A simple, kind gesture for a friend has ended up being the late ABC cameraman John Bean's lasting Christmas reminder for freelance writer Leigh Wayper. Picture: John Bean's family album Source: Supplied
CHRISTMAS Day can be the happiest day of the year - catching up with friends and family, sitting down to Christmas dinner, bonbons, bad jokes, everyone talking over each other. Yet it can be the loneliest day of the year.
As a remote parent I am occasionally left to my own devices on Christmas Day.
The phone calls last year began about 7.35am with the mellifluous tones of my eldest son in Canberra. We talked comparative plans for the day - he had already breakfasted in the park with the extended family of his partner and was headed to a noon barbecue with other family and friends.
Son number two lives in Brisbane with his wife. And there is my darling daughter, the musician with the terrific tonsils, trying to crack it in Sydney. I have every confidence she'll succeed; my pride already knows no bounds.
I love them dearly, with a tinge of sadness over distances. Happily I saw most of them this Christmas, calling in for brief one-on-one gift swaps. As usual I refolded the Christmas paper, tucking it in the back of a cupboard.
"Why don't you just chuck it Dad?"
"Because it reminds me of everyone."
Remote fathers are experts at celebration stretching. Three days after Christmas I have a birthday and the erstwhile gift giver can be caught napping. How can I soften requests of "something for Christmas and something for birthday". (That means two presents please and definitely no Christmas paper for birthday wrappings.)
Another difficulty that comes with my birthday is, given it's slap in the middle of the holiday season, most of my friends are at the beach or similarly "outta town".
I guess I'm over it all now.
But a few years ago there was a notable exception to my usual post-Christmas birthday tradition, which was arranged, quietly, by a very dear friend and colleague.
He had taken note of my Christmas and birthday dilemma when I was having a gentle whinge about it to him some time previously.
Much to my surprise and gratitude I then received an invitation.
He and the rest of his family rented a unit for Christmas at Sunshine Beach. Knowing my feelings he had suggested I should come north and stay a couple of nights and I could be a "birthday" guest with his family as hosts.
Gladly I accepted to discover he had prepared a birthday dinner for me to enjoy with him and his wife's family.
Delicious it all was but a further simple surprise was in store. He had baked a splendid birthday cake, which, with sparklers crackling, was "sung" into the dining room. Matches were struck, candles lit and I blew them out.
But they lit up again. So I blew the "magic candles" out again. This could have gone on for some time but I laughingly huffed and heaved and puffed, eventually blowing them all out and slumping back into the chair, hyperventilating with laughter and a severe oxygen deficit.
I sat there beaming gratitude around the room. After the dish-washing we played Trivial Pursuit. It was a great evening, a lovely way to celebrate any birthday.
It was some time later before I could realise how much I would come to value his simple yet wonderful gesture.
One August morning last year, listening to the early news on ABC radio, I could hear by the tone of the presenter's voice, there was something wrong, terribly wrong. My friend John Bean, an ABC-TV cameraman with whom I'd worked around the country and overseas, had met his end along with two notable colleagues while filming around Lake Eyre via helicopter. The helicopter crashed.
And I guess this is the nature, the unpremeditated nature, of such an event; the birthday party, a lovely simple birthday party whose import subsequently goes way beyond the original actions and motivation.
John's simple human gesture of inviting me to celebrate my birthday with his family has given me a new take on humility. I now have the perfect Christmas and birthday gift, in the form of a warm memory, forever.
This from my friend who died doing the job he loved. He was a top-notch cameraman, a fabulous husband and a magnificent friend and colleague.
I think timing is the overarching factor in all the things we do - to act at the appropriate time is important. Now-ish, with not too much of the ish.
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Leigh Wayper is a freelance writer
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