Autumn of their life

For two weeks I had lunch with my mother in her retirement home at Albany, Western Australia. We ate in a communal dining room and every day I met more and more of the inmates. One of note was Jack Davies, raconteur, published poet, accomplished artist and Merchant Mariner in his youth. My mother introduced him and added “a girl in every port” Jack’s laconic reply was “I wouldn’t say just one” He’s 93 I went over to his unit and looked at his art. He is just finishing a bush scene and if ever a artist got the colours of the Karri forest right it was Jack, and it isn’t easy. He left home at 16 and signed up on a ship going to Bombay with the intention of signing off and seeing the world but the shipping company had other ideas and coerced him into staying on as engineering crew. After several trips around the world he was heading south from Bowen (Qld) with holds full of sugar and had decided to finally sign off at Melbourne when some where off the Sydney Heads World War Two was declared. He ended up being blown up by Nazi bombers when they were docked at Liverpool, UK where he lost his fingers on one hand and one eye; but a quick look at his Record of Service lists service with the Royal Australian Engineers after that. No war stories, just a long life of acomplishments and the chance to refelct on them after nine decades. The elderly haven’t given up, they just move slower. The woman, my mother included, have a teenage girl approach to the unwed men at the centre. “Hows your boyfriend?” one ask mother. “Nothing to so with you”, she retorts. My mother is 86 and she and Jack are comfortable in each others company as my Mother is also an published poet. She recently won a national poetry competition run by the Retirement Village Chain where she lives. A hundred bucks. I think she gave it to some charity. Don’t get me wrong, they are just friends but it is good to see that interest in the opposite gender doesn’t end at 70, or at 60 for that matter; an event in my life that seems to be approaching at warp speed.