I've never much liked New Year's Eve. I've always thought it over-rated – struggling to stay awake until midnight, kissing drunk strangers at parties, or battling crowds in the city to watch extraordinarily extravagant fireworks. And now I like it even less.
On December 31, 2016, my brother Terry passed away. When everyone was planning New Year's Eve celebrations, Terry was planning his funeral. His organs had already left the party and gone home.
"I don't want a f…ing church service, and I don't want any of you to f…in' well wear black," he told us. "Just dig a hole and bury me. Bring a bottle of rum and tell lots of stories, just like we used to do." Terry spent his final days talking about his life and explaining how he wanted to die. And he died the only way he knew how, the only way he knew how to live – fighting.Â
Being the eighth child in a baker's dozen of children isn't an easy gig for anyone, least of all in a poor farming family in rural NSW. And Terry fought for everything – a seat in the car, a chair at the table, food on his plate.
"Getting the cows in from the paddock in the middle of winter was the worst," Terry recalled as I held his hand in hospital. "We had to do it before catching the bus to school. None of us had shoes, so we used to find the freshest cowpats, the ones that were still warm, and we'd stand in them to thaw our feet after walking across the frost-covered ground.
"And then we had to milk the cows, walk the half-mile to the bus stop to go to school, then come home and do it all again. It was no childhood." He peppered his sentences with more expletives, and tried to find enough saliva in his dry mouth to moisten his scratchy voice.
We're a big family by any standards, an interesting medley of personalities. There's the perfectionist, the workaholic, the passive people-pleaser, the underachiever, the over-achiever, the rebel, the creative drop-out who never quite fitted in, the one who distanced himself from the rest of the family, geographically and emotionally …Â
In a time of crisis, though, we always managed to come together, to forget past grievances, and tell the family stories. Those remembrances are funny now: the broken arms, horse-riding accidents, fishing trips to the river gone wrong and someone falling in, playing in Dad's old Humber car and letting off the handbrake on the sloping driveway beside the house with disastrous consequences.
And we all lived through it to tell the stories, decades later, stories to reunite and reconnect, stories to help each other find our place again in our family. All this is so valuable to me, the 10th-born – so necessary to hear the tales of all before I was even born, the tales that make us of one blood.Â
Terry was the storyteller, the joker, before illness snatched away his smile. He'd tell of pub fights and motorbikes, of jobs lost and special places he'd found, of lucky breaks and not-so-lucky broken bits of him – and most of all, his two daughters. "They're the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "They've made my life worthwhile."
He gave as good as he got, proud to show you the scars on the once burly body that had carried him through a strife-torn life – now grey skin and bone. "Love ya, sis," he said as I held his hand to say my last goodbye. "I've never had much luck with you lot [women], so I'm better off on me own, you know, in the end." He sighed heavily with the words and the effort of fighting.Â
I will celebrate all New Year's Eves now, to honour my brother. I will buy a bottle of rum or go to the pub with mates. I'll wear my "Sunday best" shorts and shirt and think I'm pretty all right. I'll get amorous and angry in no particular order. I'll tell stories, and laugh at them, because nothing beats a good laugh. Wherever I am, I'll make friends with everyone around me, then flop into bed just after midnight and think what a bloody good time I've had.