Mum

Today, April 1st, would have been my Mum's 71st birthday. Sadly she passed away three months ago, in the early hours of New Years Day, after a two and a half year battle with cancer.

Three days after, a massive bushfire tore through the small village where she had lived. This was what was left of her house.

As I remember Mum on her birthday, my thoughts are best expressed in the words I said at her funeral.

Today we are here remember my mother Barbara Hill with our words and our presence. They are never really enough to honor someone we love, but they are all we have left.

She was christened Barbara Ann Graham but she was known to her family as "Dick". I only discovered the reason for that two days ago when talking to Mum's brother, Geoffrey. It seems when she was small she had an Aunt Victoria nearby--Aunty Vic--but Vic came out as Dick and the name stuck.

My late father David, called her by many names, but they were all filled with love and affection. To myself and Joanne and James she was always Mum. To others she was a beloved mother-in-law, Auntie, sister, sister-in-law, and to many a true and loyal friend.

What do you say about your mother's life? My perspective on her is dominated by that wonderful experience of a mother's love - constant and unconditional. She worked incredibly hard at being a good mother. She often struggled to suppress her natural instinct to wrap us in cotton wool, knowing that she needed to let us fall, and that the best thing she could do as a mother was be there to pick us up. Her own childhood had its challenges--something I only came to fully understand in recent years--but she never used that as an excuse, but rather as motivation to always do the best she could by her kids.

Perhaps it is better to sum up her life in her own words: "I've lived a life I could never have imagined as a child," spreading her wings far beyond Pottsville, the sleepy seaside village in which she grew up. She could however see the irony in ending her days in the sleepy seaside village of Dunalley.

After raising a family Mum went back to study and became a librarian, a job which gave her real satisfaction and pleasure. Mum and Dad travelled extensively, although sadly Mum never got to make that one last trip. Of course if she had, I'm sure there would have been another "one last trip" because she wanted to see it all.

At heart Mum was a creator and an artist. There was pottery and painting and her garden--which went a little crazy once Dad wasn't there to restrain her--and her bonsai trees, some of which she had been growing for thirty years, living works of art that to me best captured the true spirit of a wonderful woman.

At least by Mum's telling, she was a bit of a rebel in her early years. That's pure hearsay--inadmissible in a court of law--but I can swear from first hand observation over many years that she didn't know how to give up. As was her nature she went out with one hell of a fight.

As most of you will know, a terrible firestorm tore through Dunalley on Friday and the residence affectionately known as "The Shack" is no more. I am so thankful Mum wasn't here to see the place she and Dad poured so much love into destroyed in one hellish afternoon. Without her presence, though, it's only a building that has been lost, a timely reminder of how much more we have truly lost in Barbara's passing.

Snowshoeing Rabbit Ears Loop 1A

Today we snowshoed the Loop 1A trail on Rabbit Ears Pass with Aline and Tony.

It was warm again today but fortunately a little cloudy with a breeze which made it perfect.

Here's the GPS data.

Thunderhead Express

It's not often that I go out and spend the entire time on the lower mountain but that's exactly what I did today. We found Goldilocks conditions - not too hard and not too soft - so we just kept circulating on the Thunderhead Express. Concentration was good enough to do twice, which is unusual on a non-powder day. Vagabond was also nice and not too crowded. Even Heavenly Daze on the way home was good.

The high temperature today was 60F or 15C. That's the warmest I've seen it in March in eight seasons.

Here's the GPS data. Only lap 1 on the lower mountain is mine; Tony and Aline stayed out after I was finished.

Summer skiing

It should be spring skiing this time of the season but it is so ridiculously warm I am calling it summer skiing.

I skied with Tony and Aline again today.

Here's the GPS data.

In-laws

I skied today with my wife's brother Tony, and her sister Aline.

Aline hadn't been on skis for several years (she normally snowboards) and Tony hand't been on his snowboard for a couple of years (he normally windsurfs) so we started out on the bunny slopes. They both quickly graduated to Wally World and had no trouble on Heavenly Daze on the way home, so they'll be read for harder stuff tomorrow.

It was warm. warm, warm today, somewhere around 50F or 10C.

Here's the GPS data.

50 years

My parents were married on this day 50 years ago. My dad passed away in early 2009 and my mum is fighting cancer, so there won't be any celebration, but it's still a milestone worth noting. Everything I know about loving your spouse completely whilst still driving each other crazy most of the time I learned by watching my parents!

Milestone day

We had to drive to Granby yesterday afternoon to collect my wife's mother and sister from the train (the same train my Mum arrived on a couple of months ago).

On the way back the snow was so heavy on Rabbit Ears Pass that I was down to 25 mph which made me happy because I knew it would also be dumping on the mountain!

I was out of bed at 6 am to see that the report was 11 inches of new snow and at the gondola at 7:55 am by which time the line was already quite long, so instead I was first in line for the Christie Express. From there it was a quick traverse over to the Thunderhead Express where I was on the fourth chair and then down skier's right of Vagabond to Surprise which was untracked and knee deep (so I'm already thinking "way more than 11 inches").

Then I hit the Storm Peak Express in time to be on the third chair. I don't know where the occupants of the first two chairs went, but I got first tracks down Storm Peak face right under the chair and then knee deep all the way down skiers' right of Cyclone.

After that it was over to the Pony Express where I did two circuits and found some glades where it was thigh deep (so now I'm thinking "11 inches? Bah! More like 18"). And this was full on Champagne Powder; so light and dry that you literally choke on it as you breath the face shots in.

Then across to the other side of the mountain for Shadows and Lights Out followed by Twilight. I wanted to keep going, and there were still freshies to be found in the trees, but by that time my legs were shot, so I hit Oops and Vagabond (all to myself!) on the way home.

In terms of milestones, this was the last day of 2009 and what a way to end the year, the first true powder day of the 2009-10 ski season, and day 36 of my season, which is significant because that's the total number of days I managed for the entire 2008-09 season.

Here's today's track. 13,038 vertical ft (season total 347,878 ft) in 2:36 (of which 20 minutes was waiting for Christie Express to open and another 10 was waiting for Storm Peak Express to open, but that's what you've got to do to get first tracks!)


Final bonus; it's still snowing, so the start to 2010 could be as good as the end to 2009.

Mum Visiting

My Mum arrived from Australia today.

She arrived via the Amtrak train from San Francisco, with Qantas taking care of the Sydney-San Francisco leg thanks to the miles I used to get her a business class ticket (I think she liked that a little better than flying at the back of the plane).


These long distance Amtrak trains are a black hole for taxes; but if my taxes are going to be wasted, they may as well be wasted on my Mum!

My nephew the photographer

I've previously posted excellent photos taken by my nephew Julian, but now he seems to be getting very serious about the art. Check out this fantastic shot of the Gold Coast.


Here's his technical commentary for those who understand such stuff - it's completely meaningless to me; I've not mastered anything more complex than an auto-focus point and shoot digital camera.

• "Taken using a 1976 Pentax SLR... looks like the 30 year old shutter mechanism and light meter are working perfectly... :)"
• "It's exactly what I wanted, dark contrasts, bright borderline over exposure that brings out the highlights and reflections.. I ran every shot at just above neutral values..."

Watering the cat

Two things to conclude from this photo: my sister-in-law's cat is weird and very spoilt!

Travel plans go bad

I was supposed to travel to DC today to attend a meeting with my bosses tomorrow morning.

Things started to go south when American Airlines called me this morning at 4 am to tell me that my flight via Dallas/Forth Worth had been canceled. They managed to rebook us on a flight via Chicago, but with only 80 minutes connection time between flights.

That's important because the inbound flight from Chicago was delayed by 80 minutes. I've done this plane trip caper a few hundred times before, so I knew immediately that even if they made up a little time on the turnaround, we'd be left with less than half an hour of connection time in Chicago. Even if by some miracle we made it the chances are our bags wouldn't and there's nothing worse than doing a 9 am presentation with nothing to wear except the smelly shirt and jeans you wore on the plane the previous day(yes, that's the voice of experience as well). So we made the call about 2 pm not to even bother going to the airport.

What is one to do in such circumstances? Go skiing of course. I was on the mountain by 2.20 pm skiing the foot of additional powder that had fallen overnight. Since I started very late (and skied hard yesterday on the assumption that I wouldn't be skiing today) I only managed to stay out for an hour and forty five minutes. Even so I managed 11,117 vertical ft. Basically I did four circuits on the Sundown Express skiing the trees and then I ended with my favourite lower mountain run, Vertigo.


So today was a complete bonus, not only because I was supposed to be traveling, but also because when my Mum called just before Christmas with the terrible news that my Dad had cancer, I mentally wrote off the rest of the season (and I'd only been home from South Africa and Rome for a week at that point). But as much as I love the powder, I'm with Inigo Montoya on this one:

Inigo Montoya: HELLO! MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA! YOU KILLED MY FATHER! PREPARE TO DIE!
[Inigo corners Count Rugen, knocks his sword aside, and slashes his cheek, giving him a scar just like Inigo's]
Inigo Montoya: Offer me money.
Count Rugen: Yes!
Inigo Montoya: Power, too, promise me that.
[He slashes his other cheek]
Count Rugen: All that I have and more. Please...
Inigo Montoya: Offer me anything I ask for.
Count Rugen: Anything you want...
[Rugen knocks Inigo's sword aside and lunges. But Inigo traps his arm and aims his sword at Rugen's stomach]
Inigo Montoya: I want my father back, you son of a bitch!
[He runs Count Rugen through and shoves him back against the table. Rugen falls to the floor, dead]

Dad's final farewell

We laid my Dad to rest today. Fortunately he'd had a chance to discuss his wishes with my Mum so we were able to give him exactly the send off he wanted.

Even though it was incredibly hard to keep myself together I felt it necessary to deliver a eulogy to my Dad; there were things I needed to tell the world about the most influential man in my life. Here's what I said:

How do I sum up my Dad’s life? I can’t really stand here and tell you the story of his sixty-nine years because he lived far too full a life for me to do that in just a few minutes. And whilst Dad had strong opinions on many things, and was more than willing to share them (‘like father like son’ I can hear a few people saying), I don’t really have any pearls of wisdom he shared with me.

But I can tell you how he lived his life and that’s what matters, because ultimately the measure of man is not his words but his actions.

If you’d known Dad in his youth he would have seemed a pretty typical working class lad from the inner west of Sydney; he left school at 15, completed an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, meet my Mum and married and started a family in his early twenties.

True to his roots Dad enjoyed life’s simple pleasures; a beer or two, or more; throwing a line into the water and pulling out a fish, even when all anyone else was catching was a cold; eating too much of one of Mum’s roast dinners; growing a ‘few’ veggies in the back yard; and most of all just spending time with his family.

Yet in a sense Dad was also ambitious; not for fortune or fame, but simply to make the best life for himself and his family that he possibly could. He never complained that he didn’t have an ideal start in life. He simply made the most of what he had and got stuck in to making it better.

One of the most enduring lessons I learned from watching my Dad is that there is always something you could be doing to improve your circumstances. All you needed to do was gather a few bricks and bits of tin and wood and whatever else you could pick up for a bargain, and there wasn’t any reason you couldn’t turn a two room shack in Dunalley into a palace. In fact I can’t ever remember a time when Dad wasn’t building or fixing or improving something.

He had an amazing range of practical skills that he’d picked up over the years and he was always acquiring more. I don’t recall ever seeing my Dad reading a novel, he didn’t watch much telly and wasn’t a big sports fan, but if he needed a new skill or to fix an unfamiliar piece of equipment he’d bury his head in technical books until he found the answers, and before you knew it he was an expert on some new subject.

Dad was a bit too rough around the edges to ever be called a “sensitive new age guy”, but the other thing I learned from my Dad’s example was how to treat other people.

In my forty-five years I never once saw him say or do anything that indicated that he thought for a moment that someone’s nationality, or race, or gender or anything else like that was important.

Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people he didn’t particularly get along with, but he always judged individuals as he found them.

He never resorted to or advocated violence as a solution to problems. I never saw him take advantage of another person or abuse his authority or power over those weaker than him.

And he was a great role model as a husband, creating a true partnership with my Mum and always treating her as an equal in whatever plan or project or journey they were embarking upon.

By the way he lived his life Dad was a man worthy of respect and admiration. But most of all he was a man worthy of our fondest remembrance.

Good bye Dad. We love you, we’ll miss you terribly and we promise we won’t ever forget you.

Goodbye Dad

My Dad passed away early this morning.

My Mum, my brother, my sister and my wife and I were all with him at the end.

It was way too soon for him to go, but in the end he was suffering and now he's at peace.

I already miss him more than I could have imagined.

Waiting

It seems my Dad's initial diagnosis of stomach cancer was not correct, nor was a subsequent diagnosis of colon cancer. All we know at the moment is that there are secondary tumours in his liver.

Dad has been having a series of tests to try to locate the primary cancer, but we are not likely to know the answer until Friday. Until then we don't know what his prospects are. At the moment I'm on an emotional roller coaster, wavering between hope and despair.

With any luck we'll get good news on Friday. Until then we just have to hang in there. In the meantime Dad is stuck in hospital and I know from personal experience that spending Christmas Day in hospital sucks.

Dad

My Mum called earlier today with the unwelcome news that my Dad has just been diagnosed with stomach cancer.

I don't have much detail yet about his condition or his prognosis. He'll undergo surgery later today or tomorrow and hopefully after that we'll have a much better idea of what happens next.

It's times like this that living a long way from family is very difficult.

Dad seemed to be in good spirits when I spoke to him, so I'm determined to be positive too. He's always been a wonderful role model of all that is best in a man. The world would be a worse place without him.

I love you Dad.

A big farewell

My father-in-law's funeral is now over after four long and tiring and emotional days. I'm writing this sitting in the Emirates lounge in Dubai on my way to a consulting engagement in Johannesburg that I was supposed to start last week.

On Tuesday the family received condolences at home. Most of the visitors were relatives and close friends so it was quite comforting to receive them. The day was complicated only by the jet lag (we arrived in Beirut after 26 hours of travelling at 4 am and people started coming by around 10 am) and the fact that we had nothing to wear since Etihad had decided not to transfer our luggage in Abu Dhabi (to be the subject of another post I promise you).

Wednesday was the service and burial which took place at one of the churches in the family's home village (now a Beirut suburb) which fittingly we visited last October and which my father-in-law was instrumental in restoring after the civil war. The service led by the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut was conducted in Arabic so I didn't understand any of it, but I found it beautiful nonetheless.

Here's a photo I took of the church on that visit last October not knowing we'd soon be back there under such sad circumstances.

Viewing the body was harrowing but necessary to help us accept that he really is gone and burying my father-in-law alongside his parents in the family crypt was very emotional. So this was definitely the hardest day.

On Thursday the family continued receiving condolences in the salon attached to the church. The process consisted of us sitting in this large room from 10 am to 7 pm, standing to receive visitors and shaking their hands or kissing them on the cheeks (three times).


The visitors would then sit for some period of time (I'm sure the duration of their stay was carefully calculated according to some protocol but I didn't manage to figure out the algorithm) before repeating the process on their way out. This is quite a Middle Eastern thing to do. You'll often see photos of Arab political meetings where everyone is sitting around a room like this.

The process was repeated on Friday in a downtown location where fewer family and more political leaders visited. So I've now shaken the hands and kissed the cheeks of a sufficient proportion of Beirut's residents that I feel ready to run for a seat in the Lebanese parliament.

I always knew that my father-in-law was a man of some prominence in Beirut but I hadn't really appreciated how widely he was known and respected in the local community and in political and business circles.

I also knew that he'd maintained good relations with the Shiite community which is notable enough in a country renown for sectarian strife, but they really went out of their way to pay him respect; hanging banners farewelling him in the street; Shiite leaders coming to pay their condolences; and the overwhelmingly Shiite residents lining the streets and the Shiite shopkeepers closing their stores as the coffin was carried from the church to the cemetery.

One wedding and a funeral

On Saturday we attended the wedding of my cousin Kirralee (“Lil”) held on the beach at Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. The weather was perfect for an outdoor wedding and it was a great opportunity to catch up with my parents and brother, some of my uncles and aunts and my New Zealand-based cousins. I like to think of myself as a fairly practical person but I like the big rituals; they generally emphasise the very best in human nature.

Unfortunately towards the end of the reception I received one of those phone calls that everyone dreads–news that my father-in-law Youssef Matta had suffered a heart attack and with no warning and no reprieve was taken from us. Telling my wife that she had lost her beloved father was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Now we’re making the long journey with heavy hearts from Brisbane to Beirut for the funeral.

In the twenty plus years I knew him my initial feelings of intimidation became love, and for my wife, to whom family is everything, he was a central figure in her life. Fortunately we had the opportunity to spend a week with him in Beirut in October last year and my wife visited him again in January.

As sad as I feel, the hardest part of this is knowing how deeply my darling wife Marie feels the loss and being able to do nothing to ease her suffering apart from simply being there. We have a difficult process to go through in the next few days with the funeral and associated Middle Eastern mourning rituals. Then, as they say, life goes on. But when you lose a loved one it will never be quite the same.

2007 highlights

Well 2007 is nearly over. According to the official judge (my wife Marie) it's been a good year. Here's the summary and highlights:

• 37 days of skiing (21 in January-April and 12 in December) including my most epic day of powder skiing ever


• Seeing my first niece


• 125,000 miles of travel (so much for my resolution to travel less this year) including three trips to Australia and New Zealand, two trips each to Beijing and England, and one trip each to Paris, Hong Kong and Beirut.*

*I keep track of my flights at Flight Memory which has a neat feature to generate a map of all my flights for the year (below). Unfortunately it doesn't indicate how often I've flown a route, for example that I flew BNE-CBR about twenty times.

Kids rockclimbing

It's school holidays in Brisbane this week and a climbing wall has been set up in the park behind my friend Raj's house. The kids loved it, especially our nephew Ramzi (seven) here on one of his multiple ascents.



My wife's godson Rohan (ten) made it to the top as well.

But the girls weren't intimidated. Here's my goddaughter Priyanka (eight).


And finally our friend Luisa's daughter Jai (nine).


Apologies to our newphew Alex (eleven) who was too quick on his way to the top for my wife to get his photo!

A niece at last

Until now, my wife and I have only had nephews (three on her side, two on mine). So we were really pleased when my brother and his wife recently delivered a girl called Luca. We had the chance this past weekend to visit them in Tasmania and see her.


She looks a lot like my brother did when he was born (I was ten at the time, so old enough to remember it).