A Sad Loss, Janet Margaret Ebbeck
Dear Ann,
It was the 8th April & the first monthly market sponsored by the Warners Bay Chamber of Commerce. I was more than a little bit excited about it & very much looking forward to it.
However, I had a little bit of a loss attached to it as, before the market was due to start, a kind stall holder came up to me asking if I would like to go to the toilet before the market commenced. As I am on my own, this is a kind offer from a thoughtful person & I took advantage of the offer as I had six hours of trading ahead of me.
However, when I got there I felt my ring finger & so help me could not believe I had lost another diamond & sapphire ring which was quite unique. It was a ring I had purchased in Singapore over forty years ago specifically for my Mother as it was so different & I thought it would suit her finger.
I doubt that she ever wore it & it was given back to me after she passed away. At that time I gave it to my friend, Pat who held it for a time but never wore it. She ultimately gave it back to me because of the value.
When I lost my jewellery which was stolen in my wallet I wore it & if Mum didn’t get attached to it I did. I thought how nice it looked on my finger. When I discovered it missing my heart lurched & I told myself it must be in the car or amongst the goods I had unloaded at the market so I didn’t give up hope. I had a job to do that morning so put it behind me.
I never did find it (well, not yet), but I have got the message that rings & I are not meant to be together & I did not let it affect me & the challenge before me. I forgot about it (sort of)!
When I came home & unloaded the car I was rather tired & elated at the same time. I think the tiredness took over more than the elation at that point, as I had put in two hours of solid line dancing the day before the market.
All in all I was dragging my feet when I noticed my answering machine was blinking. I answered it & received another shock. It was my long time very dear friend, Stephen Ebbeck leaving a message saying his Mum had passed away that morning.
I could hear the tears in his voice, which matched the tears that came to my eyes at that point. I could scarcely believe it. The loss of a lovely ring is not to be compared with the loss of a lovely friend & I was really sad.
Janet has been in a nursing home nearby for the past few years after she had a very major operation on a cancer in her stomach that was successful & gave her a few more years with her family. Apparently, Stephen, who lives in Sydney, was twenty minutes away from picking his Mum up to take her to lunch.
Stephen often came up from Sydney for that reason & very often kindly included me in the outing, which was lovely. With just that short time away from seeing his Mum he received a call from his sister, Michelle who informed him that their Mum had gone.
Poor Stephen, I can only imagine what went through his mind at that moment & so he asked quite puzzled “Where has she gone?” No wonder he had tears in his voice when he rang me. His Mum had collapsed while she was dressing to go out for lunch.
So now it was my turn as I thought about my very dear friend, Janet. I knew Stephen for years before I really knew Janet. She lived in a suburb very close to me.
Janet, Stephen and Gerald Ebbeck
Where I live it’s a very small close knit community, so when I was shopping at the super market I would often see Janet & we would greet each other & say the perfunctory things. This happened so often & I felt as if we should know each other more, particularly as Stephen & I had known each other for many years.
I rang Stephen one day asking if he thought his Mum would like to have lunch with me. He very quickly took me up on that & when I rang her she also very quickly said she would love to.
From that time on, Janet & I enjoyed lunch together every Wednesday & I realised she was looking for company as we so often do as we age.
Janet lived for her beautiful family. I don’t use that lightly either as I found her family of the four remaining children was extra loving & caring. Janet & her husband, Gerald, lost a twin daughter, Louise, with cancer, Mother of two, at the age of 34. I don’t think that the whole family ever really got over that loss, particularly the parents which is understandable.
I recall the funeral many years ago & the grief the family suffered. All Stephens friends were there from Sydney, most of them staying with Max & I at our place the night before the funeral. Stephen is probably the biggest, softest hearted man I know & his grief was such that on the day of his sister’s funeral he was so distraught that he kicked at the hearse. We could all understand the grief they were suffering.
The whole family were close to their Mum, but Stephen seemed to be even more so & over the years treated his Mum, sometimes accompanied by husband Gerald, to holidays in Europe & other places. He loved his Mum very dearly.
Gerald was apt to wander off on his own on these holidays & on one in particular, he wandered off, got on the bus outside while Stephen & his Mum were watching. Janet was known to remark to Stephen “Do you think we should tell him to get off the bus or will we let him travel on to China?”
Another time when Stephen took his Mum to Thailand with him on a holiday he booked her in for a Thai massage, went off & left her. When he returned to collect her she hadn’t had the massage because he hadn’t told her that she had to take her clothes off! Our Janet had a sense of dry humour & her shy smile would almost give her away.
Indeed it was that shy smile that was also her individual definitive Janet smile that we all knew so much, which brought tears to my eyes when I walked into where the funeral was to be held.
On either side of the wall, as we walked into the chapel, were two very large photos of Janet with her beautiful & unique smile looking at us. It was just so lifelike & so Janet that I don’t think anyone would not have felt she was there with us.
I did not think I would cry at the funeral as I don’t do too much of that these days, but I was proved wrong. I went to the funeral with a mutual friend of ours Myrtle, & we were first to arrive.
As we walked into the chapel, I saw part of the family, Lisa, Michelle, Mark, Stephen & before I knew it Lisa was holding me in the biggest hug ever. Lisa is Mark’s partner & we have not met many times, but somehow I feel a special bond with Lisa & when she did this I could feel the tears coming.
It got worse as she let me go & I saw Mark crying beside her. Then I saw my sweet & dear friend Stephen crying too. That really finished me. For the second time in my association with Stephen I have seen him cry like that & it broke my heart.
I recovered a little then walked inside the chapel & saw the lifelike photos of Janet with the lovely smile we all knew. It’s a time when you take many deep breaths & the service that came next was equally as emotional.
As I waited for the service to start I read this: Â ‘Miss me but let me go’ & the poem.
‘When I come to the end of the road & the sun has set for me,
I want no rites in a gloom filled room, why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little – but not too long & not with your head bowed low,
Remember the love that we once shared – miss me a little but let me go.
For this is a journey that we all must take & each must go alone
It’s all a part of the Master’s plan, a step on the road to home.
When you are lonely & sick at heart, go to the friends we know
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds, Miss me, but let me go’.
And so, it was a sad farewell to my dear friend, & I am the richer for not only knowing her but also in knowing the family that she loved so much.
I think this would please her. I think all the family have Janet’s beautiful loving nature. For instance, just after my wallet was stolen last year with my valuable jewellery in it, we had a picnic lunch with Stephen, Mark & partner Lisa, in a lovely park near to us all.
It was Mark who got me to sketch the rings I had lost as he said sometimes things come up on Gum Tree (on the internet).
A few months later, sure enough, an ad came on Gum Tree saying the writer had found three rings & wanted to find the owner. Stephen gave me a call that morning to say Mark had called to say they could possibly be mine as not often it is three rings found together.
All that day, after Stephen rang, I was sure in my heart they were my rings as it made sense & after locating the ad I went to the Charlestown Police Station to show them as, at the time, they showed a lot of care for me when I lost them as the detective involved rang me the next day to see if I was okay.
However, it seemed they were not mine but this iterates my close connection with the family & how caring they are.
Janet is leaving a loving legacy, a truly beautiful family endowed with the same love that Janet had for them all, a precious gift which will continue on,
Those we love, we never forget.
That is exactly why I am writing my letters to you, my dear friend. As Stephen always says to me as we are parted after a phone call or when we are together those wonderful words which I say to you, “I love you & wherever you are you know that.”
You know what was in my heart on that last day I saw you & went back to give you a last hug like Lisa gave me. I knew that day that I would not see you again in person so it was a hug & ‘I love you’ before I let you go. Dawn X O X O