About last weekend....

Some stories live in boardrooms, some in communities, and some deep in the heart. Last weekend I delivered a life celebration for Barbara Ann DeCaux, my Mum’s best friend of more than 50 years, and a woman who felt like a second Mum to me. This is my love letter to her and the extraordinary life she lived.

Dear Barbara,

Some lives arrive like a gentle hymn and, before we realise it, they become the soundtrack to a whole community. Yours was that kind of music - steady, generous and quietly uplifting.

Last week, I had the enormous honour of standing with your family, your brothers, and the circle of friends who adored you, and together we stitched together our memories of you into something warm enough to hold us as we grieve your loss.

You always said legacy is the love we leave behind. And when I looked around the room, Aunty Barb, you and your beloved Austin, well you made a family that spills over with it: four children, eleven grandchildren, a growing tribe of great-grandchildren, and more neighbours, friends, and “adopted” kids than anyone could count.

It was all right there in their faces - the laughter lines, the stubborn courage, the sparkle when the stories began - unmistakably yours.

From your earliest days, music and theatre were the backdrop to your life. The Jeffery clan gathering at Grandma Elsie’s piano, voices rising together in song. The summer nights when you and your brothers clambered up the outside stairs of the boarding house to watch the flickering screen of the Piccadilly Theatre in Adelaide through open windows.

The radio crooned with Sinatra, Ella and Bing and later the thrum of Elvis who it turns out was born just months before you. Those rhythms stitched joy into the hardest years of a wartime childhood, teaching you that laughter, music, and a good story can make even the heaviest days lighter.

And that sense of story never left you. You carried it into nursing, where pranks with skeletons softened long nights of study. Into motherhood, where Christmases were set to a soundtrack of pageants, carols, and butterfly cupcakes. And into your friendships, where conversations, rituals, and cheeky escapades became the theatre of everyday life.

For me, your story was always personal. Long before I ever became a Marriage & Life Celebrant, I had a front row seat to what it means to grasp a chance meeting and turn it into a lifelong friendship. That moment when you and my Mum, Geraldine, met at Calvary Nurses College shaped decades of love, loyalty and laughter. You were never just Barbara to us - you were always Aunty Barbie, Mum’s best friend, our second mother.

What I remembered most was how, though you lived in different states and at different stages of life, you both made time each week to pick up the phone...in the days when you had to book a trunk call! The ritual of those weekly calls - the simple act of checking in, bound the intimacy of a friendship that spanned more than 50 years. And in preparing your service, I came to realise something: 

Starting a friendship might be chance, but staying in one, nurturing it across seasons and distance, is a deliberate and intentional act. 

In you and Mum, I had exemplars, role models at every age and stage which I now know I was blessed to witness up close, what it meant to live a friendship that walked all the roads together.

And then, of course, there was a trellis, a convent window, and one bold young man named Austin. You fell in love the way the best stories begin - with mischief, with music, and with honest, everyday joy. Friday night dates at the markets....oh yes please, cheese!

A house that became a home, then a family, then a neighbourhood. Life in Lindsay Street, Plympton, where Christmas meant earrings that lit up, Mass at midnight, and a kitchen table that never let anyone leave hungry or unseen.

Loss came too early and too hard when Austin died. You loved him once, and then you loved him again - this time by standing up for your children when standing was the hardest thing to do. 

That’s the part people don’t always talk about in eulogies: the unglamorous heroism of continuing but you did it. Day after day, you showed your kids how grief and gratitude can sit at the same table. You showed them that routine, good housekeeping, and a swipe of lipstick can be smallest acts of rebellion against an endless despair to keep you going. 

You showed them that humour heals and heavens, you could laugh and make those around you laugh. Lettuce spinners for everyone, avocado savers by the dozen, tupperware mats for stubborn jars and even more stubborn wine bottles.....if delight came in pairs, you bought two.

Later in life, you settled by the sea. Victor Harbor became your haven - a home of crisp linen, a pot of earl grey, original art, a swept path, roses in bloom, and a door that opened as widely as your heart. And then there was my Uncle, Father Mark, or “Mudder Fark,” as he became affectionately known.

It was such a perfect example of how you embraced life with curiosity, even faith. For you, religion was never about strict formality; if the people and the spirit were right, that was religion in itself and my Uncle Mike.....he adored you for that.

You delighted in the ceremony of a Mass he celebrated, in the community it created, and in the warmth of the people who gathered. 

In your world, love, humour and humanity were the truest sacraments.

You embraced every new invention with the same openness. The move from outdoor loos to microwaves and cordless phones, from car phones the size of bricks to tiny mobiles, from letters to text messages and even facetime.

Things and the technologies we take for granted today were, for you, ground breaking - sometimes life changing. 

And instead of resisting, you welcomed them. Technology became another way to love and stay connected. It let you watch your grandchildren grow and share in family milestones that distance might otherwise have stolen.

For a woman who grew up carrying ice blocks for neighbours’ chests, the leap to instant photo-sharing must have been staggering - yet you always took it in your stride, as if to say: “Of course, this is how we keep telling each other our stories.”

You faced the hardest chapters with the same stubborn grace. When your son Andrew died in 2013, the light dimmed, for a while but it never went out. When dementia began to unspool the threads of the everyday, your daughters, remarkable women shaped by your example, wrapped you in care as devoted as the care you had given the world. 

In March this year, ninety years was marked quietly, as you preferred and then a gentle, peaceful letting go, with your daughters Robyn and Elizabeth beside you.

If love had a destination, you found it.

Your children spoke of a mother who was both ballast and breeze.

Stephen recalled the tremendous courage and spirit it took for you to go on after losing Austin. Robyn and Elizabeth spoke of the rituals and routines that defined your approach to life. 

Dinner at the table was eaten efficiently and with manners - no elbows, fifteen minutes, then thank the cook and take your dishes to the sink. 

Beds made with hospital corners. 

Appearances cared for with pride.

Books read. 

Patience practised. 

And, above all, time taken to listen - to notice people, to hold space and offer a safe place to fall, no questions asked.

These were not just habits; they were lessons, etched into your children and grandchildren and now woven into their own families.

Your brothers spoke of a big sister who made them feel safe and important.

Your grandchildren spoke of sleepovers and seaside walks, of ginger jars and cheeky asides, of a Nanna who could turn an ordinary afternoon into a story they’re now telling their own children. 

And in the spaces between their words, something else shone through: your way of seeing people. 

You noticed, you listened, you held space and you made room.

We watched photos, a life in frames: the girl at the piano, the nurse in crisp whites, the bride in love, the mum in motion, the matron, the friend, the grandmother on the foreshore, hair tousled just so that even Judi Dench would approve!

The music swelled and, for a moment, you were everywhere: in the chorus, in the laughter, in the quiet sigh of a room that didn’t want the slideshow to end.

And before we closed, I spoke on behalf of my brothers and myself to thank you. When Mum faced her cancer diagnosis over 20 years ago now, you dropped everything and came to live with her in those early, frightening weeks.

You nursed her, steadied her, and carried us too. We would have been lost without you, and our gratitude will never leave us.

This is my love letter to you, Aunty Barb, and to your family who entrusted me with chapters of your life. It was truly an honour and privilege to be trusted to stand at the intersection of joy and grief, to gather up the threads of our memories and weave them into something whole.

It's never a task I take lightly and your story reminded me why I do this work: 

Legacy isn’t grand gestures; it’s a bookmark tucked into a favourite novel, a recipe made every December, a weekly phone call that knits two lives together across states, a friendship that says “I’ll walk this road with you, however long it runs.”

Your story is safe with us and it will be told and retold at kitchen tables, in gardens by the sea and in rooms where we gather.

And as long as the people you loved keep laughing, singing, caring, and noticing, you’ll be right there in the middle of it - the steady melody we hum on our way home.

And so, Aunty Barb, I hope you are back with your beloved Austin, the man you missed every single day.

Your love story, well, it was quite simply the stuff of legend.

A tale so full of devotion, humour, and loyalty that it will echo through time, reminding us all what it means to find your one great love and hold it fiercely.

The values you lived by - kindness, resilience, loyalty and laughter, fear not they live on in every branch of your family tree.

I want you to know that your children, your grandchildren and great grandchildren, your brothers and friends will be ok, because we have them and each other. We will steady ourselves and each other, we will lift each other up and make sure we stand upright, just like your showed us and as you would want.

And last week, with love and reverence, we passed the matriarch’s mantle to Robyn. She carries your warmth, that softness that puts people immediately at ease alongside the steely resilience you modelled every day.

She inherited your gift of keeping a watchful eye over everyone, holding the family close, ensuring no one will ever fall through the cracks. 

And she will be loved and supported every step of the way by Elizabeth, my sister of another mother Lu Lu, who has those very same qualities of care, loyalty, humour, and grit.

Together, these two remarkable sisters embody your spirit and side by side, my gosh, two more amazing siblings you would go a long way to find.

Your legacy is not just safe, it is alive, it is strong, and it will continue to grow through them.

Say hi to Mum & Uncle Mike for me, be nice to everyone in heaven or wherever the afterlife has spirited you........even the ones you don't like!

All my love, Mellie xoxo