Caught up with a cousin (Colin) I’ve not seen since his wife’s funeral in June of 2016. He was in the middle of an interstate trip from New South Wales to Hobart in Tasmania, where a member of his late wife’s family was being married.
He decided to drive rather than fly because it gave him the chance to reconnect with relatives here in Victoria on the way to his empty family home.
His is a very religious family, the four children all working in various Christian vocations in Australia & England. He & his late wife insisted that their kids should become established in a professionn before taking up their ministerial responsibilities.
Colin himself is a retired civil engineer and the most genuine & honest man I have ever met.
Towards the end of his working life his employer – a major municipal council in a big inland city area – was trying to sack him for various alleged irregularities & improprieties. Anyone who truly knew the man could tell this was a stitch-up and in the end, justice prevailed.
He was exonerated and then retired ASAP to take up voluntary work with his wife at the African Inland Mission in Kenya for 6 months of each year until his wife’s ill-health forced their return to Australia. She had open-heart surgery ASAP.
Then early in June of 2016, Colin phoned me at 8 am one Monday morning in great distress. Wendy (his wife) had been feeling a bit uneasy and lay down on the sofa in the loungeroom for a snooze and never woke up again. I asked him about funeral arrangements & said I’d be there for him & the rest of the mob.
So I drove there with my mother in tow & we stayed the Thursday night with her sister at another inland city a little over halfway there before continuing onto the funeral on the Friday morning. We headed back to Mum’s sister’s place that night then home again on Saturday.