|
December 29, 2007
Yesterday marked a year since the death of Ron Calcutt, a minor celebrity in the recreational fishing and boating scenes, and my father. Back in the '60s he started up the first magazine devoted to your average fisho and made a series of short films which were broadcast on the ABC. He helped launch the careers of most of the bigger names in the now well-established niche market, mainly by nurturing their writing and photography skills. Good anglers are not necessarily good writers or photographers.
It's hard to imagine such a thing happening now - a bunch of amateurs keeping such a thing afloat, let alone making a success of it, without selling their souls to advertisers in the process. These days the soul-selling is well underway before anyone puts pen to paper. It's necessary, but very ugly.
I had to speak at his funeral representing my three fishing brothers and my non-fishing self. It wasn't an easy thing to write so I Googled around for some inspiration, something I could say that meant something but wouldn't choke me up in the process. I found some discussion forums which sent me back 30 or 40 years to family outings when we were kids.
Hours waiting around a boat ramp while Dad conversed with some total stranger. Hanging around mud flats with a bucketful of warming yabbies while Dad talked to some total stranger. Baking in the car waiting for Dad to finish chatting with some total stranger. It happened all the time. And there they were, decades later, some of those total strangers writing their recollections of the day they met Ron Calcutt and he took the time to talk to them, just like a normal bloke.
It was a weird thing, feeling like a selfish brat for all the complaining I'd done as a kid about waiting for total strangers. The other thing was the changed shape of grief. The intensity didn't reduce, but knowing it was widely shared spread it further, shared it around, which helped somehow.
I talked about the forums in the speech and quoted one of the total stranger's comments. The words weren't earth shattering. The point was that they'd been written at all. Later I put a post about it up on the forum with thanks and acknowledgement, but it's hard to put sincere gratitude into the right words. How do you explain to a bunch of human beings that their pixels sometimes matter more than sentiments expressed in the flesh?
So much of our face to face interaction is formulaic. How are you? Have a nice day. How about this weather? Sorry to hear about (insert event here). It's hard to gauge the level of sincerity sometimes. The people on that forum had no reason to say what they did beyond wanting to say it. I don't doubt the sincerity of all the things I heard said the day of the funeral, but my brothers and I felt something along the lines of solidarity with those spontaneously typing total strangers.
|
Think I know how you are feeling Lyn. Lost my mum this year. Please acept my honest commiserations. And the basis of your posts, he succeeded admirably as a parent, and that would have been a good thing to take with him.