New Zealand Listener - 09.07,2019

94 LISTENER SEPTEMBER 7 2019

THE GOOD LIFE

I

t was a gloriously raw, blue-

skied Monday, the day of Aunty

Helen’s funeral. That was as well.

Many had to make a long

drive to say a final goodbye to

her, and sorrow is surely easier

to bear in the sunshine.

It was a solitary trip for me

to her last hometown, the

small Rangitīkei community

of Marton, though I had

some company. There was

the radio and the handsome

march of the snow-covered

Tararuas. There was my guilty

conscience.

It kept pricking me the whole

two hours to Marton: how

long had it been since I’d seen

Aunty Helen? How long since

I’d laid eyes on any of her four

wonderfully fierce, no-nonsense

and funny-as daughters? God

knows. Probably not since the

last family funeral I’d been

to, when we laid to rest Papa,

my grand father and Aunty Helen’s

father-in-law.

The Dixons, or at least this

Dixon, had never been much good

at family. I see little enough of my

parents, now in their eighties, or

my sister and her kids. But of our

extended family, I have seen much

less. It’s been that way most of my

life.

I had my excuses. They were all

too far away; there was always some-

thing else to be doing; it seemed too

Saying goodbye to a

whānau member is

also a chance to try

to make amends.

Love and family

GREG

DIXON

hard to breach the distance created by too much

time gone by.

For Aunty Helen, family was life itself. She and

Uncle Malc, Mum’s brother, married in 1967

in Lower Hutt, and raised Dona, Nicki, Kristina

and Helena in a house in Wainuiomata that was

barely big enough to hold them all, let alone all

that love.

When the Dixons visited the Keyes in Wainui,

and then in Marton, we found a home filled with

warmth, laughter, clouds of ciggy smoke, endless

cups of milky tea with two sugars and a profound

and near overwhelming sense of family, a sensation

that felt like a foreign country to me, the uptight

nephew and cousin.

My upbringing encouraged little concern beyond

the detached parochialism of our family of four.

But for the Keyes, the love and companionship of

their large and loving whānau were only the start.

Through baseball and athletics clubs, and through

their schools and neighbours and workmates and

churches in Wainui and Marton, they made an

even bigger family. And at the centre of all that

was the funny, loving, caring and

needle-sharp Aunty Helen. And now

it was time to say goodbye to her.

S

t Stephen’s in Marton is a fine

19th-century Anglican church

built in native timber in what

is called the Carpenter Gothic

style. It has pews for 200 at most. It

was barely big enough to hold all

those who had come, let alone all

the love.

There were many tributes,

and the right amount of tears. I

learnt a few things about Aunty

Helen. She was incredibly

proud of her 12 grandchildren,

told everybody about them,

and when she did, “embel-

lished slightly on occasion”.

She was good with a one-liner,

but could cut you dead with

a glare; one of her whānau

would always say of her that

“with one look, she could peel

the paint off a privy”.

Aunty Helen could “spot

dodgy from a mile away”, and

could be blunt and funny all

at once. “You don’t get those

standing up,” she’d say to her

teenage daughters. The “those”

were hickeys.

Even her Malc’s far-too-early

death in 2003 and the stroke in her

fifties could not bend her. She was

still naughty and funny and full of

love. And she “wielded her walking

stick like a taiaha”.

Outside St Stephen’s, in the

sunshine, the church’s bell tolled

as the hearse pulled away. Aunty

Helen was gone, but everyone else

stayed. Standing lamely with the

rest, uncomfortably smart in a suit I

hadn’t worn in years, I did my best

to catch up with my family. l

Aunty Helen and Uncle Malc at a Post Office social, circa

1966 - 67.

Aunty Helen

was said to have

“wielded her

walking stick

like a taiaha”.