Alan Lloyd 10 years gone

[Chris Lloyd]

My dad died 10 years ago today. I have thought about him pretty much every day since then, partly because we both worked and spent time together on the University of Melbourne campus. University House, the Grainger museum, Jimmy Watson’s are all associated with him in my mind.*If you Google “alan lloyd economics” you actually come up with a few hits. So he still exists in cyber-memory*as well as in my own.

Despite coming from a working class background, he bootstrapped himself up the intellectual ladder to become a first rate thinker. He eventually became an academic (an economist I am afraid!) and was obviously very much responsible for my career choice, though I am more mathematical that he was. He managed to make intellectual endeavor and intelligent conversation look cool to a young teenager*– or I thought so.

Below the fold is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral on July 29, 1999. RIP dad. I am proud of you.



__________________________________________________ ____________________

Everyone here new Dad well. But only two of us knew him as a father. So let me start off by telling you a little about Alan Lloyd the Dad. It will come as no surprise to you that he was a great father. But more important than this, he was an exemplary father. And being a exemplary father is incredibly important, especially for sons. Because daughters have a whole sorority of women — mothers, aunts, sisters, family friends — to teach them how to become women. But boys typically don’t and look to their father alone. Fathers become, in their sons’ eyes, all men and the best of men. Luckily in my case, my father was the best of men.

There were no domestic wars in our house. No missiles of crockery. No cruelty of any kind. Not even much yelling, except perhaps by me. My father was the very opposite of a dark, looming figure of authority. I can hardly recall any instance where Dad smacked me. I can recall many instances when he should have. The worst punishment for Murray and me was to feel you had lowered yourself in his estimation.

I have the example of a good father so I have little excuse for doing a bad job as a father myself. But I sometimes worry about the way my two boys watch and emulate everything I do. When Alister was about 2, I was waiting at a red light on the way back from childcare. The light changed to green and the car in front stalled. A little voice behind me chirped up “Come on arsehole”. And I don’t seem to be getting much better it seems. Just last week, my younger boy Oliver was sitting quietly in the lounge room looking pensive. I asked him what the matter was and he replied “Dad, why are there so many morons on the road?”* In contrast Dad was a very calm driver. But while he remained calm he made his passengers and other road users extremely nervous. I can hardly explain how he was never involved in a serious accident except perhaps by suggesting that his driving was so erratic that other vehicles recognised him as a mobile disaster area from several hundred meters and kept their distance.

Let me share with you some of my best and worst memories of my father. There were many candidates for best but it being a Melbourne winter I will choose as my best memory, the 87 preliminary final, Demons against the Swans. Melbourne hadn’t been in the finals for about 23 years and we absolutely slaughtered them, by around 20 goals. It just rained goals from every angle. Robbie Flower, in his last season, was a man possessed. Dad and I stood in the stands hugging each other and jumping up and down in pure delirium for about 40 minutes. Several years earlier Dad had a kind of heart attack at the footy so he took it seriously believe me. I watched a match with him five days before he died and it was the only point of my last visit where he was at all animated. Many of my worst memories of Dad are of course from that last week where his declining health made every activity and bodily function extremely distressing both for him and his family. You his friends will I hope be comforted by knowing that he faced his fate calmly and with a degree of resignation. These are heartbreaking memories of course but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

There aren’t too many things to come out of a long drawn out death by cancer that are positive. But I think it is important to try and find some. Here is what I could think of. First, Dad died at home where he wanted to be, because Mum had the great courage to insist that he be brought home. In sickness and in health, through thick and thin, she stuck with him and endured. Dad isn’t here to thank Mum, so on his behalf I thank my mother for making Dad’s illness and death something personal and shared. In the future, Mum can look back on the last few months not only with great sorrow but with pride, as one of the major achievements of her life.

A second positive to come out of Dad’s death is that I have completely quit smoking. I didn’t smoke much before but now I don’t smoke at all. I encourage others to do the same. For your own health and also so that the murderous cigarette companies don’t get any of our money.

A third positive is the nursing staff who helped out over the last three weeks of Dad’s illness. I didn’t know how many people choose to care for the terminally ill in their home as a living. Some of these angels of mercy are men and Mum and I agreed that three of the male nurses were amongst the best of them. It must be a very stressful job and a rather thankless one in most cases. The family are mainly too traumatized to think of thanking them all. But they make a big difference and I am filled with admiration at their choice of profession and I am rather embarrassed at the triviality of my own by comparison.

Let’s get back to Dad. He was brought up in the western suburbs of Sydney post depression. Petersham in the 1930’s was a pretty tough area I imagine. His family life was also tough. My best information is that his was not a happy home and that he had to see and endure things that young boys should not have to see and endure. He lived in a community that placed a very low value on education and intellectual life. Where on earth did he every get the idea that he could become the Alan Lloyd we knew? I had it easy because I had him as a living example. What template did he use to turn himself into the person he became? I never asked him so it remains a mystery.

What person did he become? I think Dad was largely defined by three qualities:*

Intelligence. He was very clever indeed and it was important to him that he was clever. He was several notches cleverer than I. He was certainly able to out-argue me on most issues, which pissed me off no end when I was a teenager who thought I knew much more than him. During the last few years of his life he did lose much of his intellect and this worried him a great deal and was responsible for his partly withdrawing from the world and his long time friends. I think this is a great pity because those who loved him never loved him because he was smart. If only he could have said to the world “Here, I am. Alan Lloyd without the IQ. Am I still worth anything?” I am sure he would have been thrilled at the answer.

Kindness. Dad was 100 percent kind. He really didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I have several mean bones in my body. But Dad didn’t. He was never cruel to me or to anybody. He was always as kind as he knew how to be. When images of disaster or famine came on the TV I would often see tears in his eyes and this is pretty much the only way to teach a young boy to have a soft heart.

Devotion to duty. There was never someone more motivated by duty than Dad. Whether he was saving the little desert, arguing against margarine quotas in country town halls, fighting Vice-Chancellors trying to get some justice for Albert Schulmann, explaining the birds and the bees to me in great detail (I can still hear his voice), he would never shun the difficult job if he thought it was his duty. He was unable to.

Dad didn’t believe in an afterlife and to the best of my knowledge he never changed his mind. I am not completely sure he was right. But the question of an afterlife reminds me of a joke that Dad liked. Paddy and Mick are parting at the airport. Paddy says to Mick “Here. Put this rabbit’s foot in your pocket for good luck” Mick replies “You don’t believe in that superstitious nonsense do you Paddy?” who replies “Of course I don’t. But it works whether you believe in it or not.” The afterlife is like that I reckon. You’ll wake up in it whether you believe in it or not. So right about now there are two possibilities. Either Dad is nowhere at all. Or he is very, very surprised indeed. I hope the latter

Thank you all for coming. Funerals aren’t often planned well in advance and I know most of you only found out on Sa****ay. Dad will be missed by all of us, especially by me, until it’s my turn to die. In the meantime, I’ll carry on with life, find joy in my kids, and try to be the kind of loving father that he was

*

Get More from the original blog...