An abridged version of the eulogy Elliot Stein delivered at St Michael’s in Thirroul last month.

For a bunch of Catholics my family is a bit hippy. We believe in symbols and signs. We believe that happenstance means a little more than random chance. And we believe that when they are gone – our nearest loved ones look down on us and look after us. I’ve been thinking this last week how little we really know about Dad’s illness. We know it was fast and sudden. 

We know the type of secondary cancer he had. Still, not the primary. It’s just something that happened. In my family, when we see lorikeets, we think of Lucy Kiggins. Bees make us think of Jack Kiggins. St Michael’s means a lot of us – it’s where everything happens. Jack and Lucy married here, Mum and Dad married here. It’s where we welcome people in and where we say goodbye to them too. 

When Mum and Dad moved back to Thirroul a few years ago Dad was overjoyed. He was really proud, truly happy, to – as he said – be bringing Mum back home. So Dad, once of North Sydney, said he was really happy to be bringing mum back here to this place. In March I came back here too. On my first day out of quarantine, he and I walked down Bath Street to Thirroul Beach just the two of us. 

And as we passed the swings and the swimming pool, he asked me if being back in Thirroul ‘felt like home’. And I realised this place wasn’t just special to him cause it meant something to mum, but that because it meant something to him too. So it means so much to us to have you here with us, in this place, this special place. 

I remember Dad telling the story of the first time he met Jack and Lucy – Mum’s parents up at Soudan Street. Out the back Lucy would feed more Lorikeets than you can every imagine. The lawn would be covered with them. And beyond those Jack raised bees. 

Hives and hives of them. As Dad rounded the corner to meet the parents for the first time, Jack gruffly yelled out “Where is he? I’m going set the bees on him!” Well, I said we believed in symbols and signs. Last week the trees outside Dad’s window at the Hospital were just filled with Lorikeets. Just filled. 

And sitting on the window was a single bee. So, we know when it was time to go Dad was welcomed warmly into whatever comes next by those who he loved and who loved him. We know that they were looking out onto us as well. And for whatever that can bring to us, it brings something.