One year on
Ayear ago to this day, on March 16, Noeleen Shaw lost her lovely husband, Jeremy. Jeremy had served in the Merchant Navy, been ordained as an Anglican minister, then moved away from his traditional religious beliefs, supported the Black Caps through thick and thin, and had been Noeleen’s soulmate for the past 26 years and 13 weeks.
Noeleen grew up in a street in Papanui, Christchurch, where there were 20 boys and her. She had two brothers and across the road was a Presbyterian Boys’ Home.
Her childhood was spent out on the street playing in carts, kicking a ball around or playing in the big empty paddock behind her house. Noeleen thought she was a boy until she was 12.
Noeleen doesn’t remember her first day at school but she does remember sitting on the fence in front of Waimairi School waiting for her mother.
When she saw her mum walking towards the school Noeleen remembers thinking, ‘wow, you are a really beautiful lady and much more attractive than all the other mums’. Sadly she didn’t remember to share these thoughts with her mum.
Noeleen thinks her dad was typical of most dads of the time. He was a carpenter and he would go to work at 7am and come home at 6pm. In the evening, he would sit down in his comfortable chair, turn on the radio, pull up his newspaper and that was about it.
The only time Noeleen really got to know her dad was during the Christmas holidays when they went camping for six weeks at Woodend Beach. Her father would spend his two weeks’ annual leave there and for the other four weeks he would travel to and from the tent to work in Christchurch.
Noeleen says these six weeks were his favourite time of the year and a golden time for her.
I ask Noeleen what her parents’ relationship was like considering her father appeared to be quite distant.
Noeleen says she never gave it a thought at the time, but has reflected on it over the years. Only a few weeks ago, when Noeleen was sorting through some old papers, she came across a letter her father had written to her mother on their wedding anniversary. He couldn’t be there as he was away working on a building in Hanmer Springs.
The letter began, “my darling little girl”. It melted Noeleen’s heart as she’d never heard her father talk this way to her mother.
Noeleen’s bedroom was next to her parents’ room and she can remember hearing laughter coming through the wall. These are still special memories for her.
Noeleen has nothing but happy memories of her days at Waimairi but when it came to choosing a high school her mother had strong views.
Very much against Noeleen’s will, she was sent to Avonside Girls’ High. Her mum had got into her mind that it would be good to separate Noeleen from all the boys she’d grown up with. It was apparent her daughter had developed a huge curiosity in boys.
Everything started going wrong the day Noeleen started at Avonside as none of her friends were there – they were at Papanui High. To make matters worse, Noeleen detested the brown and lime-green uniform.
There was no choice of subjects at Avonside and Noeleen was shunted into full mathematics and French. She remembers getting only 10% in one French exam, but in maths she excelled at algebra and geometry.
However, when it came to arithmetic she was disastrous. Years later, Noeleen realised she suffered from dyscalculia – a learning disability that makes it hard to make sense of numbers and maths concepts – but during her school days the only treatment was the ruler over the knuckles.
Noeleen’s dislike of her high school, coupled with her desire to be back with the boys, brought out a strong spirit not appreciated by her mother or by her school. Noeleen can laugh about it now but at the age of 15 she was caught smoking, so her school, in all its educational wisdom, responded by not letting rebellious Noeleen sit School Certificate.
Noeleen’s problems didn’t end there as she had a miscarriage when she was 15. This tragedy will never go away for Noeleen. Her father never commented on this sad episode; Noeleen thinks he thought it was the mother’s job to deal with.
Noeleen became pregnant again when she was 19 and her mum decided that this time her daughter would get married. Noeleen agreed as she wanted to keep the baby and did not want her daughter to be born illegitimate. In 1963, to be born illegitimate was not something you would wish on one of your own.
Noeleen took on full responsibility for the marriage but as she walked down the church aisle her dad whispered in her ear, “it’s not too late to change your mind, you know”. Noeleen says if he had said this a day earlier she probably would have agreed.
Michael, Noeleen’s husband, was a Shepherd’s Bush Cockney from London. Sadly he hated being in New Zealand and never felt settled. His family also neglected to tell Noeleen that he was on probation from prison.
Life with Michael was difficult and after only three years he took off for Australia, leaving Noeleen behind. Michael didn’t fare any better in Australia and was deported to England. Many years later, he phoned Noeleen from London to apologise for how he’d treated her. By this stage Noeleen’s anger had healed and she had remarried. She now refers to him affectionately as “dear Michael”.
For the next 10 years, Noeleen was a solo mum, bringing up daughter Karen. It was hard yakka, she says. Financially it wasn’t too bad, as she had what was called in those days A Deserted Wives Benefit. To get it, Noeleen had to apply to a committee of four men in Wellington. The first question they asked was, “what did you do to make your husband leave you”? Noeleen’s reply was, “I trusted him”.
Until Karen was 6, Noeleen was a stay-athome mum in her statehouse flat. I ask Noeleen what she did to stimulate her brain and Noeleen laughs and says: “I drank a lot of sherry.” She had a great group of friends too, but they were all married and it was tricky being invited to events as a single woman.
When her daughter started school, Karen was the only child in her class from a oneparent family, but by the time Karen left high school a third of her class came from single-parent families.
At this time, Noeleen was employed in the office at St Giles Presbyterian Church, which had been her family’s church since she was 5. Noeleen says this job was very good for her as it was a nurturing environment.
One of the female assistant priests accompanied her to court when she applied for a divorce. In those days, to get a divorce Noeleen had to stand up in the witness box in front of the judge and a row of reporters on the hunt for a salacious tale.
In time, Noeleen followed in her parents’ footsteps and became an elder at the church and a leader for the Girls’ Brigade.
She then decided to broaden her horizons so applied for a job at Plumbers Ltd in central Christchurch. This turned out to be a fabulous decision as it’s where she met Don, who became her second husband. Don got very involved with Noeleen’s church, where they both taught Sunday school classes.
Don was obviously appreciated by Plumbers Ltd because he was promoted and the family moved to Wellington and then to Auckland.
Tragically, Don was diagnosed with mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure in his early life. He started a case against Fletcher Corporation and, when his days were numbered, asked Noeleen to continue the fight. For the next four years she did so.
She had two top lawyers who worked pro bono and were absolutely wonderful. The case never made it to court but there was a settlement. This made a difference to Noeleen as she now had a freehold house, but what she really wanted was an apology.
Noeleen sighs and says: “Don was such a lovely man … my little pixie.”
Before Don died, Noeleen started working as the PA to Bruce Gilberd, the Bishop of Auckland. Noeleen, who’d been immersed all her life in the Presbyterian Church, knew nothing about the Anglicans and even had to ask what a deacon was. She says the church was so kind to her through this tough time.
Bishop Gilberd and his wife Janet, a close friend, set up a dinner party blind date for Noeleen with their old friend Jeremy, who was visiting from his home in Melbourne. Jeremy was an Anglican priest who’d lost his wife two years previously.
Noeleen thought there was something special about Jeremy. Afterwards, she looked him up in the book listing all the Anglican clergy and thought ‘oh gosh, he’s a bit old’.
Jeremy was 11 years older than her, but they started to correspond. Noeleen had been a meditator for many years and felt this joint bond might be the glue to hold them together.
By this stage Jeremy had moved away from his religious beliefs and even tried to rescind his Anglican priesthood, only to be told he couldn’t. He was always going to be known as Reverend Jeremy Shaw.
On one occasion, he told the congregation at the end of a sermon that he didn’t really believe in that kind of god any more, Noeleen says. There was dead silence, then people started to clap. There were obviously a lot of people who agreed with him. Jeremy explained that he now found it hard to accept the god up there and the mortal sinner down here. These traditional rigid beliefs no longer rang true with the philosophical Jeremy.
Although Noeleen loved Auckland, she was missing the South Island’s big skies and mountains. Good friends of Jeremy’s had recently moved to Conway Flat, on the east coast, so Noeleen thought “yippee”, this might be the excuse to head south.
The couple did a tiki tour around the South Island – only the second time Jeremy had been there. They liked the look of Cust, in North Canterbury, but there were no houses for sale, so instead looked at a house in the middle of Oxford. Jeremy walked through the door, sat in one of the chairs and said “this is it”.
Noeleen immediately became very involved in the Oxford community and, always looking for new challenges, became an enthusiastic line dancer.
Jeremy was not so interested, as by this stage in life he was an indoor man and loved to read, cook curries and watch cricket. He became known to everyone at the supermarket. Over time, people would knock on their door and ask if Jeremy was awake as people loved talking with him. He had worked for many years as a psychotherapist and was an exceptionally wise and interested listener.
Noeleen and Jeremy had 17 very happy years in Oxford before Jeremy became ill. They knew life together wouldn’t go on forever so never shied away from talking about death. When they married, they decided to adopt radical honesty, meaning they hid nothing from each other.
It took Noeleen some time to get used to this new way of living but she could see that anything hidden from your partner is what puts distance between you.
Jeremy didn’t need anything to shield him from the inevitable. The one sadness that broke his heart was the knowledge that he wouldn’t be around for Noeleen. He was not afraid of dying himself.
Jeremy didn’t want a funeral service, so on a Sunday afternoon, two weeks after he died, Noeleen invited a small group of friends around for a few drinks and afternoon tea, then told everyone “it’s story time”. Everyone told their Jeremy anecdotes and Noeleen learnt a lot of things she didn’t know. Her daughter came from Tauranga and stayed with her for a week – it was a wonderful time.
There are things Noeleen finds hard to come to terms with, such as when a woman came up to her in the supermarket and brightly asked what Jeremy was doing that day. Noeleen says that bursting into tears in the supermarket is not ideal.
Grieving is an impossibly difficult thing to define, she says. When Don died, she was invited to talk to a gathering of people going through their own grieving. She remembers saying you have to let it hurt as you loved so much and the hurting is the balance of the loving.
After Jeremy died, she changed her phone’s home screen picture so whenever someone calls, Jeremy’s gorgeous smiling photo lights up.
Noeleen also smiles when she looks at Jeremy’s La-Z-Boy chair, where he spent so much time. The red leather arms have seen better days from Jeremy clutching them tightly with every ball bowled and struck in his beloved cricket matches.
Jeremy’s death prompted Noeleen to give herself two rules to live by each day. First, she would always make her bed before she left home, and, second, she would always eat proper meals. Noeleen says learning how to cook for one is not easy because you end up with a freezer full of dozens of little boxes of leftovers.
Keeping in contact with people has helped Noeleen enormously to get through this first year.
After this deeply meaningful chat, I made us both a simple ham and salad sandwich and couldn’t help but reflect that friends are the most important thing in our lives.
Former Cantabrian Mark Walton, an internationally recognised clarinettist and saxophonist, has an enduring fascination with New Zealand history and writes regularly about his home country.