Rider Wait Allegory

A few people wanted access to the speech that I did at the celebration for my partners life. So here you go...

Just to introduce, clarify or confuse my bit you may be wondering why, on the Program for Celebration it says Rider Wait Allegory. To explain this, my partner and I threw a few great dinner parties over our many years together. On that very rare occasion, after a wee too many Cardonays, a poor unsuspecting guest might be very lucky to get one of my terrible tarot card readings. A friend, who is here today has been one of those poor, poor guests and will bemoaningly testify to this.
I have a Rider Waite Tarot Card pack. One of the cards in the pack is The Fool. It can symbolise lifes journey and that you never really know what is around the next corner but you march merrily on through it.
I first met my partner on a bicycle ride that another friend of mine who is here today, took me on back in 1985. Thanks fellow rider Soddy. Good things come to riders that wait. So now that's as clear as mud to you.......

Another Rider. Waite. Tarot card. Fools story. Starts. NOW! One of those huge, tassie, blue-day mornings, way back when, maybe 2nd or 3rd time you've done this. It was a nice cycle before. Would be nice to do it again! You charge the water bottle, make sure the tyres are hard, don the helmet, sunnies & lookin' pretty flash in those skin tight lycra shorts, knobbly knees blowin in the breeze, you take off down the streets. Air rushes past. Through the city, domain, govie house to the left and up to the bridge...

The future segue is Melbourne. You. The Rider. Waite. You share a house. You becomes we. We lives together in St Kildas. After a few years she becomes a well known potter. Going crazy with clay, she helps set up South Melbourne Gasworks Arts Centre. Always busy. The first few years of 26 good ones pass...
Back on that bridge, traffic whining, sun heats up the blacktop, you start peddling hard through those eastern sore suburbs...
We marry in Melbourne. Friends and family meet. The Mazda Capella blows its head gasket on the Geelong Freeway again! How the hell are we going to get to that lavish Queenscliffe honeymoon we spent our entire life savings on! The sky is falling!
A few minutes later, by some kind of divine intervention, our wedding photographer resident angel drives past and spies us on the verge. Shoulda put a few big ones on the ggs that day!..

Traffic dies, road winds up Grass Tree hill, down into low gear now, slowly climbing. Breath of Eucalypts. Stillness is broken by heartbeats thumping, drips of sweat. Black cockatoos cry and crows caw...
Another analogy. Another hill. Melbourne gets harder. She gets pregnant. A big mountain. Hobart looks like the summit. The rubber band snaps us back to Tassie and we move and buy 41 Louden St. Cheapest house in Hobart that year! Yeh and up near the tip!
Big & bigger from the beginning he is born and we. Become three...
Back on the hill, you've reached the summit. Gravity sucks. The wheels get the idea. Down, down, down towards Richmond you burn...
...She changes direction and does the day job. Supermum! You care for the lad, garden, make art and extend the house. Superdad. He starts school. Superboy. She stops the power towers in South Hobart and gets a masters degree to boot. We grow into our forties and share good times. I retrain and become a geek. We move to Arthur Street. Back in Sydney, her folks pass away. We buy a private forest reserve at Roaring Beach and start to make plans to be there until we are racing each other on our Zimmer frames. We move to the quiet of Roope street Newtown and spend nights listening to the dulcit tones of bogans burning up the Brooker.
The down hill run slows as you reach Malcolms Hut Road. Your in the flat of the Coal River Valley. You veer right and coast easily. Its an hour and half since you started.
It is the peek of day with the heat shimmering. The grass and sea breeze whisper their secrets, the journey cools...
She buys caravans and we spend a few years sharing weekends of paradise at Roaring beach.
We make more friends. She works for DPAC and we slowly design a house to build there. He grows taller than her - and then me. Rats! She turns fifty and we celebrate with many friends at a long table last supper down on the block...
You have now reached what is known as the Dulcot intersection. Your cup is half empty and the last hill is always the worst. You select the lowest gear and climb up and up steeply. It's a hard hill but you've shared such good times together. You are thinking about more you could share.
You see each other. See the smile and she gives you that look. That look! That look! Wah!
She waves as you pull off the road to the studio. The ride is over but the future and past come into being again.

Whooshing past

Last night a friend of ours said she felt my partner wooshing past her as she left us. Whoosh!
She had been waiting at the departure gate for way too long and had listened to way too much lounge music - stuck record on Cafe del Mar Siez or Diez. Then her flight was called...It wouldn't have been a cheap airline...

...It would have been Guru...da!

Goodbye my lovely woman

My partner passed away at 2:35 am this morning. She is at peace now. Like times before she did not give up until she left us. Until there was nothing more to give or get. Her heart was young and strong. Her breath held her. At the palliative care facility I had slept next to her knowing that this was the last night. Hearing her consistent breaths when I rose to the surface of my slumber now and then. Through all of her life she was consistent and strong. An equilibrium had been reached between her breath and her heart. By the position she had been laid in. Reached by a marked change in her breath on Saturday that seemed a lifetime away. Then around 2:00 pm they came to move her. The pattern was broken. The equilibrium was disturbed and she finally let go. Two weeks since she made her decision not to go on. Many days since she stopped raising an eyebrow or making a smile or frowning when in pain.

My son and I packed our things. I put a picture of her swami in her hand. We said our last goodbyes. Our last kisses to her forehead She was smiling in peace as I took my last glimpse of her from the door of her room. We left her with her many vases of flowers at the foot of her bed.

Goodbye sweetheart.

Serenity

Last night she opened her eyes around five and her breathing seemed to be very faint. I thought she was leaving us. Then she came back. I stepped out for a while three friends gave my partner a massage all together as the same time. I came back and there she was responded with smiles and what seemed great satisfaction - moving her body more than she had done for days over which time she has looked so serene. We move into today.

Transformation takes a long time

Back here I think we have given her friends the time to enter the and/or achieve the possibility of saying goodbyes. I think I have contacted most of those who have been with with her. It feels we are entering the stage where is time for goodbyes to be passed on rather than be made directly.

Last night one of her yoga friends gave us her guru's chant that was played / sung as he meditated when he passed into his next life. She talked about this as part of her way forward quiet a few times over the last 11 months. The chant makes you really sleepy and one of her buddies who gets an elephant stamp and gold stars for support all through this long year gave my son and I massages whilst listening to it. It is played permanently at her guru's ashram to this day. It took a while for us to find the repeat button so that she could have it playing all last night. We then left her in peace and went home to sleep. I wonder if it is still playing. Hope its not driving her crazy.

Her sister is flying back for the day. She needs more closure than being with for her to weeks ago. I understand. She sounded like she was falling to bits on the phone.

On Saturday I put up a frieze of photos in her room that I chose of her that have been take all through her life. I made sure they were the most beautiful I could find in our albums, had them duplicated which was hard at the store. I had to look at the bargains to stop my eyes leaking badly in public and be whipped off to a pysche ward somewhere! Her radiance is intense in all of them and it is hard for me to look at for more than a few moments. They remind me of the good times we have shared with each other for more than half our lives together.

The new day brings on the next round.

A special occasion

So many have come to see my partner over the last few days. Unfortunately some have missed out. She was asleep. Or out. Its the luck of the draw. You might like to try again. It becomes clear that the 'longer' you live the more the present seems to compress. The moments and memories become more succinct as you go through a few short hours called a day.

I pushed her around in the chair to a nearby cafe. She had a few sips of the soy decaf latte while the traffic roared around us. We sat outside - there were too many steps to go inside. Too unsafe to be worth the risk. She rolled her eyes at me as I helped far too much. It rained. Then was too sunny. It rained. Then was too sunny.

I went home and made some supper to take back to her. I walked the dog. My son, my partner and I had tea at the ward. We opened the wine that was a present from a friend who said must be kept for a very special occasion. A few more days, weeks or maybe a month. Definitely special occasion time.

Going into into palliative care

My partner has decided to go into palliative care. She has been chewing on this for the last month or so. Her quality of life has been slowly going down over the past few months and she has got to the stage that during that time her supervision and care requirements have been slowly and surely been getting higher and higher. When all is said and done continuing aspirations means further and worsening hardship. We had a meeting with the Palliative team this morning and she was offered and took a bed at the Whittle ward. It was a great release and relief for her to finally be able to come to this decision after many long months of exploring the "what ifs" associated with her condition. I'm sorry. It may come as a surprise to some of you as you may have enjoyed times with her recently and had not realised we have arrived at this platform.