There’s a lesson in the passing of our beloved neighbour

Our little community is bereft of our neighbour’s presence, writes Nikki Gemmell.

You learn from those who’ve died, from the lesson in their living; it’s a little nugget of a gift I carry from any funeral or memorial service. What is learnt from this person’s passing, and the example they’ve set in life? Recently our little community lost a cherished member, far too young, a dear man. Mid fifties. Cancer. Wretched cancer, it’s taken too many people I love. And now him, shockingly too quickly.

Our worlds were very different. He was not born in Australia, his packed memorial was segregated by sex and much of it was in a language I do not know. But what came through, in the English sections of the service, was that this was a good man. Again and again people spoke of his loyalty and kindness. One of his best friends broke down while talking of him and it was striking to see a middle-aged man so publicly bereft over the loss of a friend. This was love, male love, and despite the wretched circumstances it was beautiful to witness, this soul laid bare by grief and tenderness for a fellow man.

My near-neighbour was larger than life, with a charismatic generosity of spirit. It was said of him that he was always interested in other people, curious about anyone he met – and that was the lesson I took from his memorial service. It was such an attractive quality, the attentive curiosity. There was a generosity to his listening to others, from other worlds, which is so different to much of the shouty, combative discourse of modern life. This man gave you the gift of his thoughtful attention and at his service, I realised he gave his whole community that; all the different worlds he was connected to. There were a lot of us there from his small local world, for he’d deeply touched many of us.

His wife spoke movingly of his “beloved local community” – he was seamed deeply through our grid of households. We’re a group of people with little in common yet we’re all knitted together by the chance of where we dwell, and these people are a daily nourishment on my walks with the dog. We’re all bound. Keep an eye on each other. Someone’s had a health scare, a cat’s vanished, a cherished dog is on her last legs and the neighbourhood kids are growing up, leaving home, and we’re all marking the passage of the years through them. I care deeply for these people, even though I rarely enter the minutiae of their worlds.

Cared deeply for this good man I barely knew, except for our chats as we dog-walked. His memorial service was packed. There was a lot of love in that room. He was a hugely successful company man but work was barely mentioned – it was his relationships with others that were acknowledged; the instructive grace in his dealings with people around him.

A long-running life study has shown that good relationships are more important than money and success for happiness. A new book, The Good Life, details a Harvard study of adult development that has tracked the lives of hundreds of Boston men since 1938. The aim? To discover what really makes for a good life. One crucial component was pinpointed as the most impactful on our wellbeing and happiness – the quality of our relationships.

I was a tiny, peripheral cog in my neighbour’s vast network of good living, but what I took from his service was the nourishing strength of his relationships. It was brain health for him. You could see it as he navigated his world so buoyantly, always exuberantly chatting away with someone – he was bolstered by his relationships with others. As am I, by our little community. It’s a tonic every day to step out into it, and to have known a good man like this among its cohort. The hole in our tiny world feels large and unfillable, bereft of his daily presence.