I can’t remember a worse end to a year than this one | David Penberthy
Forget comfort and joy. If there is an all-powerful and loving God, he needs to admit that he’s had a bit of an off year, writes David Penberthy.
Opinion
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Christmas is meant to be a time of hope and optimism when we give thanks for what we have got. Personally I am not feeling any of this mushy Hallmark greeting card sentiment right now.
As a South Australian I can’t recall a worse end to a year than the one our state is enduring. Rather than whacking on about tidings of comfort of joy, I find myself possessed with darker theological questions about whether, if there is an all-powerful and loving God, he needs to admit that he’s had a bit of an off year.
So if there is a theme to this usually cheery year-ender piece, it’s this: Goodbye, 2023, and go and get stuffed.
In the space of a few short weeks South Australia has lurched from the murder of Brevet Sergeant Jason Doig to the road death of Charlie Stevens to the shocking alleged home invasion which claimed the life of Dr Michael Yung.
These three deaths shared several miserable qualities.
They each involved individuals or the families of individuals who had dedicated themselves to public service.
All three lives were cut short and all three victims had special and unique qualities which saw them revered by their peers and regarded as irreplaceable by their families.
Bad things happen to good people, as Peter Malinauskas said the other day.
It’s true, but it’s also one of those empty things we say when presented with the unfathomable and unprocessable.
It is also an aphorism we have heard far too often over the past few weeks.
Let’s not forget that in the context of our appalling ongoing road toll, it’s one that other families and groups of friends continue to hear. As in the case of that poor 16-year-old lad Benjy Weenink in the HiLux crash at Second Valley last Sunday, or young mum Taneasha Steer who died at the age of just 25 when her car hit a tree in Allendale on Monday.
Death is hard enough to process when it is predictable and dignified.
We had a death in our family three months ago which was completely expected, that of my mother-in-law Ros.
She had been ill for a fair while so none of it came as a shock and her eventual exit was made more bearable by the fact that she brought her two defining qualities to her demise, humour and stoicism.
She also had time to be with her kids and grandkids before she went. But the fact that it was all foreseeable, and that everyone had got the chance to say goodbye, did not make it some walk in the park.
It is always tough on everyone, which makes the sudden and cruel loss of life in the cases mentioned above so much harder to fathom and process.
We had several great catch-ups and conversations with Ros in the lead-up to her death.
And speaking of Christmas, one of those chats centred on what is easily the funniest and most memorable Christmas our family ever had, the great Sheidow Park Christmas catastrophe of 2018.
The shambolic quality of the day was established early.
Ros and her late husband Barry had bought a large yellow walker in the shape of a car for our then toddler son Sam.
He thought it would be a good idea to drive the car straight into the Christmas tree, knocking the immaculately decorated thing to the ground with baubles and tinsels flying everywhere.
It was a stinking hot day and we had the airconditioner cranked up.
Ros was slaving away in the kitchen working on her typically vast, tasty and ambitious Christmas spread.
As always happened she fell way behind schedule fussing over everything and eventually started serving lunch at around 4pm.
She had served up all the meats and vegies and gravy and had little trays with mustards and chutneys.
The last thing she needed to do before we could all tuck in was remove the piping hot cauliflower cheese from the oven and put it on the serving bench with everything else.
The dish was so hot and the ambient temperature in the room so cold that in an amazing display of physics, the pyrex dish containing the cauliflower cheese literally exploded into thin air.
The explosion was so intense that it sent cauliflower cheese up onto the ceiling, into the light fittings, down the side of the kitchen cabinetry, and most of all, sent thousands of shards of shattered pyrex spraying all over the food Ros had so lovingly prepared.
She was on the brink of tears and saying she was going to throw everything out but we calmed her down and as a family set to the task of each talking a bowl of peas and beans and broccoli, all the sliced beef and turkey and the gravy boats, and carefully inspecting all the serving plates to remove the shards of pyrex.
We then spent the next two hours methodically chewing all our food and praying quietly with every swallow that we weren’t about to wind up on life support at Flinders Medical Centre suffering from internal bleeding.
We told Ros before she died that we have decided to start a new Christmas tradition this year in her honour.
When making the cauliflower cheese we will set a portion of it aside each year in a crappy old dish and take it into the backyard and smash it on the bricks.
The ceremonial smashing of the cauliflower will be our way of remembering her.
And frankly, after the year we have all had, the idea of just smashing something makes a kind of sense.
Merry Christmas to everyone.
Special thoughts to those who have lost a loved one.
The most special thoughts to those who, unlike us, were robbed of a family member in a premature and unexpected way.
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