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