angels watchin’ over him

*

another death

Our friend Michael has left his body at last. He was eighty one years old, and the father of a thirteen year old daughter, A. 

I met A’s mum Z in a yoga class twelve and a half years ago. I don’t think either of us ever made it back to that yoga class, early motherhood being what it is. But we discovered, while assisting eachother in down dog, that  not only were we both ‘older mothers’ of new babies, we also lived in the same street.

We made immediate arrangements to have a cup of tea together that afternoon. We were both desperate for a laugh.

It’s a common and lovely story, the lasting bond between women who meet over playgroup play-dough, nappies, breast-feeding. Baby-vomit on your shirt, the feeling that your intellectual life has gone forever. The sleep-deprived generosity we are able to extend to eachother during that humbling, unglamorous “Do The Hokey-Pokey” era,  when our children are toddlers and every adult conversation is interrupted. Our children growing up together. 

I was a little surprised when I discovered Z’s husband, the retired psychiatrist, was so much older than her. She was already 43, like me,  but Michael was more than old enough to be A’s grandfather, and was sometimes mistaken for it.  Z and A were his third family. You sensed a hard-living past. He went to AA meetings every Friday night.

Michael and I did not get off to a great start. I thought he was grumpy and sexist and rude. He thought I was...well I don’t know exactly why he didn’t seem to like me. Stroppy feminist  perhaps.

The great thing is that we both got over all of it in the succeeding years, and came to be fond of eachother. We mellowed. Our two small  families, both  exiled from or without extended family nearby, grew close in a way that felt like family. We got to know and  love eachother’s kids.  And our two kids can’t remember a time when they didn’t know eachother. 

They’ve had their moments, the children, their squabbles, their rivalries. For a while it seemed like A was always lording it over F. Until he learnt to stand up for himself. We all agreed that it was good practise for them, to have to sort out their conflicts with eachother, in the absence of siblings. 

At times we all had our judgements about eachother, talked behind eachother’s backs, just like real family. A was sent to the uniforms-and-prizes mainstream grammar school; F to the rainbows-and-fairies Steiner school. But we all knew we were there for one another, in that solid, loving  way that matters. Michael taught F how to be teased, and that we only tease people we really love. He was like a robust,  affectionate grandad.

*

We all used to meet almost every Saturday at the market. Often with J and T, who are also beloved old playgroup pals, also single child/older mother.  We’d sit at the same table each week drinking coffee, ordering laksa. 

In the early days we’d take the three kids down to clamber on the choo-choo train in the playground. Later they roamed the market  with a mobile phone and money in their pockets, collecting free samples of popcorn and banana smoothies, buying bubble-gum, seeing school mates. For a while they earnt good money busking.

It was a sweet routine. Z and I shopped for fruit and veg at our regular organic stalls, bought bunches of flowers, chatted to various people. Michael would be hunched over The Sydney Morning Herald, getting  indignant about all the stupidity and greed in the world. He’d chat with D. Friends and acquaintances came past. We met eachother's relatives - Anyone visiting from interstate was brought to the market on Saturday morning. 

Michael and ‘the girls’ had moved to the hinterland by this time and often D, F, and I would go back to their place, which was nearby, after the market. We’d sit on their big verandah overlooking Cooroy Mountain, drinking coffee, sometimes staying for lunch. We’d watch king parrots and rainbow lorrikeets feeding in the grevillea, egrets down by the billabong. The kids often had a sleep over. 

Even after moving down here, we’ve kept up the Saturday market ritual whenever we are up on The Coast, which is at least every month or so.  

M has had quite a few health scares in recent years - a couple of strokes, cancer, emergencies with ambulances and hospital. Gruelling times for his wife and daughter. He’s fought his way back from death’s door on several occasions. 

We hoped he’d live to see A graduate, or turn 21 or something. But then again, looking after him was wearing Z out terribly. It’s been a hard time for all of them. Constrained. Often when we’ve been there the last year or two he’s been mostly dozing on a lounge on the verandah, or in the recliner. His glasses askew, the newspaper flopped in his lap. 

Then a week or so ago, another stroke, and  the definite sense that he was getting ready to go. I went to see him four days before he died. Z had a Siddha chant, Om Nama Shiviya playing quietly in the background, and vases of flowers in the house.

Michael had stopped eating and was an insubstantial blur under the doona. A faint remnant of the big hearted old patriarch, who’d always greet you with a  rib-crushing bear hug, holding you to his heart. He was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him, but Z nudged him gently awake and said ‘Jane’s here to see you’

The old voice boomed out from somewhere inside his shrunken body:  ‘Hello Jane, I love you’ . ‘I love you too Michael’ I said, then sat in silence by his bed for a little while, feeling strangely peaceful and complete, and remembering when he used to sing the deep bass part in Z’s gospel choir Angels watching over me

He died at home with his wife and daughter beside him. 

We were all in Samoa together in 2008

*portrait of Michael by his wife
portrait by Michael's daughter of her parents several years ago