December was a great time for me during the past years since 1985.
In that year, on Christmas Day, I had met up with Shirley (purely by accident) at a party at 14 Hampton Street, Balmain in the afternoon and we had remained with each other for most of the time talking. Then, at party's end, I walked her to Darling Street where a whole group of those who'd been at the party were to board the coach that would take them to the Australian Jazz Convention in Ballarat, Victoria and I made my own way back to Alexander Street where I lived.
I had spent the day up to that point driving to various places around town visiting friends that I hadn't for years. I'd not had a car since around 1982 and had been pretty much trapped in that lonely existence of holidays being no different from any other apart from the fact that I didn't have to go to work since haqving moved from the friend's floor I'd been staying on in Northbridge to Balmain in December 1983.
My initial move had been to stay and take care of the home of friends in Phillip Street, Balmain while they had gone to visit family out west and then come back to the Convention in Forbes before returning home. On their return I moved in to share with an acquaintance directly opposite the London Hotel in a beautiful old tri-level home before being thrown out by the arsehole and winding up in a so-called 'bachelor unit' sometime around October 1984.
The unit was just wide enough to fit a single bed across with room for a cardbord box that I used to throw my rubbish in at the foot, about one-and-a-half times that in depth and with a toilet and shower just off the side near the foot of the bed. Into that space was also crammed a double-wardrobe, a refrigerator and kitchenette. Not much 'room-to-swing-a-cat' so to speak!
Whenever I'd had money it usually went through the poker machines at Gladstone Park Bowling Club trying in vain for a big win. I think that the only reason I was eating reasonably well was the cafeteria at Reader's Digest where I had morning tea and lunch and put it on my tab to be paid the following payday.
Then I met Shirley!
We got together for the first time when I took her, as one of my guests, to the 'Mid-Summer Jazz in the Domain' Concert on January 5, 1986 when I was singing with the Manly Jazz/Blues All-Stars Band, a number of whom are sadly, no longer with us. We also met another who remains a friend to us both that afternoon/evening after I had lost my cigarettes on-stage - Delilah, an African-American Jazz & Blues singer who just happens to be the 'sorta' daughter of the late Joe Williams (Joseph Goreed) who sang with the likes of Basie and many others. We got to see them singing together at the Sydney Town Hall on Saturday - March 28, 1992.
She (Shirley) came to visit me in hospital at Balmain, less than a week later, after I had taken suddenly ill and sat beside my sleeping form for what I was later told was an hour or more.
Once again she was away on a little 'jazz adventure' and was heading off to Taree for the weekend, but had taken the time out to visit me when very few others were.
We finally started to see each other regularly in late February 1986 when she came to see me performing at Soup Plus in Sydney and came back to stay the night at my (then) home on the top floor of a beautiful old harbourside home in Alexander Street, Balmain. From then on she would show up at my place each Saturday and we'd make love, then head off to see and hear our favourite music at some venue or other around the town and she would eventually leave on Sunday afternoon, usually by cab, to head back to West Ryde where she lived.
At some point in April, we decided that we'd live together. This followed, as I recall, one Sunday afternoon when I suggested that we call it quits and my darling girl burst into tears saying she didn't want that. I moved from Balmain to West Ryde within the week from memory after agreeing to continue paying my share of the rent at Balmain so that Brendan could stay on there and also so that Shirley and I would have a place to stay whenever we were in that way.
On May 10th along with Brendan (my Balmain housemate) and Terri McCormack, we set off on a rapid round trip to Queensland and back with the intention of both visiting my dad on the Gold Coast, attending the eightieth birthday of Terri's dad at Caloundra and seeing some great countryside into the bargain.
It was a great trip and we had a ball before arriving back home to Sydney on May 17 for the engagement party of Shirley's nephew Stephen and his wife-to-be, Nia at their home in Ermington. While we'd been away I asked Shirley to marry me and she said yes and i also used the occasion of the party to ask her father for his daughter's hand in marriage which brought tears to the eyes of the 85-year-old. It was also Shirley's 59th birthday!
The following Monday or Tuesday, I can't recall which anymore, I drove my darling to the airport and put her on the plane to send her to the U.S. and Canada for a holiday that she'd booked a long time previously and would have blown her money if she hadn't gone - she didn't want to it must be said. I have spoken with our dear Californian friend, Joanne Lindamood since Shirley's death and she tells me that Shirley was miserable the whole trip without me and only felt joy on those occasions when we spoke together on the phone. I was the same!
I was absolutely overjoyed when she arrived back home mere days before my own 34th which we celebrated at West Ryde on June 14, 1986 with many of our friends.
We were wed in the backyard at West Ryde on December 20, 1986 at what was the best party that either of us has ever attended before or since. From that day on we were very nearly inseparable except for those occasions when I was away on tour with my band - the worst of these all occurred in 1994 and 1995. I hated those times!
Over the years I had developed Type II Diabetes, osteo arthritis and a number of other ailments. Then in October of 2006 I started to have more health problems and went to see our GP who sent me for a PSA test which came back extremely high.
On December 1 I finally saw the urologist who said that he was concerned and wanted me to have a biopsy out at Orange on December 13 as he believed that I may have Prostate Cancer, so we drove out on December 12 and stayed with my family out there for the next two nights enjoying each others company and generally doing what families do. We were going to have to go out again the following week for me to have a bone scan and also to receive the prognosis - both to take place on December 20 - our twentieth Wedding Anniversary. We decided that whatever the prognosis I was going to be at home for what may well have been my last Christmas with my family and that any treatment would have to follow on after that.
As it transpired, it actually was my last Christmas with my family, because on August 11 this year at 4:15am my darling girl slipped away as I held her hand with son, Marc a mere few feet away. I'd been beside her since around 9:30 the previous morning with the exception of those odd times when I was called aside by doctors to discuss her condition, or much later in the evening when I went out for twenty minutes, while Marc stayed with her, to get some booze for us both for when the time came and we had gone back to his place at Rozelle.
It is now December 8, 2007 and I am in tears much of the time. Thursday week will be our twenty-first Wedding Aniversary and also twelve months since we received the news that I was terminal and given anywhere between two years and five to live. It is also the first that I have faced without the love of my life.
I am in the process of trying to think what to do for Christmas as Marc will arrive on Christmas Eve and stay until the day after Boxing Day and as has been the tradition since we three started spending our Christmases together, we'll watch the Boxing Day Cricket Test on television while he is here. I just hope that I have enough money to buy in what I have to and that I can get around to cleaning up the house and caravan for his stay and put up some of the Christmas decorations that Shirley would normally have done.
May we and all have as fine a Christmas as can be had.
