I wasn't with her that day as she took another trip in across the city to the Docs at St Vinnies. Several appointments with various doctors and assorted tests and scans to find out why she just didn't feel quite right. So, I don't know for sure how she took the news. A pinch of shock I suspect mixed with a dose of hard nosed... 'huh, well we'll see' and a dash of, not exactly orthodox religion type, spiritual... so be it. I can picture the scene, the doctor looking all serious and a little sad because he liked her and it was never easy. Cancer, inoperable... terminal and likely to be so in a few months. Just the thing to brighten your day. So she troops off back to the train and heads home and I meet her up at the station after work.

"I've got some bad news for you..."

I've known her all my life and she was always the slightly eccentric one. A bit of a black sheep in a gentle sort of way. The fun loving gypsy in a crowd of conservatives. A caring and gentle woman who everyone wanted to be friends with. She did have a temper though, a tongue that could tear strips off people, as she mixed facts to suit the current argument. Mostly though she was sweet and kind and generous with a big dose of wide eyed little girl innocence.

We'd bumped into each other quite by chance one day as she was coming down and I was going up a staircase in an arcade in the city. Hadn't seen her for years, so we did coffee and chatted a bit and discovered we only lived a few k apart. Walking distance, go figure.

Ah... see, I was still in guy mode back then, mid nineties a sort of struggling doubt phase, though just a wee bit on the girly side for a regular guy, it was was often surmised I was gay. People do tend to go with the more obvious choice, a girly guy has to be gay, simple. Shrug, so it goes.

But she didn't really care about that sort of thing and so I started to wander round to her place and talk and listen to music and then one night as I was lying stretched out on the floor leaning on one elbow, she made an observation.

"You look so cute lying there with your hair hanging down. Almost like a girl."

So there was the moment... just hanging there. Just a teensy bit loaded as I'd been there and done that with the family a few years earlier and that had gone real well, cough. Do I tell her or just smile and shrug it off?

"Well, funny you say that Auntie C. Um I don't suppose you've heard about me from mum or someone in the family, you'd have said by now, but...."

Gist of it is I told her and she was cool, even offering some of her older daughters clothes that she had tucked away. They'd probably fit she said even though I was a little taller. So here she was the 'mad' Auntie, just going with the flow and not flustered at all. I can say and maybe you get it... that meant quite a lot.

Regular visits and phone calls and we became friends more than rellies and as I made my way to Kristina she backed me up quietly and never worried about other people. Quietened my fears with phrases like.."Oh you're so lucky to be so lovely and tall.." And .." I love your hair, I wish I had that blondie red and those lovely blue eyes.."

Still as I said, she did have a temper and we fought at times like cat and dog, or cat and cat maybe, whatever. She might have been slight, but her tongue could strip wallpaper. Had the knack of being able to find the vulnerable spots to cut deep. Vicious and hurtful and even as you recognised the broken logic and half truths she used it still brought tears often as not.

But she very rarely held a grudge and any tantrum would soon be forgotten and if I might sulk for a few days and not talk to her it would all blow over once the initial outburst was past. Just how she was and yes, I've deservedly been on the receiving end a few times. She was always quicker than I to react and let fly if she felt it needed. Different generations and personalities and when I'd question her as to how she could be so hurtful she would reply, that she never really meant it and she did love me but sometimes she needed to and sometimes I needed it too, plus... she was allowed, but if anyone else said or did anything they'd face her and she meant it. You could never really stay angry or upset for too long.

We kept in touch as I moved a few times and she went through a couple of changes in hair style. Always with the fluid gypsy, almost hippie style clothing. All the scarves and Indian bangles and soft bright cottons. She'd taken some grief over the years for being a half caste. Anglo Indian, well a quarter I guess, her Mum was half darkie and half whitey and Dad was a German, Czech, Brit blend. What did that make me? About an eighth, though it didn't show, I got all the Anglo colouring from my Dad, a Scot. Anyway she loved all the flowing clothes and silver jewellery and she had that lovely dusky skin that I envied as it held the years at bay.

She'd tell me stories of the old days in India, the beauty and noise of it, the poverty and richness. Servants and 'wallahs' mostly Mohammedan's, she never heard the word Moslem till years later. India before partition, trains up into the Punjab and trips into the Hindu Kush. Catholic boarding school in Rawalpindi and the easy cruelty of the nuns. She was protected some by being the daughter of an English officer but being not quite of one race or the other was never easy. The whites looked down on you and the locals treated you with suspicion. She was there when Ghandi was shot and with her mother and sister, were trapped in a shoe shop for two days as the rioting went on.

The holy men in saffron robes and conflicts with Catholicism. Incense and colour, the smells and stories of a different world, one that had never been mentioned as I grew up. As the brothers moved away to Canada and left India behind never to mention it again. Oh dear, did she get in trouble during a trip in the late eighties when she told the nieces and nephews of their heritage. It did in part I suppose support my ages old desire to visit Northern India and Afghanistan, something unlikely to happen now the way things are. She visited South America for several months, another dream of mine. How could I not love her and envy her.

The story of the choice after the war, Canada or Australia and the journey by ship. The amazement at some simple things like vacuum cleaners or a milk shake. Different worlds.

I was interstate doing the muso thing back when she did that big trip to the Americas and so missed a lot of the background stuff. She came back to a murder of her older daughters hubby and a somewhat poisoned relationship and her younger was into drugs, again. Half sisters to different fathers, the elder a beautiful European blonde and the younger a stunning dark exotic beauty often teased at school for being a Philippino, though of course she wasn't. There's a photo I have of Auntie C when she was about sixteen on the back of her brothers motorcycle and she was gorgeous, but a lot darker, I used to tease her about how she'd faded over the years.

Yes there were stories and blame and anger and silence. Black sheep like I said, so we did sort of fit together. Hasn't seen the elder since and only a brief get together with the younger a few years back during the short failed marriage. Estranged from her children and basically her brothers and sisters and exes too. Pride and stubbornness and keeping secrets, generally not talking... Don't ya love families. Nope not a question. Wonder why we fit?

It was a funny sort of relationship, friends and family and supporters and jousters all rolled into a not so simple mixture, but it worked. Mostly we loved each other in that gentle easy you be you and I'll be me way. We worked and chatted and kept up as we moved and became each others support network. She was as I said a tough old thing and never looked her age, pretty much Aussie but never quite completely. She'd get asked all the time... 'where are you from...' Manly or Ryde or Blacktown she'd say, with mostly humour but just a pinch of annoyance way in the background.

And there we were a few years back, she was suddenly alone in a large house and I had to move...again. So.... simple and yet it never is, is it? Mostly it was fine and we were good together. Then again, we had to move, stressful? Oh yeah, but we did it, this time with my two puppies are her two kitties. Hah, they got on, even if the puppies did like to chase and the kitties never quite saw the humour of it. Watching the four of them eat side bay side after sniffing each others food was fun in a bemusing sort of way.

Still, there we were. Another house and okay but she seemed to be getting tired, not dramatic, but there. Maybe she felt worse than she let on, I don't know. Quite possible though, she was like that. I think I'd have picked it up, we'd gotten pretty good at reading each other. A year and at the end she knew, we had to move, somewhere smaller, more manageable. So we did, reasonably straight forward as moving house goes, it's never simple and I was really sick of it, so was she. A tough choice, the kitties had been adopted out, space and..well not a simple decision, but we both agreed. At least they still had a good situation, the puppies would not have fared as well.

So a new place, clean and simple, comfortable close to everything and yet tainted. There in the background the knowledge that she at least would not move again. And it began, that slow slide from active to barely being able to walk up the street. Trips for radiotherapy, stints in hospital, a slow and gradual slip from who she had been.

She stayed at home as long as possible and I helped as much as I could while still going to work a few hours a day. District nurses and home visits from the GP kept her comfortable and ...well, happy? Can't really say that, but she was there and the puppies were with her and me and you make do don't you. Simple things.

But finally, she was no longer able to stay at home, needed more care than I could give or the visiting nurses provide, and so....

A hospice, not too far away fortunately. They were mostly good, caring and thoughtful, but I will admit at times as I dealt with the 'system' both there and previously at home, there was the odd moment where I would like to take a word bubble of bureaucrateese and shove it where the sun don't shine. But I am quite sure that dealing with such a thing as palliative care cannot always be easy, from any side.

I'd visit every day, sometimes with a puppy in tow and she was usually grateful and not too demanding. There were also occasions where I could cheerfully strangle her and likewise I'm sure, frustrations and inadequacies bumping into hard nosed reality.

In her own way she fought and challenged and wrestled with fears and pains which will make anyone a little narky at times. The trouble is of course that no one else can truly understand exactly what another is going through. They can approximate it, within their own experience and empathise up to a point but it will always be unique and personal.

I watched her go from that fit active lady that could run rings around people half her age to a thin and frail old woman and that was not easy for either of us. Then out of the blue one of the pups died, the big bumbly beautiful boy had a massive stroke and died in my arms on the lounge room floor. Horrible and made worse in that looking back I missed a few symptoms, misunderstood... would it have made a difference? I don't know, the vet later said probably not and I don't think he was just being kind. Sigh I debated the next day whether to tell her, checked how she was and sat and chatted for a while.

She seemed okay so I did and she was shocked but fine. It took a couple of days to register properly, I know and she felt it then, perhaps equated it to herself I really don't know. Mostly lucid she did have times where she jumbled memories from years ago with the past day. Not always easy to piece together and impossible for someone that did not know her well. Upsetting but.. not so much, it's all relative. Mostly we joked about it.

She was aware and with it right to the end and if she perhaps tried to hide her fears and pain from me to a degree she was not always successful. I told her a year ago she would see her next birthday and she did, just. I wonder if that was a target to aim for and for my benefit more than hers? Whatever the case she did, plus a month, and then gave up as it got too much.

That last Wednesday afternoon she was pretty much out of it but still knew who I was and in the midst of general bits and pieces of conversation asked me to write a letter for her to 'thank all the girls' for helping look after her. I know she meant all the staff and consultants that made her last month or two easier than it might have been. I did, though I didn't mention names because I was damn sure I'd forget some.

But I knew then... she knew, she was done. She could fight no more and at a suggestion I went outside and there were a few tears, as there are now as I write this. I went outside and sat with the puppy and came in and out a few times, but she was in and out of sleep, or dreams or something and after a while I went home. Several hours later, at two forty five the next morning I got the phone call.

So now, in my own long winded and somewhat inept way I am writing something sort of as she might have wished and based on that original letter. It's worded a little differently than she would, but she would expect that. Would she expect this exactly? No probably not, but she'd understand it.

Thank you to all that give the care and friendly attention, that show to all that come through that despite money problems and bureaucracy and human inadequacy it can still work on that basic level.

Sure there might be 'moments' but aren't there always? I know she greatly appreciated all that was done to help her and to a lesser extent me. Yep, even there, right at the end she was trying to organise things. Three months later I know she did all she could to make it easy. There's fights and drama and petty officialdom, but I can look at it all now it's mostly sorted and I can't help but smile.

An end? Yes perhaps, might depend what you believe. One way or another she's still around.

Thanks for reading.

Kristina