Vivienne Lewis

This is my little speech at Vivienne's funeral; celebrating a life cut too short but a life well lived.

My earliest memories of Vivienne centre around her care and creativity and detail. Her meticulousness.

They are little boy memories. As much impressions and fragments as anything else.

I remember the beautifully embroidered hankies - christmas presents for my dad every year.  Every year it would be a delight to see what she'd embroidered. Dad motorcycling. Dad skiing. Dad digging the garden.

I remember Vivienne's wonderful writing.  The envelopes that she sealed with wax and the signet ring my dad made her with her own seal that she designed. 

I remember Vivienne's succession of mice that as a very young preschooler I’d somewhat awkwardly dig up again after they were buried. They ended up with unmarked graves fairly quickly. 

I remember visiting her at her job at Mater Hospital, with all the smells of bulk cooking in the kitchen.

I remember the sounds of the flute being practised, and I remember marvelling over the actual pressed vinyl of the Kaikorai Valley High School production of Titivulus that she worked on.

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Vivienne left home when I was six, so I was less connected with her varsity days, then as a child vaguely aware that she’d taken an overseas holiday - and was now engaged! 

My very first aeroplane trip was to go to her and John’s wedding which was incomprehensibly far away in Auckland.  

I think the next time I remember seeing Vivienne and John was their motorbike trip over the length of New Zealand, before they left for Canada. They met us in Dunback for a christmas in caravans and tents. Although it was hot and sunny in Dunback, they had to pass over a freezing cold pass riding through snow. I remember how cold and near hypothermic they were when they arrived. 

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As I grew up, I’d get regular updates of Vivienne and John living in far off places and doing amazing things. I would treasure the letters and postcards I’d get from far off lands, in her neat unique handwriting.

I was able to spend more time with Vivienne and John, and now their very small boy Benjamin I moved to London and they lived in Edinburgh. We overlapped by a year or two in the UK.

I got to know the M1 and the A1 pretty well, as well as the east coast train timetable and the easyjet booking system. 

It was fun spending time with them in their little house in Durham Road South, getting to know my new nephew Benjamin. Spending weekends and christmases and then being able to squeeze them all into our little flat when they were on their way back to new Zealand.

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And then, we were living in different countries again, emailing and phoning and swapping presents, until I made it back to Wellington in 2007. We can almost see their Ngaio house from ours!

Andrew and Sally told me about mouse-sitting the Lewis family mice one time. There was an unfortunate accident with the cage and both mice escaped. One was retrieved but the other could not be found. The next day Andrew rang Sally and told her, "It's okay! I went to the pet shop and found a brown mouse with just the right patterns. They'll never know!" "But their mouse has no whiskers," replied Sally. "It's fine, I chopped them off!" Andrew replied earnestly. (No, he had actually found the escapee and restored them to the cage.)

Toby remembers being babysat when he was quite young. Of Vivienne bringing around books about pirates and cavemen that she used to read to Benjamin. And then getting the whole Captain Underpants series from Benjamin!

Now we had a supply again of Vivienne’s shortbread - aunty Claire's recipe - and Christmas fruitcake - Great Grandma Warrington’s recipe. 

Our presents were always something creative and wonderful. We have quilts and flannels and scarves and clothes and all sorts of other things that are so special to us, even more so now.

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I reckon it’s what you fit into your life that counts. Vivienne was taken from us far too early. But she crammed so much into the years she had.

We need to honour that, to celebrate it, and live like her.