An unusual day

Last night, as I slept, I had a strange dream, without structure, without event, without participants, just an odd sense of physical well-being, that I was in fact healthy, a feeling that persisted through the night, even across periods when I was awake. When morning came, my awareness of the tumours inside me was undiminished. Nothing had changed.

I have no explanation for the dream, except perhaps as some sub-conscious optimistic anticipation of forthcoming surgery. But this unusual night led to an unusual day, the first Monday of the new spring, following the shift of our clocks forward over the weekend. I decided to drive with Miang to Palmerston North to attend the funeral of an old acquaintance and friend, Florence Bacon. Florence's surviving husband Don had been Professor of Microbiology at Massey University, and I inherited his office in Tower C under one of our many relocations.

Florence (Flo) was an American, the daughter of Albanian migrants to the US. She met Don, a kiwi postgraduate student at Yale, while she was a laboratory technician there. She married him, and left behind her family to migrate to New Zealand. That was half a century ago. Flo became well-known and much loved in Palmerston North. She was a wonderful woman, savvy, funny, and warm hearted, the very best of America.

Miang and I drove back from Palmerston North in spring sunshine, wondering if our long winter was finally over. I felt both moved and privileged to have shared in the reminiscences of the Bacon family, as two daughters and a son spoke of their memories of their mother.

At the end of the funeral, we were invited to sing a song hardly ever heard in New Zealand, and one which I had never, until this moment sung. I finish here with its first verse.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain;
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea.