My father’s quiet existence was a lesson in living

Nikki Gemmell with her father Bob Gemmell.

It was one of the last things your father said to you before death moved over him: “I’ve had a wonderful life”. You weren’t expecting it; this summation of an existence that had been hard, particularly towards the grim end. He could now feel the lung cancer doing its bullying work in his chest. He was estranged from a wife he dearly loved. He knew his seven children would end up chipping in for his funeral costs; that’s how poor he was.

But no, towards the end the feeling was that it had been a wonderful life and it was a balm to hear it during those most wretched of circumstances, in a hospital where he’d gone in as a day patient a month earlier for chemo and had never come out.

Nikki Gemmell with son Jago and her father Bob Gemmell.

This was the instructive perspective of a man who had been through so much.

He would not have known of the mental health term, ‘glimmer’. but in that moment it felt like he was recalling all the glimmers that kept him buoyant through a tossed-about life. These are micro-moments in our existences involving a person, place or memory that settle us into stillness and rest, a state of grace that is a balm. Glimmers do not spark angst; they do the opposite, anchoring us in peace.

Walking was one glimmer, which kept him young for so long. Talking with strangers another; he was boundlessly curious. He loved driving, somewhere he’d never been most of all. Fresh experiences kept him joyous. The wonder of a sushi train. A female traffic controller holding her sign. A row of kookas on the power line; one turned back to front: “There’s always one.”

He was an observer, an appreciator, who took delight in the little things in life. His glimmers. He was also that man from a previous generation who could turn their hand at seemingly anything; the workings of a car, the building of a house. He was the Swiss Army knife of men and people turned to him, instinctively, for help. That was another glimmer – helping others.

I’d seen his life at the end in terms of a cruel medical condition and wretched finances and failed marriages; yet, yet, to him, the lifespan had been wonderful, bloody marvellous, and his words on that day slid me into peace.

Nikki Gemmell in an undated family Christmas photo taken in Wollongong, NSW.

“A man who had been through so much.”

No envy, bitterness, anger. Only chuff at his quiet time on this earth. The shift in perspective recalibrated my own restless existing, shored on the shallow reserves of material and career success. This was a different, more observant way of being.

An appreciation of the small, ordinary, the everyday. And it feels like a lesson for now when there is so much to despair about. A paramedic stabbed to death in the back of his ambulance as he quietly does his paperwork. A bus overturned on the way from a wedding; 10 beautiful souls gone. Police officers take 24 hours to locate a domestic violence call, then finally arrive to find the caller dead. The faltering of the voice, which should represent a great upward curve into a generational generosity and healing for a riven nation. A dam destroyed in Ukraine. A never-ending war. So much darkness, confusion, division.

Then I think of an old man on his deathbed, acutely aware of the great seam of pain through this world but also of the great beauty and wonder in it too. A man continually in awe of the little things, right in front of him, throughout his life. Glimmers of joy that slide us into peace.

My Father’s quiet, observant existence, untainted by envy, was a lesson in living. He noticed the small, delightful details in the quotidian and revelled in them. It’s like he saw the world how we are meant to see it: as a gift of wonder, to all of us.

Look closely. Find your glimmers. Marvel, with gratitude, and unclench.