born.

Killarney is one of the most beautiful places in Ireland-McGillicuddy’s Reeks, Innisfallen Island, Muckross Gardens, the Gap of Dunloe, Torc Waterfall and Aghadoe Heights were our backyard. Mum loved it despite the occasionally fractious relationship we had with Mrs Murphy next door who once emptied her house of all its furniture in order to build a wall between our two houses in Upper Lewis Road, dispatching her two young sons to patrol it, yelling insults that have passed in to family folklore such as, “Your ma can’t cook a banana.”

She was homesick and heavily pregnant with Joe when we arrived in Mildura, having spent a fortnight acclimatising to our host country at Mont Park Psychiatric Hospital watching World Championship Wrestling and queueing for soup in the canteen before driving through the Wimmera and the Mallee in a two-car convoy, through drought and dust storms and locust plagues and mice infestations before being delivered to vines and orange orchards and three-cornered jacks and pop-up sprinklers and cacti and bungalows and enervating heat. To console herself she’d play Mary O’ Hara’s Spinning Wheel repeatedly, mourning the old country and the family she’d left behind.

She was a model of resilience her entire life and she soon adjusted. Things took a turn for the better when she discovered an Edward Beale salon in Moonee Ponds and managed to get a decent haircut in the Australia of the 1970’s, notwithstanding that it involved two overnight trips on the Vinelander there and back, covering a distance of 1200 kilometres. In 1981 she supported us by opening a shop that sold religious artefacts, importing crates of tea and fabrics from Sri Lanka. She also managed 17 acres of vines, producing walthams, sultanas and currants for sale.

At the end of that year we piled in to our old Holden station wagon and made for Melbourne with Joe as her co-pilot manually operating the high beam by banging a button on the floor of the driver’s side. Mum supported us by delivering groceries and cleaning at half-way houses before securing work at the ATO where she made friends for life in Ranjanee and, later, Christine. The development of Menieres disease forced an early retirement. City traffic intimidated her when we moved to Melbourne, but within a few years she returned home thrilled with herself for having sailed through a congested intersection whilst blithely eating an apple.

One of the most formidable of her many qualities was the unstinting commitment she had to securing first rate educations for her children despite her inability to fund them. She coaxed Xavier College into taking Tony by reminding it of its core Jesuit charter of caring for orphans and widows. When she was called to Whitefriars to discuss Joe’s sub-stellar academic progress she chided the school for its inability to recognize the rare jewel she had entrusted to it. She auditioned a number of equally prestigious institutions such as Siena, Preshill and Sacre Couer who vied for the privilege of educating her precocious and brilliant progeny. She wouldn’t hear of payment.

She returned to Galway in 1984 and rented a house in Renmore. The Ireland she returned to was not the one she had left and that period was tough, although she was buoyed by the release of The Smiths second single which became a staple of her limited pop repertoire and, amongst her children, her most popular cover, totally eclipsing Betty Davis’ Eyes.

She returned to Melbourne in 1986 and lived in Blackburn before moving to Burwood. The backyard was always full of friends, friends of friends and partners and she was always cooking elaborate meals and consoling Pete’s girlfriends, Pete’s estranged fiancees, Pete’s aggrieved exes and women who were on the cusp of instituting proceedings to enforce their contractual rights against him. She continues to receive letters from one of Pete’s exes who is, apparently, doing just fine and has, like, totally moved on.

She left the city and moved to Timor in 2001. She described these 20 years as the happiest of her life. She lived on her own and committed herself to recreating Monet’s Giverny, a Sisyphean task she was never going to complete. Having complained bitterly in the late 90’s of how, despite raising 8 children of her own, she had not been provided with a single grandchild, a flood of fecundity soon ensued. Rebekah was the first in 2001. We were living in Alice Springs then and mum, Hanny, Pete, Tony and Romy drove from Melbourne in a hired camper van to attend her baptism and deafen her with Territory Day fireworks, a round trip of 4,500 kilometres. Being flown above the red centre by James Nugent remained one of her fondest memories.

Once the flood gates opened, Gabriel, Charlie, Maisie, Max, Frances, Eloise, Lucien, Dan, Raphy, Pippa, Ines, Claudia, Helena, Rita, Michael and Lucinda followed like machine gun fire and she was often glad of the geographical distance she had established. She had a prodigious memory and recalled everything of significance about each of them, their friends, their educations, their hobbies, their interests, their fears and aspirations. Each of them felt seen and understood by her.

She loved travelling and managed to see some of the worlds great gardens in Kent and Normandy and Tuscany and Ubud and Kyoto and Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie and Fitzroy Crossing. All of these were fed into her life’s work in Timor. She was a fiend for gazebos and pagodas and rockeries and Japanese bridges and ornamental totems.

In recent years she had eased off travelling and had stopped driving. She remained formidably curious and physically active, but she was deaf as a post. We, as a family, are deeply appreciative of the care for her provided by her neighbours in Timor especially Maree, the Fosters and Leigh who was entrusted with realising her endless projects.

She was a champion. I can’t believe she’s gone, but she was ready. Physically she had declined, but mentally she was as acute as ever. Living on her own terms was non-negotiable. She valued her independence above everything. She lived for her garden- it was a way of repaying Paulette for her generosity in buying Timor and providing it to her so she could live there on her own terms. Ensuring Gabriel attended the Australian Open was an unflagging priority and she hounded me to secure a ticket to the men’s final for him, insisting I call John McPherson to make it happen. One of the last things she did on earth was to sit and watch Rafa snatch his 21st slam knowing that Gabriel was at the venue watching it live thanks to her intervention.

What lessons do we take from mum’s life? Money comes and goes, it’s not important and shouldn’t guide your decisions. Do what you love and success will follow. Be the first to give. Don’t watch Rafa in the final of a slam. Don’t pray that Novak’s plane crashes. Remember that feelings aren’t facts and that you can compel your limbs and muscles to act rightly in spite of your feelings. Whether you can or cannot cook a banana is unimportant, except to the Murphy’s. Pass on your plum pudding recipes. Don’t get Pete to do the dishes. And by somebody I don’t mean Lovedy.

For Joan Burke: ' A constantly replenishing magic pudding of love and compassion', by son William Burke - 2009

On behalf of all of mum’s large and loving family I wish you all a warm welcome and thank you for joining us today in celebrating her life.

Joan Margaret was the eldest of four girls born to Jack Kennedy and Margaret McCarthy, both of proud Irish stock, on December 6th 1927. Even though before long with the birth of a second daughter there was a not only a Jack but a Jaqueline Kennedy in the same family, there, beyond their Irish Catholicism, any comparison with American political royalty ended. The Clovelly Kennedys were very much blue collar rather than blue blood but in the manner of the time there was a simplicity to life that seems quaint now but came undoubtedly with quite a few harsh realities at the time although living in beachside Clovelly did have it’s compensations meaning lots of time at the beach, some of it spent learning to swim under the firm tutelage of the legendary Tom Clabby who we subsequently also, in a nice little cross-generational linkage, had the dubious pleasure of being screamed at as we splashed up and down the rock pool adjacent to Clovelly beach as kids.

Mum fondly recalled some holidays spent also in the country where she became a keen and accomplished rider and as a special treat the family also sometimes holidayed at beautiful Hyam’s Beach in Jervis Bay when a shack at Hyam’s Beach meant tin walls and no electricity and plumbing rather than today’s expensively manufactured ‘distressed’ look costing $5000 a week. Family life was loving but strict and like a lot of depression children she had her share of bad memories of hiding under tables when the rent man came and when dinner meant bread and dripping night after night. I have only very vague memories of her father Jack who died when I was young but mum plainly loved him very dearly and all of my siblings will have very clear memory of Margaret who we knew as Nan and who we all recall as loving but somewhat formidable, living in her ancient house in Nolan Ave with the outside toilet and copper boiler and to whom a salad meant iceberg lettuce always with tinned pineapple and beetroot.

Mum was a clever girl but her parent’s limited means did restrict her options and while initially considering a secretarial career her naturally caring nature lead her to nursing and a good Catholic girl with aspirations to nursing would naturally gravitate to St. Vincent’s, an institution that had a dominating influence on the rest of her life. Her quite and striking dark beauty must have burst among the rowdy residents at Vinnies like a dropped bottle of DA and none was more agog than one fresh faced and chubby cheeked young man fresh out of Newcastle and Joeys, one young Billy Burke. The relationship almost came to naught when Dad turned up to take Mum out on their first date fresh from Kevin Lafferty’s buck’s party. The lifelong teetotal Margaret Kennedy was not impressed. Neither was Dad when Mum kept him on tenterhooks by dating among others the jockey George Moore who turned up in a big, flash black car. Even then mum had a liking for colourful Sydney racing identities. It was just as well though that Margaret was even less impressed by George than she was by Dad.

Dad continued his specialist training in London and Mum followed and there they were married on the 14th of July 1951, honeymooning in Paris, their early newlywed bliss marred only by an argument precipitated by dad’s disgust that Mum could not recite all the decades of the Rosary. They overcame that minor hurdle and were thereafter inseparable and one of the few consolations in our losing mum is that her long and painful fifteen year separation from her beloved husband is now over.

It sounds vaguely condescending in these PC-plagued times but mum was born to be a mother which is just as well because she didn’t have time to do much else for the next few decades. They returned to Sydney with Catherine in tow, born nine months and one week after the wedding, and mum set about her own one woman baby boom creating a well worn path between Telopea St. and the Mater Maternity, regularly crossing paths as she went with the Flemings or L’Estranges or Newtons or Quoyles or McAlary’s or Batemans. I was quite surprised when I got to school to find that there were families out there with less than seven or eight children.

The intermediary in all this fecundity was the inimicable Dr. Bob McInerney, Obstetrician to the stars. One of the strongest memories of my childhood remains a lift we all got home with him from mass one Sunday when dad had been called away. We were floating along in his trademark Roller when he opened a compartment revealing a bakealite phone, this is the early 1960’s remember, and duly rang mum at home advising of our arrival time so that breakfast would be ready.

We all like to romanticise our childhoods but I honestly don’t think I have to do that. It was really a golden period in my memory. Hot summers, loud cicadas, roaming the suburb with other feral children getting up to mischief. The joy of numerous Christmases, a never ending supply of chops, chips and peas, splurging on mixed lollies at Medlicott’s. No fears and few insecurities. It took me a long while to realise that a child’s brain needs the right conditions to lay down those abiding memories. A child needs, more than anything else, to be valued and wanted and listened to and encouraged and needed and loved. That is a challenge in a family of eight but God has cleverly gifted mothers like mine with a constantly replenishing magic pudding of love and compassion and understanding. And patience. Lots and lots of patience.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be parent to eight children under the age of 11 with a husband increasingly busy and in demand even though she had invaluable live in help from Jenny then Ping then Monica who all over time became like part of the family. Packing us off to school must have been a relief compared to holidays particularly when holidays often meant packing us all in the station wagon and heading off to a distant location. Imagine the scene. No airconditioning, no seat belts, eight children and often a dog richocheting around the interior like bees in a bottle, constant squabbles, always someone throwing up or needing the toilet. We thought that mum and dad must have just been constantly thirsty to pull in to so many pubs along the way where they would disappear inside leaving us with a tray of raspberry lemonades. There must have been plenty of times when they struggled to overcome the urge to sneak out the back and head in the opposite direction.

We particularly loved our early childhood Christmases but I’m not sure mum felt the same. Apart from the nightmare that the present buying and equitable distributing must have been, dad, in his well-intentioned way, insisted on showing off his brood to the nuns at Lewisham, St. Vincent’s and the Mater on Christmas Eve, which meant we all had to be scrubbed and polished and dressed in our finest. We would inevitably be made a fuss of by the nuns who plied us with biscuits and fizzy cordial while we watched Fran sing ‘Miss Polly had a Dolly’ again. We would be so hyped by the time mum got us home that she practically had to nail us into bed but without fail we were never disappointed the next morning. But then mum never did disappoint us.

Inevitably the next day after mass and breakfast and later as we grew, after midnight mass and a much later and slower Christmas morning, we would head for the Fleming’s and a couple of hours of always delightful Christmas cheer. We didn’t notice, like we didn’t notice so many of the things mum did, but she would slip away early so when a rowdy and hungry family burst in an hour or so later, all was ready. She was small and wiry but she was tough. How else could she have manhandled a turkey the size of a small horse? You might think that after a long lunch was had by all that she would have earned some down time but no. Not for this woman. Scarcely had we collapsed on the floor in a post-prandial torpor than the door bell would ring and it would be on for young and old again with the extended family. If this woman had been at Gallipoli or on the Kokoda track those Turks and Japanese would not have stood a chance. If she ran out against the All Blacks one rattle of that drawer with the wooden spoons and they would be looking for a hole big enough to hide in.

It must have seemed like forever but at last we drifted out of the nest, some of us needing a bit of a shove. Mum was a last able to enjoy the luxury of a little time to herself and with dad. They loved to travel and I still remember their tales of Breakfast at Brennan’s in New Orleans, of Las Vegas, of The Outrigger in Honolulu, of visiting the Warnes in Hong Kong or their old haunts in London and one very adult trip where they were chauffered around Germany with Ray and June Pearce who introduced them to the joys of Holy Milk, or milk and whiskey, at breakfast. When any one of us were living overseas it wasn’t long before they would be over visiting, a natural tie in of two of their great loves, travel and family.

Mum and dad loved being together. It was very much Darby and Joan, at least a party version of Darby and Joan. They were night owls, their courting days often seeing them at Princes and Romanos and later they would be, in their own egalitarian way, on first name terms with Denis Wong, flamboyant owner of the Mandarin Club and Albert, the doorman at North Sydney Leagues where they would often give the pokies a bash of a Sunday night. What they really loved was the races. They both loved the mix of glamour and the Runyonesque edge of criminality that attaches itself to the racetrack along with all the colourful characters. They took it one step further however when they invested in a brood mare and experienced the joy of standing in a stable tearing up money that is racehorse ownership. Maybe not in dollar terms but in terms of sheer enjoyment they certainly got their moneys worth and there was one selfish side benefit for me. As a uni student with a bit of time on my hands I became the chauffer whenever we had a runner at a midweek meeting. We were for a time regulars at Canterbury and Wyong and Gosford and Kembla Grange and while becoming a nodding acquaintance with a string of bookies and trainers I had the joy of lots of what is now called quality time with my mother. We talked about lots of things including her life and mine and just occasionally I got to see the naughty schoolgirl side of my quiet, lady-like mother.

The latter part of her life was perhaps the most rewarding because any joy her own children had brought her was steadily eclipsed by her large tribe of beautiful and talented grandchildren. She loved them all, Kate, Caro, Charlotte, Tom Smith, Matt, Stephanie, Nick, Isobel, Charlie, Rosie, Tom Burke, Camilla, Oliver, Max, Will, Lochie, Dylan, Sam and Ruby. All that joy and sense of achievement and contentment and she could give them back. When Kate gave birth to young Darcy it just confirmed what her grandchildren had known for a long time. Joan wasn’t just a grandmother, she was a great grandmother.

She wasn’t perfect. None of us born this side of the Garden of Eden are. She had her foibles and intolerances and life sometimes seemed to get the better of her as she struggled with her demons but she taught us the most valuable lesson of all. She would not just succumb and she fought back quietly and determinedly and it shames me that I did not always do as much as I should have to help. Life had become increasingly difficult for her of late but her natural forebearance meant that she would grit her teeth and just do it. Even if she wouldn’t just lie down God knew when she had enough and mercifully spared her any further suffering and we are, despite our sorrow, grateful for that.

Those of you in or close to my generation will probably fondly recall a television show called Happy Days. I know, the poor man is unhinged by grief you are thinking, what relevance has that possibly got to today’s proceedings? Well mum loved TV - it is a genetic affliction unfortunately - and she loved Happy Days.
One of the principal characters was an uber cool leather jacketed hood with a heart of gold known as Fonzie. One day he was visited in his apartment by the squeaky clean Richie Cunningham who proclaimed loud surprise at the presence of Fonzie’s motorcycle in the lounge room of the small apartment, exclaiming that it was just a motorcycle. Fonzie’s reaction was to throw his arms wide and fix Ritchie with a withering stare and the telling reply ‘and I suppose your mother is just a mother’.

A throw away line in an American sitcom perhaps but encapsulating on of life’s truths. Our mother’s are never just mother’s. Mother means so much more than just female parent. They are for most of us our first smell, our first sight, our first soft touch and gentle voice and first loving embrace. They teach us the meaning of love because they are the embodiment of unconditional love. And they remain, if you are fortunate as my brothers and sisters and myself have been, the dominating presence in your life well in to your middle years when their loss should be easy to rationalise because by then you know about the unrelenting cycle of birth and death but it is no exaggeration to say that even as a mature adult your mother’s death leaves you with a feeling of helpless abandonment, a sense of panicked realisation like a toddler separated from his mother in a crowd.

She has gone to a reward she has earned many times over. She has lived a full life. She has been a giver and never a taker, a peacemaker, a mender, a quiet inspiration. She has been to us a mother and grandmother beyond peer and there is no greater praise than that.

Joan Margaret Burke 6/12/27-24/9/09

For Jean Pattinson: 'Her laugh could fill a room', by Brett Pattinson, Vanessa Johnson & Georgina Pattinson - 2020

7 August 2020, Innes Gardens Memorial Park, Port Macquarie, NSW, Australia

Brett (son): At the start of 2020 I would never have thought that I would be delivering a eulogy for the second time in two months especially not Mum & Dad.

A little over 2 months ago, I stood in this very place and delivered what was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do and now here I am again delivering a second eulogy that I never thought I would have to do.

You may recall that on the way to Dad’s funeral I was pulled over by the police??? As strange as that was, this morning was even stranger. On my way here we were driving and all of a sudden I heard mums voice appear…… she said “listen Brett do you think you could pop into Aldi on your way and grab me a packet of those peanut biscuit’s I like”…… pause (pull out the biscuit’s and go and place them on the coffin).
My earliest memories of mum

When I was young and growing fast, I used to have severe problems with my legs and I used to wake up in tremendous pain mum used to sit up and rub my legs during the night, she would sit for hours and rub my legs…. She always did this with gentle precision and the professionalism of a nurse.

On the flip side Mum was a tough old broad, this might have stemmed from my ability to drive her mad…. Constantly!!! I was no angel and I would always be doing something that I wasn’t supposed to. She would chase me around the house with a stick and low be tide if she caught me, she would give it to me and give it to me good…… she could really wield That stick!!!

I remember once on a particular night when we were living in Gymea bay, she was wearing a pair of these wooden Dr Scholl’s shoes (heavy bloody things they were supposedly good for your feet) and I was doing something I shouldn’t, next thing she started to chase me, by this stage I was getting pretty good at ducking and weaving…..all of a sudden she pulled off one the shoes and chucked it at me….but I was quick to react and ducked, fortunately for me the shoe missed me by a fraction and flew past my head, but unfortunately it clocked Craig fair in the scone……. He went down like a sack of potatoes…. I think she regretted that for a long time but it still makes me chuckle to this day.

I could tell you many stories like that but I won’t as we don’t have all day.

Some of the things I remember most about Mum.

Mum drove an amazing car when I was little it was a green Triumph Herald, she looked so cool in that thing with her cats eye glasses and her 50’s dresses, god I wish we still had that car.

Mum Smoked Viscount ciggies (which I may add I used to nick when I was a teenager) mum smoked for over 50 years and then one day she just decided to stop and she did….just like that, that was mum… she had a steely resolve when she put her mind to it.

She loved PK chewing gum and she really loved Eucalyptus lollies which I loved as well.

Mum had a passion for Antiques and second hand stuff, sometimes I would get thrown in her car on clean up weeks and we would drive around the neighbourhood scouring the streets for plunder….. we found some good shit over the years…… the thing I hated most about that was I would be the one that would have to get out of the car and go and get the shit!!! How embarrassing for a 10 year old boy….. but I have to say we did find some good shit!!!

Mum also loved to drag me around for what she called a “Sunday Run”. She would pile us in the car and we would drive around all the rich areas of Sydney and look at bloody houses….rich people’s houses, we would make regular visits to historic sites like Vaucluse house, Parramatta house etc and make us walk through these places, even if we had been there several times before…..for me it was excruciatingly boring, I just wanted to be with my mates playing footy etc…. I don’t think dad fancied it very much either…but we all towed the line.

I am convinced that secretly mum thought she was from Royal birth…..

Mum taught me how to try, how to compete, how to be tough and how to be fiercely independent.
Mum gave me the gift of good sportsmanship and how to play in a team, these were valuable gifts she gave, which have held me in good stead throughout my life and by doing so these traits have now been passed on to my kids.

The thing I will probably remember and miss the most about mum was her laugh, her laugh could fill a room, it would echo through the house late at night when we used to watch British comedies like on the buses (ill get you butler) or are you being served (are you free) all the way through to The two Ronnie’s (its good night from him and good night from me) and her favourite Dad’s army (who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler). She had a wicked, cheeky and non pc sense of humour which we have all inherited from her…..everyone knew when mum was in the house!

A couple of week ago I spent the week with mum, just me and her….. I am so glad I got this time with her…. It was a tough week because she wasn’t well, but we made the most of it.

On one of the days we went on, “A Run”…… It was a well worn path for her…. we drove to and past every land mark in bloody Port Macquarie…. Past Steph’s house where she told me how well Steph and Charles were doing, then onto bonny hills where she showed me where Steve and Liz (Charles Parents) lived and how nice they were….. then past the golf club where she said that Craig and Sue said the food was great and what a lovely club it was…. except for the doorman who she said was a Dickhead…… BTW Dickhead was Mum’s favourite term for most people…. she called me a dickhead all the time.

Then off past the retirement village where, as the story goes, dad liked this place because they had heard that all the oldies were having sex and doing wife swapping etc…… she said she would never go there “bloody dickheads”…. but your father would, she said!

Then we went to north haven past the pool that her and Dad used to swim at….. BTW we stopped at every bloody op shop between her place and Kew!!! I am not kidding…. We also had to drive past Ma and Pa’s (Charles Grandparents) who she loved and apparently are the best thing since sliced bread.

Then she said we had to go and have fish and chips by the river…. She made me park in a particular place and we sat and watched the river, we chatted about all her grandkids and great grandkids and how great they all were…….. then all the way back to Port and back to get her a coffee from a particular place……. By this time, I was on a very short fuse…. But I am glad we did it because it made her happy.

I realised that night, when I was laying in bed, that the reason we did THAT drive in THAT order was because THAT is what she did with Dad…… Mum was heartbroken, 68 years of marriage was just too big a hurdle to get over, she missed him so much, she just didn’t know how to show it to us, I wish it could have been different, but that was Mum…. Mum may have been tough on the outside but on the inside she was soft and caring, she loved us to pieces and was proud of all of us…..

We love you mum and you will live on in our hearts forever.

Vanessa Johnson (daughter):
Mum was always full of support and encouragement to me. When I was growing up she was always there driving me from dance lessons to weekend pantomimes. She would always be backstage helping out with dressing and hair and makeup. When we moved to Katoomba there were piano lessons and golf tournaments.

I moved to Katoomba with mum and dad at the age of 12, of course being the mountains our first winter saw a huge snow fall.

School was closed early in order to get the kids home before the roads closed. We didn't live far from the school so I walked home, mum met me half way on this day and we walked home together while throwing snow balls at each other. We arrived home freezing cold and I remember she encouraged me to 'go have a nice warm shower she said'. It was a great idea, I warmed up real quick. Unfortunately mum had other ideas. While enjoying the warm shower I heard mum enter the bathroom, not knowing what she was up to I soon found out as a huge handful of snow was thrown over the top of the shower and covered me. Mum thought it was hilarious.

It was both mum and dad that encouraged my love for golf. Both mum and dad became members of Katoomba Golf Club not long after we moved to Katoomba and I guess you could say it was 'if you can't beat them you might as well join them'.

Mum and I played many games and competitions together, winning match plays and mixed foursome championships together. She was always there with me at junior competitions walking the course with me and if not allowed she would always be at the 18th green waiting to see how I had played.

Mum and I were both members of the Katoomba Golf Club Associates committee with mum holding the positions of both Captain and Vice Captain for a number of years.

I had the opportunity of being able to travel with mum and dad. Cruises when dad was entertaining, Fiji and the last trip to America with both Aunty Jan and Kristen.

Mum always liked company, the slightest hint of a sniffle or a cough and it was 'oh you better stop home from school today' and then half an hour later she was saying, 'let's go to Penrith for the day shopping'.
Three weeks ago Andy and I came up to Port Macquarie and spent the weekend with mum. We took her out for an early birthday lunch and she then directed us on a drive around what I think were a few of her favourite places where she used to go for drives with dad. I am so glad we had that weekend mum, little did we know it would be the last time that we would spend with you.

I know that you will be happy again now as you are reunited with dad, who we know you missed terribly. I want to thank you for everything mum, rest peacefully knowing that we love you and will miss you always.

Georgina Pattinson (Granddaughter)
:10 weeks to the day that my Nan, Jean Margaret Pattinson, decided to call it a day. After 68 years of marriage it seems she couldn’t bear to be without my pop. We are all shocked and saddened by our loss but I have the most wonderful memories of how fun and funny my Nan was. So I thought it only appropriate to celebrate her humour and her unforgettable laugh in my eulogy last Friday.. I’m not quiet sure why I, of all people, who normally can’t tell a joke, decided it was a good idea to attempt a fart joke at a funeral (of all places) but thankfully it got a good response. I guess we all know and loved my Nan’s great sense of Humour. Love you Nan..

My speech -
This is a little passage that I found that I know Nan was very fond of..
Lord
Grant me the serenity to
Accept the things
I cannot change
Courage to change
Those things I can
And the wisdom
To hide the bodies of
The people I may have to kill
Because they
PISS ME OFF!

Hehehe and then I can still very clearly hear nan saying ‘oh you gotta laugh George’.. and she’d beam her big pearly white denture grin, as we wiped away the tears from our eyes.

Nan had a wicked sense of humour, I can’t think of a time I didn’t have a solid belly laugh when I was with her.. and it’s this cheeky spirit that I just wanted to celebrate for a minute.

She had a wonderful way with words and a story for everyone she met. No-one was safe!
- Alex was up and down like a fiddlers elbow
- Stephs girls were like a fart in a bottle. Always eager to escape.
- And Dad couldn’t sit long enough to warm a seat
She was also a BIG bingo lover and I thought it was pretty funny that she managed to reach the epic milestone of her 88th (two fat ladies) birthday, a week before she passed.
It was when I rang her for this birthday and we were laughing because I was telling her about this fancy new STICK deodorant I had just bought - the instructions read..
take off cap and push up bottom.
I tell you, I could barely walk, but whenever I farted the room smelt lovely..
Then nan thought it was a good idea to remind me that
An Apple a day...
Keeps anyone away, if you throw it hard enough!
Thanks for all the laughs Nan, you certainly were one of a kind. And a great reminder not to take life too seriously as you never get out of it alive...

JEAN MARGARET PATTINSON
20th July 1932 – 31st July 2020

for Vivian Rippy: 'The only way to get hurt in this life is to care', by Chirstopher Eckes - 2017

Harriosn, Ohio, USA

It’s the little things that seem to stand out the most—her rolled up Kleenexes, her colorful muumuus, her iced tea and fried chicken, the aroma of her kitchen or a “yoo-hoo” from the other side of the door letting you know it was all right to come in.

I’ll remember her tapping her foot to Lawrence Welk or cheering for Johnny Bench (her favorite ball player). There are so many things that I can see and feel as if they had just happened.

I’m sure everyone here has memories much like mine. They are good memories, something we’ll always have to cherish. It isn’t often in our lives that we come across someone so special that that person stays with you forever. Grandma was that kind of person.

The only way to get hurt in this life is to care. Grandma cared more than most, loved more than most and was made to suffer more than most because of just how much she cared.

But no matter how many times she was knocked down or made to endure things that no one should, she just kept coming back; caring more and loving more—opening herself up to even more pain. Yet there were never any complaints or bitterness—it was the only way she knew how to live.

The kind of love Grandma felt for us was a love without condition. She may not have approved of everything we did, may not have liked some of the decisions we made, but she didn’t lecture, she didn’t judge. She just kept loving us, letting us know that she was there and if we ever needed her, we could count on her to listen, to comfort, to help.

She lived a simple life. It didn’t take much to make her happy—a phone call, a card, a visit or a kiss before saying good night. We were the most important people in the world to her. She lived to make our lives better and was proud of us.

To think that someone like her felt that way about us should make us all feel more than just a little good. We can never forget that there is a part of her in each of us, something that she gave to us and asked nothing for in return.

Money can be squandered and property ruined, but what we inherited from her cannot be damaged, destroyed or lost. It is permanent, and it keeps her from becoming just a wonderful memory. It allows her in so many ways to remain just as alive as always—alive through us.

There have been and will be times in our lives when situations arise where we’ll want so much to talk to her, be with her or ask her just what we should do. I hope that, when those times come, we can begin to look to each other and find that part of her that she gave to each of us.

Maybe we can learn to lean on each other and rely on each other the way we always knew that we could with her. Maybe then she won’t seem quite so far away.

So, for your wisdom, your humor, tenderness and compassion, your understanding, your patience and your love; thank you, Grandma. After you, Grandma, the mold was indeed broken. Thank you so much. I love you.

For Nen: 'She leaves a deep hole for such a tiny woman', by Kim Kane - 2017

17 November 2017, St John's, Toorak, Melbourne, Australia

There have been a number of sad moments this week. Opening a Word document, something I do regularly as a writer, and naming it ‘Nen’s Eulogy’ was a shock.

Constantly overriding the autocorrect on my phone -- which still changes the name ‘Ben’ to ‘Nen’, was a shock.

Making the plum pudding for the very first time without Nen – even if it was just having her issue directions from the couch as she did last year -- was a shock.

Seeing Nen’s little dog, Timmy, lying down outside her bedroom.

Throwing out Nen’s favourite shoes, the ‘comfy’ones’ that I had been urging her to replace because, as I kept trying to tell her, no deserving poor would want those…

And writing four simple words, four impossible words, Nen died on Tuesday.

I don’t know when these things will get easier. I don’t know that I want them to. But a little over a week ago, my grandmother sat down to watch the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops the Nation. And this year, it not only stopped the Nation, it also stopped Nen.

Before this week, I don’t think I understood death – that there can be good deaths – and my grandmother lived a fine life, but she had the great luck of a fine death, and for that I will always be exceptionally grateful. Nen did not want to die alone. And she didn’t. She died surrounded by family and flowers.

Over the last week, all of us sat with Nen and we told her how much she had meant to us. We got time to say goodbye and time to say thank you. Nen was able to listen to her interstate grandchildren and to her brother on the phone. She got time to say goodbye to her son and grandson. Mum, T and I took turns to sit by her bed, while the other two lay on a mattress in the bathroom, Harry Potter style. This caused a nurse to look horrified as she peered into the shower cubicle in the dark ‘Just how many relative are in there?’

And even in death, Nen was still fun and funny.

She was able to flirt with her favourite nurse Kai/Kye, even after she failed to recognize her own daughter – charm was in that girl’s DNA.

She hated to be underestimated and she had sass in spades, sass enough to roll her eyes when asked by the neurologist whether she could manage a blink.

When the minister administered last rites in the hospital, Nen sat up and barked ‘I’m fine’.

But this eulogy is not just about Nen’s death, it’s about Nen’s life, it is about a woman who lived as she wished, independently until 91 and a half, fit, elegant, charismatic and full of vim.

Nen was always the grandmother in the tailored pants and a jaunty little hat. She was always chic. She was a grandmother of whom I was immensely proud because people always commented how young and gorgeous she looked.  But of course she was young. Nen was a grandmother in her 40s.  She was younger than me and parenting a married woman who lived a hemisphere away and a teenage son on a surfboard. No wonder she had time to brush her hair.

Nen was a hoarder. Born of war time and ration cards, Nen was of a generation that was environmental because they had done without and never quite trusted it wouldn’t happen again. Consequently, she never threw anything out. Nothing. Need one of those tags that does up a bread bag? Second drawer. There’s a sack of them. 50 years worth of multigrain.

Nen loved a bargain, Nen chased bargains like they were a blood sport. She would buy a pallet of loo paper to get it at 23c a roll. Her house was often full of strange foods she picked up because it was just too hard to go past 24 pink iced donuts with a best before day of 4 November at $2.99. It gave her great pleasure just to watch them going off at that price. Besides, Nen only ever saw best before dates as a guideline rather than a deadline. If it was burnt, scrape it down. If it was mouldy, slice it off, if it was black, toss it in the freezer.

Nen was strong. The thing I learnt through observing Nen, is that you don’t just cruise into 90. You work at it. You still haul your shopping trolley up hill to the shops every day. You still walk the dog at 91 and a half. You are still mattocking your 2000m2 garden at 89. It was therefore fitting that Nen’s granddaughters helped carry her coffin out of the church this morning.

Nen was a health nut before health nuts starred on Instagram. Nen loved a bit of crudité. Bran on cereal. Porridge. All that celery. That celery is genetic. But having monitored treats for her children and then her grandchildren, Nen’s standards really slipped when it came to her great grandchildren and she used to proudly tell me that Tommy calls her ‘Bickie Nenny’. There were no rules at Nen’s. And if there were rules imposed by the parents, Nen overruled them. I would go out of the room and return to find Nen feeding the boys chocolate biscuits, Pringles and cordial half an hour before dinner. As a friend reminded my sister and me yesterday, when Nen took her out to buy a treat as a child in the 80s, they came back with a flannel. That’s the sort of treat the grandmother of my childhood was famous for.

Nen never drove in Melbourne. She had too many ks to clock up on her fitbit. But for those Sydneysiders who have seen Nen drive, there was nothing more nerve-wracking. Or to be more accurate, not seeing Nen drive. Nen was so tiny you actually couldn’t see her behind the wheel. Even propped up on her driving cushion.

Golly gosh. The car’s driving itself! It’s like driving Miss Daisy without Daisy. Look closely and you’d just sees her hands clutching the wheel [action].

Us girls inherited much from Nen: Her wit, her charm, her bunions. One of her greatest lessons, however, was that a job not done properly is not worth doing at all. I still say that as I force my way through unpacking the dishwasher, my tax or the unbearable crusade that is my son’s violin practice. Nen set very high standards for herself and was exacting about others. At no point was this proven more strongly, than one afternoon when I was 16 and constructing my fake ID at the kitchen table. Watching me hash this operation, Nen snapped. ‘Oh I’ll do it’, snatched the pencil from me and expertly executed a federal felony motivated not by the desire to break the law as much as a desire to do the job properly. I was busting to get caught just so I could explain to a magistrate that my grandmother had made it for me. Of course the job was done so properly that ID was inscrutable.

While Nen was an expert at fake ID, and certainly embraced a number of modern ideas, she never quite got on top of technology. On hearing her mobile in her handbag, Nen stopped and said. ‘Oh Mr Whippy’s changed its tune’.

Nen added contacts to her mobile by sticking names on post-it notes to the back of her phone. But she did embrace modern conveniences in fashion and became a terrific fan of both the puffer jacket and pol-ar fleece which got her through her Melbourne winters.

Nen had a terrific sense of the ridiculous. She was still willing to hop in the booster seat to travel in my car at 90. She wore bunny ears with the children at Easter, antlers at Christmas time and she delighted in games like Headbanz in which she had a card stuck to her head and tried to guess whether she was a tomato or a can of condensed milk.

Nen loved children. Any walk with Nen was slow but not because she couldn’t hip flick with the best of the speed walkers for most of her life, but because she would stop to chat to every baby. But Nen loved no babies more than those in her own family and it has been a great privilege to have had her here in Melbourne watching her great grandchildren grow up.

Nen’s commitment to family was decidedly unWASP; she carved her own family culture. She was caring to the very end. Dazed and confused in emergency, she was still caring with every last ounce of strength, comforting my sister as she cried.

Nen’s desire to nurture, came, I suspect, from the trauma of boarding school – she was sent away at 10 and returned home only twice a year. She often spoke of her mother waiting for her four children to arrive on the drive, waiting with her arms outstretched for her brood. I look at our children now and wonder how on earth she did it. This meant that Nen made her home a home in which everybody was cared for. Lean cuisine was not in Nen’s freezer or her vernacular and she never took family for granted. Until very recently, nothing was too much.Nen flew down from Sydney to help mind our children so that I could attend the Sydney Writers Festival. When we were children, she flew down from Sydney to see our school concerts. She sewed navy flannel petticoats for us to wear under our itchy school skirts. She laboured to create beautiful cakes for our birthdays and smocked our party dresses.

Almost two years ago our family toasted Nen for her 90th birthday. We were so lucky to have a grandparent so present in our lives and in the lives of our children and we knew it.

Nen died as she lived. Adored. She leaves a deep hole for such a tiny woman, one I cannot even begin to reconcile.

Darling Nen, our grand matriarch. Vale, farewell. We love you.

xxx

Australian author Kim Kane's award winning time slip novel, 'When the Lyrebird Calls' is dedated to Nen. (Allen & Unwin, 2015)

For Marcelle Loughnan: 'An altogether softer chorus awaits people who work tirelessly to protect and preserve', by son Chris and granddaughter Amy - 2013

16 October 2013, St Mary of the Angels Basilica, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

Chris (son):

Mum. We have come here today to celebrate and honour Marcelle’s, my mum’s, life.

Mum to me was a constant source of love and unconditional support.

She supported me even if I was wrong, my enemies were her enemies.

I think it first dawned on me that she was more than a mother when we visited her sister Mary and our cousins in the country. Together they were like two laughing schoolgirls. Our cousins would say how wonderful she was and could we swap. We would say how wonderful Mary was and could we swap. The truth is they were both wonderful mums.

Mum was getting very tired toward the end but still maintained a dry sense of humour and flashes of that old sparkle in her eyes. Mum was at home in a familiar environment thanks to Gen and Sue’s gift of care to her and the whole family. Thanks Gen and Sue.

Amy my daughter wrote a tribute for me, to her Nana which I would like to share with you.

Amy (granddaughter):

Creating something is difficult. Protecting it can be near impossible.
 
A creator is met with fanfare and accolades.

An altogether softer chorus awaits people who work tirelessly to protect and preserve.

Perhaps because of this, there is a quiet dignity to those who stand guard.

Theirs is a delicate business, which spans a lifetime.

It is difficult to recognize a protector at work, so soft is their guiding hand and light is their touch.

It is only clear eyes that reveal all things treasured and precious are marked
with their fingerprints.
 
Nanna was a potter, a gardener, a grandmother, sister, mother in law, wife, friend and mother to six. More than anything, she taught me the value of taking care of something. She was one of the best protectors I have ever known.
 

Mum knew at the end that the time was coming to rest and stand down.

Thanks mum, I love you and god speed

For Jean Russell Yule: 'I've had fun, darling!', by granddaughter Bec - 2012

27 October, 2012, Anglesea, Victoria, Australia

Hi, I’m Bec, Jean’s first grandchild, and she asked that I say something on this momentous occasion, which is both completely terrifying and an honour! I have really loved having the opportunity to talk with all my cousins about our memories of Nanna, and it has been an honour to try and sort those memories into a speech for her to be proud of...standing here today is the terrifying bit! However, it’s very typical of Nanna that she spent her last hours planning her own funeral, and it has been the lifelong lot of her grandchildren to ‘volunteer’ at her bidding, so here I am. 

A long life deserves a long thank you, and this speech reflects the thoughts and memories of 14 grandchildren and great-grandchildren! Deb, Jenn, Martin and I all called Jean Nanna. Naomi, Jemimah and Hannah knew her as Grandma, Graeme and Diane called her Gran and Jess, Finn, Zoe, Emily and Chloe knew her as Great Nanna Yule. Since I got to choose her name first, she’ll be Nanna today!  

My earliest memories of Nanna are at Highett. Martin and I used to love having sleepovers at Nanna and Grandad’s. She was always good for a packet of juicy fruit (until my chewie ended up in Martin’s very curly hair and Mum laid down a ‘no more gum’ rule!) and she’d let us spend hours playing in the caravan they kept in the driveway. We weren’t so keen on walking to the shops with her as she seemed to stop at every second house so she could introduce her darling grandchildren to the entire suburb. Even at a young age, we recognised Nanna as a social networking maestro. A reflection of this wide friendship circle was the legendary number of christmas cards she received every year, festooning her house with them like a flock of birds perched on the rafters. 

I remember watching Nanna and Grandad play tennis with great energy and discuss the game with even more energy afterwards. It seems like only a couple of years ago that she stopped playing tennis, and she was certainly still having an occasional swim at Pt Roadknight right up until last summer. 

I remember the back verandah of the Highett house suddenly bulging at the seams with exotic, colourful handicrafts as my new ‘cousin’ TRADING PARTNERS arrived. As I travelled through Vietnam and Cambodia recently I was struck by how familiar all the traditional crafts felt, as I’d been surrounded by them from a very young age. Naomi recently helped Nanna to complete a history of Trading Partners, and really enjoyed that special time working together. 

Two events stand out from the Highett years as good examples of who Nanna was in my life. I can’t remember in which order they occurred, but both changed my view of the world. I think I was about 8 or 9 when we arrived at Highett for easter lunch, eager to get our usual stash of chocolate. Nanna greeted us with the exciting news that she had decided to stop buying us easter eggs each year, and instead she would donate the money to refugees who needed it. I can still remember the look of hope in her eye as she watched me struggle to pretend that I agreed this was a great idea, while inwardly screaming NOOOOOOOO! I doubt it was meant as a test, but I felt I’d failed it...this watershed 12 second conversation definitely scarred me for life but, perhaps ironically, I also spent 6 years volunteering at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in my 30s, so her message eventually reached it’s mark! 

Probably around the same time, I couldn’t sleep one night (no doubt dreaming of long-lost easter eggs!) and got up to find Nanna and Grandad watching a movie. Nanna let me stay up to watch it, as she said it was the story of a very important man. I was glued to the screen for the entire movie, totally enthralled by the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer… I don’t remember much about the movie, except for the final scene where he is taken from his cell, marched out to the firing squad and shot in cold blood because he wouldn’t recant his view of God (or something like that!). I’m not sure that this helped me sleep, but it gave me a clear idea of the values my grandparents held dear and again, it’s either scarred me for life or helped to form my views!

Jenn also has fond memories of Highett and reminded me of Nanna’s amazing porridge, which has never been possible to replicate, possibly due to the exotic bonlac she used in it! Nanna loved telling tales of her children and grandchildren, and Jenn in particular provided her with many laughs... she loved telling the story of the day she found Jenn cleaning her pet kangaroo’s teeth with Grandad’s tooth brush, and the look of sheer horror on his face! Eating fresh apricots from the tree and cooking custard will always remind us all of days spent body surfing at Anglesea and nights filled with Mahjong and 500 while scoffing down Nanna’s crystalized ginger stash.

It can’t be said that Nanna was a traditional granny type. Her cooking was functional at best (though she did a cracker roast, with good crumble and custard to follow). However she was totally tuned in to the world around her and always had something to say about politics…as you’d all know she ran for state parliament as a democrat, back when they were still keeping the bastards honest. Politics was about the only topic that could potentially cause arguments, but she was always more than happy to set people straight and help them to see she was undoubtedly right! We all grew up listening to Nanna loudly listing the inadequacies of any given government, and all the ways they could be doing things better. I know I yell at the tv in just the same tone of voice she used!

All of us, including my children, were taught to play our favourite games by Nanna, so look out if any of us challenge you to a game of 500, scrabble, mahjong, chinese checkers or Mastermind. We’ve been trained by the games Ninja, world-renowned for always having a ‘Yule-rule’ to get her out of a tight spot!!! You’d be nearly cleared in Mahjong, and Nanna would cough, say ‘kong’ at some discard, pause, and then triumphantly say ‘and mahjong!’. Competitive to the end, no quarter was given for age or infirmity... If you couldn’t beat her fair and square then you didn’t win!

We’ve done a tally and the only one of us to actually beat Nanna at scrabble in our last game with her was Deb… even at 94 she ran rings around us! Watching her run her hands through her hair until it was a white mohawk as she tried to guess Finn’s mastermind challenge recently is an image that will stay with me forever. She got the answer, too, looking like a gleeful cockatoo! 

However, everything took a back seat to conversation – even scrabble.  “Come and talk to me” she would say, patting the chair beside her. The conversations would be wide-ranging and would always seem to meander, but there would be something she wanted to ask about. She always had her own view but she was also keen to hear another perspective. 

Nanna was supportive of anything and everything we did… but she wasn’t afraid to tell you what she thought, either. When I was 20 I started up a business making and selling silk and ceramic giftware in a shop/studio in Fitzroy. I’ll never forget Nanna saying ‘It’s a lovely thing to do, darling, but when do you think you might get a job that uses your degree?’ Diane remembers often having to bite her tongue as Nanna told her exactly what she thought of a particular behaviour...the more foolhardy among us (Jenn and I for example) were more likely to fight back than bite our tongues but looking back as adults we can all see how much she shaped us as people. She taught us to value our minds and our education, but we all knew she was proud of us no matter what field our accomplishments were achieved in. Hannah says, “as long as I was happy, she was happy” and Jemimah remembers always feeling special when Grandma clapped her hands and said with genuine joy, excitement and interest “Good for you darling girl!” 

This joy, excitement and interest was extended to everyone who was ever brought to visit Nanna. All of our friends, our partners and of course, our children, were always treated with the same enthusiastic welcome and a searching conversation in which Nanna would find out which 6 degrees separated her from this new friend. Those of us who had time to introduce our partners and children to Nanna are aware of the blessing received. She was certainly very special to my husband and children and for that I will be forever grateful. I remember how excited she was when Jess, her first great grandchild was born, and she was just as excited with each of the subsequent great grandchildren to arrive. Her genuine interest in people and their stories meant that she could connect with any age and any background. The circle of children who grew up visiting Nanna Yule far exceeds the bloodline, as is obvious here today and the example of a life lived out in passionate and intelligent action against injustice has shaped our journeys and left a legacy within our family and beyond, that is truly inspiring. 

Nanna was a genuine matriarch, always ready to arrange, organise, connect, bestow and provide love, if not actual food. Although she WAS very generous with her large supply of biscuits so you’d never totally starve if relying on her pantry. As we got our P plates and started driving ourselves to Anglesea we all learned to stop at Freshwater Creek and buy lunch to take with us... it was that or go hungry! While I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, she’d hate us to portray her as a saint, so I will point out that she was also very good at getting cross and I doubt there is a single one of her descendants (or house guests!) who hasn’t received a withering rebuke at least once. This trait became more noticeable in her later years... she definitely felt her time was running out, so if you took your time in a scrabble move you’d get a hurry up glare or worse! 

On one of her last trips to Anglesea Deb stopped at the butchers (how our family of wordsmiths loves the fact the anglesea butcher is called Mr Stab!) and picked up a chicken to roast for dinner. She cooked the chook to perfection but for some reason absolutely massacred the bird when it came time to carve. Nanna finally became so enraged that she banished her from the kitchen with a scathing ‘It’s ridiculous, this carving effort of yours!’ and finished the job herself. Although they laughed about it afterwards, Deb has now sworn off chicken carving for life!

The extended Yule family is way overloaded with forceful Capricorns, and january is always a busy month as we all celebrate our birthdays, but January 20 is the Yule equivalent of the Queen’s birthday, and we all made sure every year that Nanna was fully appreciated on her day. Naomi has the mixed blessing of sharing this birthdate. While this made Nanna very proud, Naomi has spent years having her birthday overshadowed every year by watching never-ending Australian Open tennis games and Nanna getting FAR more birthday cards than her. 

In a speech at her 80th birthday, Martin nicknamed Nanna the telephone exchange, and it is true that not much happened without her acting as the information hotline. In later years the accuracy of the reportage sometimes slipped due to her hearing... when I gave birth to Finn I rang her to let her know and was very surprised to hear her say ‘wonderful news, darling’ and hang up. I later learned that she’d hung up so abruptly in order to ring the rest of the family as quickly as possible. It was lucky that she rang Janie first, because she proudly announced that I had had a baby boy and named him SIN. Jane managed to persuade her that she must have got it wrong before she spread THAT rumour around the entire Yule clan!!

Naomi sums up our collective sense of loss well: “Our family and my life will never be the same now that she’s gone and I honestly don’t know if I will ever not miss her. I am grateful for the time I’ve had with her, the force she has been in my life and the love and acceptance she has always given me. I pray that the rest of us are able to carry on the legacy she has left us, with the grace and energy she had.” I would add to this that I’ll miss her sense of humour, her endless goodwill to all, and her unfailing attempts to change the world for the better. She certainly worked hard to instil these qualities in all of us and we are lucky to have had such a long time with her. As Martin puts it “She managed a special relationship with everyone.  All of the contributors to this speech clearly feel they had a special connection with her. They did. Because people were her priority, especially her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.” 

I think all of us feel a very special bond with Pt Roadknight, and that has been inherited from Nanna. Diane put it perfectly: “The trip to Anglesea was always so long for us, coming from Yackandandah, but there was always the same feeling of anticipation and homecoming as we turned down her road, knowing that she would be coming out on to the balcony as we pulled up, waiting to give me a hug and with a roast in the oven. The feeling of warmth I always felt upon arriving at her house and seeing her is something I have never felt anywhere else and I will never forget no matter where I go in the world.” I think wherever Nanna was, her visitors felt that same sense of homecoming, but Pt Roadknight particularly will always feel like a place we can find Nanna when we need her.

Martin’s children Emily and Chloe want to say this: “We love you great nanna, and we miss you now you’re in the sky.  Hopefully you can play with our Pa.”  

My daughter Zoe wants me to read the letter she wrote to Great Nanna after her death. 

Dear Great Nanna,
I loved having you around.
I was lucky to have you.
I wish you were here with us.
Every time I went to your house I would smile when I saw you waving.
It was ANGELsea to me because it had your spirit.
But now you’re going to the real ANGELsea.
Great Nanna I love you. 

This letter was cremated with Nanna last week, and I know it will make her very happy to have it with her as a reminder of how much we all loved her and how much we will miss her.

Having been lucky enough to get the chance to actually say goodbye to Nanna I’d like to finish with our last conversation. As Finn sobbed into her arms and told her how much he loved her she gave him a big Great Nanna squeeze and said ‘Oh, darling, no-one can live forever!’ which made me realise just how much I hadn’t believed that of her. If anyone was going to carry on energetically running things it would be Nanna! 

Mike took the kids out and I realised that she already knew most of what I had to say...a 90th birthday speech and a deathbed speech are worryingly similar apparently! I started to tell her how much she has always inspired me with her passion for human rights, and how she has always known how to do the right thing seemingly effortlessly and it was all getting very earnest and embarrassing when she interrupted me with a glint in her eye and said ‘... and I’ve had FUN, darling!’ and we laughed and hugged and I realised that she had got it in one. My enduring memories of Nanna will always be of her laughing at something, playing games with the joy and enthusiasm of a child and being excited by absolutely everything. What a gift she was.

Thank you.

For Alice Leonards: 'I'm all for you' - by granddaughter Clare Wright

Cleveland, Ohio. 2007

ALICE ELIZABETH SIZER LEONARDS KRISS WYGANT LEONARDS

 We loved our grandmother.

Grams, as she was known to us, had a twinkle in her eye and a skip in her step that always brought us great pleasure.  She had a zest for life, a quick and intelligent wit and a true appreciation of the delicious details of family life.  She loved to teach, to take the lead, to show an example – but she never moralised or judged, or at least never to her granddaughters.

I remember one trip to Florida when I was fourteen.  Grams took me out to lunch at a fancy restaurant with three of her old work buddies.  They were all elegant women, well educated and well groomed.  The conversation veered from politics to interesting menu items to changes in the public health system to the unseasonable weather.  There was a lot of raucous laughter and hugs all round when departing.  A few weeks later, when I was back in Australia, I received a letter from Grams.  Grams told me that she was concerned that my lack of table manners, as demonstrated at that lunch, were going to prohibit me from getting along in the world.  Respectable and influential people, argued Grams, would expect a fine young woman like me to exhibit exemplary table manners.  She then proceeded to outlines my etiquette misdemeanours and provide the correct method of deportment.  At the time, the words stung somewhat, because I was always sensitive to criticism, but I knew Grams honestly had my best interests at heart and her words of advice were offered out of care and mutual respect.  I knew that for Grams to take the time and effort to scrutinise and direct me, I must truly matter to my grandmother.

And there were numerous other ways in which Grams conveyed her love and appreciation: cards at birthdays, generous and thoughtful gifts (I am still reading my own daughter many of the books that Grams sent my younger sister Rachel over the years), sharing recipes, passing on family stories.  In her last years, before dementia stole the clarity and precision of her mind, Grams sent many long, ‘newsy’ letters.  She faithfully accepted my choices, adopting my husband Damien into her heart and warm family embrace.  She used to send photos of herself; on the back she wrote: ‘I’m all for you’.

The last time I saw Grams was on her final trip to Australia in 1999.  By then, I had 2-year old and 4-month old sons, in whose company Grams delighted.  Grams was 83 years old, but she crawled around on the floor on her hands and knees playing horsies with my toddler.  She was in her element when dealing with exhausted and anxious new mothers and their grizzly, demanding babies.  Grams just loved to jiggle and burp the little boys, and fuss over me.  Was I eating enough to look after my needs?  Was I eating the right foods to make good breast milk?  (Grams was very proud of the fact that she nursed her own babies at a time when the drug companies were pushing formula as the milk of choice; more than that, Grams’ breast milk was taken and analysed to use as a model for a new formula that came to sweep the market.  She was the only nursing mother on the ward.)   I deeply regret that Grams could not have spent more time in Australia with her great-grandchildren, as I know they would have mutually benefited from each other’s company and attention.  My redhead son, in particular, has inherited Grams’ cheekiness as well as her locks.

Grams provided an important anchor point for me.  When I was feeling lost and alone as an 18 year-old travelling abroad, Grams consoled me with the words, “Always be true to yourself”.  She didn’t mean that it was okay to be self-centred or individualistic; indeed Grams showed through her deeds that she was committed to public service.  What she meant was to trust in your heart and have faith in your judgment, staying true to your principles and beliefs.

No doubt Grams made many mistakes in her long and eventful life.  Her own judgment and choices were not always sound or sensible.  But I have no doubt that the true north of her moral compass was love.  And she loved us truly.