jmgoyder

Anthony has always had such a wonderful sense of humour and a way of being firmly planted, accepting of all contingencies, and light-hearted. I used to think these attributes were rather superficial and that he didn’t have depth (whatever the hell ‘depth’ means!) but I have, over our nearly 20 years of marriage, learned to do what he does, which is to laugh his way into and around various situations and then dismiss them as unimportant.

Well, no, I haven’t actually learned to do that exactly, but I am trying and I have Anthony’s verbal handbook by my side just in case I forget. He could run around paddocks and round cattle up without a murmer of exhaustion; he could climb onto the roof of this house during a cyclone and stop it; he could nurture a rejected calf and bring it up (and, until a few years ago, before ‘Reject’ died, this calf-come-steer would actually leap into Anthony’s arms and give him a hug.)

“Am I like you, or Dad?” Son asks me and I hide my anxiety behind a chuckle that reminds me of Anthony’s attitude.

“You are you, kid!” I say.

“Yes, but I think I might be more like you, Mum – serious and sad….”

I take a deep breath and say, “No, you are much more like Dad because of your sense of humour!”

“You know the way you laugh, Mum, in that loud way – could you try to do that a bit more often?”

“Okay.”

Anthony hasn’t laughed for a couple of years now. He used to have this raucous guffaw and his whole face would crinkle up in mirth and it was absolutely contagious and Son and I would be swept into this wonderful hilarity – always.

Anthony can’t even smile anymore and, the other day, when I said to him, “I wish you would just smile at me,” he said, “Jules, I have Parkinson’s – remember?”

“Yes,” I said, “but can’t you just try to smile?”

Anthony tried and failed and then looked at me (I was smiling hyena-ishly, trying to get him to do the same), and said, “Jules, you really are quite thick, aren’t you!”

And we both smiled….