Yesterday I went to the funeral of my Great Aunt Stella. She left the world on the same day that she was born, 87 years later. She swore that she would only move out of the farm she lived on when they carried her our feet first, and in essence that was true as well.

The funeral was in Yarrawonga, on the Victorian/NSW border, and we drove up and back in one day. In all, my sister and I spent 7 and a half hours on the road, and 2 and a half hours at the funeral.

We were the representatives of our three absent siblings who couldn’t make it, as well as more broadly the representatives of those of our cousins who couldn’t be there. But still, the representatives of my mother’s impossibly large family took up most of the pews in the little country church. My fifteen month old niece was also there to say goodbye to her Great Great Aunt, but seemed more interested in the biscuits she found in Grandpa’s pocket.

I have to say that it was the worst funeral I have ever attended. In the sense of extremely poorly conducted by the minister. 25 minutes, two hymns and no meditation. Bye bye Stella.

But, for us, it was the journey which was the way that my sister and I (and others) honoured my aunt’s life. Members of the family had come from Sydney, from Adelaide, from Melbourne and from all over country Victoria. We all packed into this church to farewell the last surviving attender of the first communion service in the church, held in 1925.

On the way there, once we had caught up sufficiently with each other’s lives, my sister and I shared our abiding memories of our Aunt. We said we would never forget her old lady country voice - whether just talking to you or singing loudly and off-key to hymns at the church. My sister teared up at the service when she heard an old lady singing very badly and loudly to the hymn “Nearer my God to Thee” - I heard Stella singing, she said.

We remembered her love of the cricket, of interrupting conversations to swear at the television because Dean Jones had gone out again. I remembered the ritual of visiting and being allowed to read the old family bibles, filled with their funny complicated english which made us giggle, whilst we smelt the oldness of the pages, felt the intricacy of the leather covers and had a brief sense of the reverence and solemnity that such books were designed to prompt.

We remembered the birthday cards from Stella written in spidery copperplate which we had to ask mum to help us interpret. The words filled every available space on the card as she shared what was happening with the dogs and the chooks and her beloved Melbourne Football Club.

I remembered the story of the new minister who turned up at Yarrawonga Church of Christ and was rudely ejected from the pew he had settled on with his family on the grounds that the pew in question was where my Great Aunt sat, and the minister should learn these things right from the start.

I remembered her meeting Phil and ignoring him until his conversation with my uncle revealed that he was in ministry - to which Stella carped “Which denomination?”. Upon being reassured that phil had the right credentials in church of christ, she was happy to join him in the conversation.

We remembered a childhood filled with driving. As the only city-dwelling branch of the family, we would regularly pile into the big chunky van we drove and conduct our pilgrimage to the country to see the multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins who lived on farms and orchards.

And as we drove from the church to the funeral we laughed, as we knew Stella would be amused that we were remembering her piercing voice, her bad singing, her swearing at the television or pointing out the saucy bits in the bible.

Rest in peace, Stella. Give the others in heaven a bit of a break occasionally, won’t you?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2004 at 11:40 am by dan and is filed under us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.