Eulogy
John Clayton, M.’s grandfather, died on Saturday morning. We had been warned by his doctors that it could happen soon, but they also said he could last for months, even a year, and we thought we’d have more time, and weren’t really prepared. I don’t suppose anyone ever is. John and M. were very close; he’d been the most stable and reliably present grown-up male in her life, and they’d doted on one another. I only got to spend time with him on visits out to Windsor over these last eight months or so, and didn’t get to hear half the stories he’d have had to tell: his childhood in Burma, which his family left when we was still little, fleeing the Japanese invasion prior to World War II; his years driving taxis on the Central Coast. . . . There’d have been more, besides. He was a bit of a rake in his day, sporting an Elvis pompadour and getting in a little trouble here and there as a young man. Like many Australians, his love for sports had its particular focal points, not least being horse racing, but also Aussie Rules. The night he died, his team, the Sydney Swans, trounced St. Kilda. The first half would have been an anxious one for him, as the score was pretty tight, but the second would have been very satisfying, as the Saints never got close to the spread again. It’s silly, but it’s sort of comforting that it worked out that way. Rest in Peace, Johnny.