A goodbye to Beryl, 103-years-old
Ruawai Rest Home may have closed, but there was one more story for Carly Thomas to tell.
Iam no longer afraid of death. It is no longer something that is distant and other worldly. Spending time at Ruawai Rest Home taught me to look at it, acknowledge it and let it sit beside me until I don’t notice it anymore.
Beryl Gray died a few weeks ago – 103 years lived and it was like she had decided it was time.
She was tough and the last time I sat with her I felt like she was slipping away, but still holding on. Her grip on my hand was powerful that day. She was not quite ready yet, but very nearly.
So, I wasn’t surprised when I got the message from Tracey to say that she had died.
But I was surprised by what I felt. Not grief, I didn’t feel sad, but instead I experienced a flood of emotional joy.
Beryl had decided it was time and she had let go. And there is something really good and confirming about that.
Her life encompassed an extraordinary amount of time, decades, eras and changes. Pat, who cared for Beryl at the rest home, remembers riding her bike past Beryl’s Kimbolton Rd house when she was a child. She would always slow down and look because Beryl’s garden was so beautiful and immaculate.
Beryl lived in that house for nearly her whole life, looking after family members until she herself was the one that needed to be cared for.
A photo I held in my hands on one of Beryl’s final days at Ruawai gave me a glimpse of her in her early years – beautiful, poised and young in a time that seems so foreign and so, so distant.
I always felt like I couldn’t quite reach Beryl, that the right thing to say, the key to her memories was just another step away.
But now she is gone, I can see how much she did show me.
I learnt the people that lived through the Depression years are tougher than any other generation. They know how to survive, they learn how to hold on, to make do and to see the good in the smallest of things.
A conversation with a man who’s mother-in-law had died when she was well into her 90s consolidated a thought forming during my Ruawai visits. We talked of her strong heart that held in there till the very end and he told me how stoical, tough and yet hugely optimistic she had been. He told me about the life she had led through the Depression, the extreme poverty she endured on a remote farm and how they would collect bits of wool caught in the fences to sell.
I saw that resilience in the Ruawai residents who were aged over 90 at the rest home – all women and all with a strength of character that I admired.
Laura always says every day is a good day and she is right. There is always good to be found.
No generation had it as hard and I now understand their quiet, sometimes private ways are because they often can’t fathom why we think we have it tough.
We have no idea. I still have no idea, but I do have their stories and their advice, their laughter at the absurdity of the modern world and a half-formed idea on what is behind their smiles and their slow, knowing nods.
Beryl loved to feel the breeze on her face and that is how I will remember her, finding her bliss in the smallest of things in the slightest of moments. She held all those years inside her and that was her treasure to keep.
And for that I will not be sad.
Beryl loved to feel the breeze on her face and that is how I will remember her, finding her bliss in the smallest of things in the slightest of moments.