Michael Harcourt Labone.....My Brother.
The family have gathered here
today to talk about Michael, and to provide memories for each other, that will
fill in some of the spaces that we all have about him and his life. I
hope that we can paint a picture of the boy and the man, and with the help of
the Photo slide show that Tony has put together, that is playing on front of
you now, and with our own collective memories, we will get to know more about
him in a very special way.
I didn't know Michael the Man, or the Teenager, but we
shared a very special segment of time together, that was ours alone.
Michael and I had a different birth Mother to the rest of the family, so I
remember him as a little boy, and up to the age of about 14, when I left home to
go Nursing, and later to get married. This is the time that I can
share with you.
When I was about 3 and a half and Michael was 19
months younger, the marriage fell apart and our Mother left. Dad moved us in with his Mother, Katie Labone and we were cared for there for approximately 2
years. I have memories of Michael and I playing with Nanny's Button tin
that were a source of great wonder to us, with all the gold and fancy trims on
them, that came from her beautiful gowns, like the one that you can see on
the CD. We would tip them onto the table and arrange them in groups, and
play shops with them. But the thrill was in the looking and the sorting
of them. When Nanny died, and we went to her house to take mementos, I
went straight to the Button Tin, and I still have it today. I have
bought some buttons from it for you both as a memory of Mike the little
boy. To other people they are just buttons, but to him they were special
things.
I can remember people always commenting on Michael's
dark eyes and long eyelashes. I was so jealous of those eyes, and didn't
think it was fair that he got them and I didn't. You only have to look
at his childhood photos to see how amazing
those eyes were.
When Dad married Isla
McKenzie, we left Nanny's home and went to live in
Michael was given a carpentry set for his birthday one
year, and it had a hammer, saw, screwdriver etc in, and he loved it. Grandad used to give him pieces of wood and
nails, from his basement workshop, and Michael would spend hours hammering
nails into the wood, and making different shapes. I used to watch this
with awe, and was quite convinced that Michael was capable of building us a
house...I never doubted him.
One Xmas Eve after the adults had gone to bed,
and the presents were put out on the end of our beds, I woke up with excitement
and saw my first sleeping doll with blonde hair, who I called Mary-Ann. I
looked over at Michael's bed and I could see that he had a scooter, so I
woke him up to show him. His face was an absolute picture when he saw it,
and in the early hours of the morning, he was riding this scooter up and
down the length of the hall, until the adults came and firmly "shooshed" us and put us back to bed, but I
suspect that a lot of smiling went on. As he went to sleep, his arm was
firmly hanging on to this beloved toy, and I believe that is where his
love of bikes and cars first began.
We then moved to Karori,
into our new house, which was in a very rural area, with lots of paddocks
around, and we loved it. We lived in gumboots a lot, and did wonderful
things like building forts in the bush, catching crawlies in McKelvie's farm creek, swinging on a big rope swing off the
big Pines at the back of our house, out over the gully.
Michael and I being the eldest always seem to
have many chores to do, as the other children started to come along. He
mowed the lawns, and I trimmed all the edges. We cleaned the family shoes
at the weekend, and I darned the socks on Saturday nights.
There was always a baby to be rocked in the old cane Plunket
pram, as Mum was cooking tea, and then taking them out in the pushchair
later. I think we did a lot of muttering about this. "Not
fair" etc, etc.
We would later go off to the Saturday afternoon
Matinee's at the Regal Ttheatre in the shopping
centre. This was a magic time. Sixpence to get in,
and sixpence to spend at the dairy. We would lose ourselves in the
adventures of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Trigger, Marx Brothers, Three Stooges,
and oh how we loved Flash Gordon, the continuing serial. We would
be "abuzz" all the way home with how we thought Flash would get
out of his weekly predicaments, and would look forward to the next Saturday.
We played with the Dyers and the Strongs after tea and at
weekends. Mr Dyer was a solo dad with 2 boys
and 2 girls, and he and Mum had a whistle signal to call their families
home. We would be riding our bikes, or playing Hopscotch,
knucklebones, marbles, or in the Forts, and we would hear a whistle, and
have to work out whose it was, and if Mum had to whistle twice, and we
didn't come, we were in trouble.
Michael also had a friend called Oliver, and the 2 of
them used to get rubbish tin lids, and wooden swords, and play Ivanhoe all over
the backyard. They would do this for hours, and drive everybody crazy
with the noise of it.
We had a Polio Eperdemic
scare when we were young, and all the schools were shut down, and we had to do
Correspondence lessons at home with Mum. Janette Dyer, my best friend
used to come to our house to do them as well, and Mum was very disciplined
about playtimes, and lunch, and she ran it like a proper school. Michael
found it hard to sit still at home for so long.
I left home at 16 to go Nursing,
and later to get married, so Michael and I started to lose touch with one
another, but always at the back of my mind in later years, I always knew
that in
I made a visit there many years later with my partner
at the time, and Sheila and Michael gave us a key to the apartment at Narrabeen so we could be independent. It was my first
trip to
Our family take great comfort in the fact that the
years that Michael and Sheila spent together were very happy for them
both, and although his and Sheila's health wasn't always the best, being
with his "Soulmate' was enough for him.
Many people in this life don't get to have that kind of love and
companionship, and we are so glad about that.
Thank you Sheila for loving and caring for our
brother, and Adrian, we know how much he lovved you,
and how proud he was of you and your children. We all have our own sense
of loss about Mike's passing, and everyone deals with death in different ways,
and you will need to find your way and manage it as best as you can, and
hopefully with support. Don't be afraid to ask for it.
The other members of our Family really wanted to be
here today, but we have an elderly Mother and Aunt back home, who need
supportive care and attention, and there is a Family Network in place to do
this, as Mum in particular, cannot be left to cope on her own, so they are
staying back to do this, but their hearts and thoughts are here with you
today as they help Mum celebrate her 92nd Birthday. My daughter Linda,
and husband Ron and children in Canberra would have liked to have been here as
well, but with young families it's not always possible, and they send their
love as well for this remembering of Mike's passing,.
With all our memories here today, I hope we have helped
to paint a picture of Michael the little boy, the teenager, and the man, and
your memories are just as important for us so we can fill in the gaps.
Goodbye Michael, rest easy my brother