Get Shouty

Autumn never seems easy.

It has a very distinct flavours: it’s burning leaves; and blue sky sunny days and crisp evenings; the rediscovery of red wine and raincoats; going through the rituals of putting away the carnival of summer while preparing to be tucked up for the long sleepy time of the winter months.

It’s wistful. Melancholy. Sometimes overly bright and shrill, sometimes grey and blustery. A giggle, a memory, cloud going over the sun. And on this crisp evening bitter sweetness is the order of the day.

I had a very sick friend. Very. She was diagnosed on Australia Day with cancer of the everything.

And in 12 hours I go to her funeral service. (this was written Thursday night)

I’ve been acting as her digital comms officer, the instigator of a blog to record her journey. She delivered beautiful, venerable, knock-your-socks-off posts from a clever, creative, fragile, graceful woman at the height of her magic.

She fought and feinted and made funny- but about three weeks ago the ability to write had gone. I asked her vast circle to share and now my role is as a collector of quotes and anecdotes, and the blog  a repository of precious ‘i remembers’ and ‘my favourite moments’, mad stories, and beautiful photographs from a seemingly endless stream of admirers and converts from all corners of the world. It is important to all who knew her to document all of the different perspectives of her life for her two precious children and to create a place to visit and remember. We have collectively created a living memorial to witness and celebrate our gorgeous, generous friend.

I cannot say that it has been easy. I hold all the three o’clock in the morning stories typed through tears, the constant requests for updates and information…everyone’s grief and advice and need to know. Emails sent to me from all over needed to be poured into wordpress- and as much as I tried to treat it all as Lorem Ipsum the emotion seeped through my weakening defenses.

I haven’t been able write about it to now- and I haven’t been able to able to blog with any degree of seriousness for a while. I’ve been under emotional embargo, have been trying to hold back my own tide with a dam made out of wet card board and duct tape. Well that’s over, there’s no protecting myself from the next step. I’m preparing myself to be hugged by strangers whose secrets I know and hold those whose story I share.

Today I am sad. But I have been blessed a thousand times by the love of a amazing friend, by the strength of a circle of chosen family and the good fortune of recognising that this thing we do, this blogging thing, can be just what the doctor ordered, even when doctors can do nothing at all.

I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés, that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and happily torturing people with my jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all eventually die as well, but so it goes.

I drank for many years in a tavern that had a photograph of Brendan Behan on the wall, and under it this quotation, which I memorized:

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

For 57 words, that does a pretty good job of summing it up. “Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.