Living With Dying

I was sitting in Melbourne’s great Catholic Cathedral St Patricks earlier this week at the State Funeral of the wonderful co-owner of Pellegrini’s Cafe Sisto Malaspina.

St Patricks is the tallest church in Australia and with its position on Eastern Hill, the highest point of Melbourne’s CBD, it looks down on all the others, including the St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral which was finished 6 years earlier in 1891. They used to hate each other back in those days.

“They still do”, says my research assistant Louise.

I’m not so sure about that, but the competing faiths of Marvellous Melbourne, as she was known in those heady after-the- gold-rush days, certainly clustered in and around the city’s well-planned mile square business district.

Within a cricket pitch or so of St Pats, is a Jewish synagogue, the City Temple of the Salvation Army including its printing works and a Lutheran church.

Catholics were pretty big 100 years ago. The Irish migration to the Gold Rush resulted in Catholics amounting to about 40% of Melbourne’s population.

Sitting in a grand old Cathedral at the funeral of a loved one who has died before his time, causes quite a reflection on life.

It was a beautiful service and hats off to the Archbishop who had the biggest hat of all. Our Catholic sisters and brothers sure know how to do a funeral, and everyone got something out of it including me.  As I sat there, I thought “What would you do if you knew this was the last day of your life?”

And I was reminded of the story of Kevin. I worked with Kevin more than 30 years ago before I started my own business. Kevin was an outstanding advertising executive. He was a good family man with a good income and strong list of clients. Life was perfect.

But one day, without warning, we were all saddened to hear that Kevin had been given 3 months to live.

And Kevin’s reaction was incredible. For the whole time we’d known him, Kevin had worn a really bad wig.

The day after getting the shocking news, the wig was gone, and a very handsome but balding Kevin seemed to have a new, albeit short, lease on life. He resigned forthwith, cashed up his long service leave and booked the trip to Europe he’d always longed for. Sadly, for some of us, he left his wife and took up with, what we now suspect was his long-term girlfriend.

And off he went. It was a new exhilarating Kevin setting out on the last 3 months of his life- Europe, freedom, dancing, red wine, what else would you want?

But he didn’t die!

On his return, and after much soul searching, he reconciled with his wife and lived another 20 years or so.

Charlie, my other research colleague for this blog, tells the story of an old English yachty mate of his who was also diagnosed with terminal ‘jimmy dancer’. He sent letters to his kids who all lived over seas and set sail eastwards from his yacht club. Five years later he returned from the west.

So, what does 2 hours in the cathedral mourning my old friend Sisto tell me?

Well it’s just this. Do what you really want to do and stick to the rules of life that you’d be proud for your grandkids to follow. It shouldn’t be that hard.

The uncertainly of life should be all the motivation we need to not hold back and to live life to the full.