Eulogies
Please select a person to read their eulogy...| Jane Williams (an introduction) |
Julie Buxton | Margot Yeomans | Neville Yeomans |
| Stewart Collingwood | Jason Andrew | Roxane Horton | Gus Berger |
Roxanne Horton - Download this eulogy?
I thought about four things about Karl that I most loved that I wanted to share with you today.
1. The first is best articulated by Shakespeare. This is from Measure for Measure:
"They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad."
I think it is fair to say that Karl could be just a teeny bit bad. This is probably not an appropriate forum to go into all the details suffice it to say we as a family were very relieved when Karl married a lawyer.
2. Karl was the real deal. He was fair dinkum. There was nothing artificial or contrived about Karl. I should have remembered that at the end of February. Karl was in hospital at the Epworth and we had been told that his treatments had not worked. I had had an earlier conversation with a priest who suggested that it might be a good idea to tell Karl what he meant to me and to share with him what I loved about him. So, I was spending the night at the hospital and I said "Karl, I just wanted to tell you that you've been a really good brother to me and you're a really nice person and you're very generous, and I really appreciated when you came to Auckland to surprise me when Imogen was born." And Karl looked at me and he said "What????". And I continued; "You've always given me such lovely birthday presents and you've got really nice hands". And Karl just said "Rock. You're a freak." And so ended that moment.
3. Karl was passionate. He didn't just tiptoe through life. He gave it everything. He sucked it all up.
He was passionate about skiing.
He was passionate about traveling.
He was passionate about alcohol.
He was passionate about music.
He was especially passionate about lying on the couch watching the cricket.
And of course, most of all he was passionate about his darling Jules.
I will never forget receiving an extraordinary phone call from Karl. It was October 2003 and I was sitting in my car in a car park in Auckland and the phone rang and it was Karl. And I said "Hi Karlos, how are you?".
He said, "I'm fantastic. I've met someone. She is Incredible, she is the most Incredible woman I've ever met. She's just Everything and her name is Juliet Buxton." And when he met her, he met his soul mate. And she made him so happy. I know that we are all so grateful that she loved him so much and looked after him so well and gave him such joy in the last few years of his life.
4. Karl was poetic. He had quite a gift for words. He wrote really funny stories and poems and I think part of that gift was that he was particularly good at cutting out all the superfluous stuff.
An example: this sounds incredibly vacuous, but the other day Mum and I were discussing what to wear today because who knows what you wear to your brother's funeral. I said "I don't know why we're even thinking about this because I know that Karl would say "I don't mind what you wear, just wear whatever you feel comfortable in. It's fine with me." and Mum said "Actually, I think he would say - 'I don't give a shit.'
A better example was the day that special, beautiful Marlow was born. When babies are born a lot of people send long messages detailing the labour and describing the child and so on, but Karl wrote only 6 words. He wrote:
"My boy.
His Mum
and me."
And that just said it all.
Karlos, I've loved you my whole life. I miss you.
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