We Met in Melbourne

My friend Margaret Luginbuhl passed away in France on 26 March 2022. She was 83. I wanted to do a post to honour her, and I thank her daughter, Albertine, for allowing me to do so. Albertine kindly contributed some delightful memory gems about her mother when they were younger, showing that Margaret then was as steadfast, loving and wise as the woman I got to know in later years.

I met Margaret in 2004 when I left my beloved Darwin for Melbourne, where two of my three children then lived. Almost as soon as I got there, I began to have crush fractures of the spine and, at 61, found myself on a Disability Pension. I signed up for public housing, which came through quickly, and I found myself in a small studio at No 25 King Street in Prahran, where Margaret was my next-door neighbour. Over time, we became close friends, walking and talking and sitting beneath shady trees in Princes Gardens or taking coffee on Chapel Street.

Margaret often came with me to Brighton Beach when I took my little dog Lolo for walkies. She sat on the sand in those high-rise days, but in readiness for the south of France on one of her routine biennial trips to see her children when she was around 80 years of age, my friend bought a bathing suit and had a bikini wax. She was full of surprises, slim as she had become.

An Old Soul

Margaret was a dignified person of unique intellect, warmth and unflagging curiosity about everything and everyone around her, an old soul. I was proud that she chose me as a friend. We were only physically together for a little over a year before I returned to South Australia to live, but our friendship strengthened through time.

With her partner, Graeme Wilson, Margaret stayed with me in Aldinga Beach once, and we had short annual catchups when I went to Melbourne to be with my daughter for Christmas, but we stayed in regular contact by phone for years. We called each other at least weekly or whenever we wanted to share.

Despite the geographical distance, Margaret’s death affected me deeply. Over the years, our friendship had become an affair of the heart. We admired each other, and I always felt better after talking to her. My friend was one of the few people apart from my other two children who met and loved my eldest son before he died. That gave me great comfort.

I learned from our friendship that intimacy grows despite separation, and love persists across distance. And, because love, as a matter of the heart, is a physical experience, grief doesn’t consider absence either. We all know that when someone is no longer with us on this earth, even after habits form around their absence, the flow of love never ceases, and grief can sometimes catch us unawares because those we love in life are always part of who we are.

A Place of One’s Own

While I struggled at first with a sense of failure for finding myself in public housing, Margaret relished it, and I learned from her. A place of her own represented independence, one of Margaret’s highest values. Like so many people in No. 25 and its sister building, No. 27, then dedicated to the elderly, residents felt secure, as did I with Margaret’s friendship. I have taken this remarkable fact as the premise of the novel I am now working on called, for the time being, High Rise Society which I’ll dedicate to Margaret, who thought it would make an excellent story.

The Romance

Margaret, a nurse, met engineer Graeme at ARAFMI (Association of Relatives and Friends of the Mentally Ill) when she returned from France to live at home in Australia.

When Graeme was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease a few years ago, Margaret finally relinquished her beloved unit to live with and care for him in his family home in Camberwell. While they tried to live together as a couple earlier in life, the fact that they were both bipolar meant they found it better to live apart. Yet, Margaret’s love was such that she wanted to be with Graeme when he needed her.

Albertine told me that in France, the year Graeme became ill, Margaret talked endlessly about illness, manic depression and death. She and her brother Simon and his son listened patiently for a few days until they reminded her that she was on holiday. They made up the 3M game — every time Margaret said maladie, manico depression or mort, she was deprived of one cigarette that day (not really, but just for the game). After a couple of days, Margaret allowed herself to relax into holiday mode. Knowing as I did how worried and sad Margaret was before she left, I was thrilled to hear this.

Margaret and Graeme’s romance lasted over 30 years. They delighted in the cinema, classical music, theatre and ballet; both were bookworms. They had so much in common. When Graeme’s condition deteriorated, he retired to a nursing home where Margaret visited him, tending daily to his needs until he passed away. Margaret’s grief was deep, but she found the energy and courage to find herself a flat in the private sector when Graeme’s children sold their father’s house and remained independent despite her declining health.

Then COVID came.

Margaret as Mum in Albertine’s Words

Albertine flew out from France earlier this year to take her mother home, where she could look after her. I am glad that Margaret spent her last few months with Albertine and her son, Simon, and grandchildren. Despite her raw grief, Albertine offered these vignettes from earlier times with her mother. The central piece is, As I Remember Mum.

Across Time and Space

Margaret stayed in close contact with Albertine and Simon and their children across the oceans, not only by phone and mail but during her visits to France. Margaret told me they treated her like royalty. Seeing her children and grandchildren filled Margaret with an abiding, life-sustaining joy.

In 2019, my brave friend travelled to France with a broken and badly infected toe. She was still on heavy pain meds to keep her going until she returned to have the toe amputated. On her previous trip, she nursed herself to recovery from a double mastectomy for breast cancer.

Albertine told me that, after Margaret had the little toe removed, she called her to say, ‘You know, I think they ought to have a window at the Alfred (Hospital),  with all the pieces they’ve removed from my body on display.’ What a wry sense of humour.

Curiosity is the Solution

Born in Australia on 9 August 1938, Margaret had three children, Albertine and Simon, who live in France, where Margaret lived until she returned to Australia after suffering severe mental illness. Her other daughter, Shauna, lives in Brisbane. Shauna’s daughter visited her nana in Melbourne in recent years, but Margaret did not meet her first great-granddaughter, four-year-old Tori, from Shauna’s eldest son. 

Margaret was an articulate and somewhat formal person, a stickler for etiquette and good manners. She once told me that mental illness was no excuse for unkindness or poor behaviour. Margaret’s erudition astounded me. Unlike me, she barely watched TV and read, always returning from the library with a wide range of books. Her favourite novelist was Isabel Allende, but she read non-fiction and biographies too. She was interested in everything.

Curiosity guided Margaret’s life. Even in illness, she once told me, the way to get through it was to be curious about whatever was going on. On her advice, I now bring curiosity to my ageing process. It has the uncanny effect of distancing you from yourself as you relinquish the fantasy of forever being young. Instead, you meet life with the question: what’s next?

The Storyteller

Margaret had an insatiable love of life and a remarkable capacity to tell stories. There was not even a smidgen of judgement in her bones. She’d sometimes ring to tell me about the suffering of a Middle Eastern taxi driver who had confided in her while she was his passenger. People on trams spoke to her of their woes. As Albertine says, Margaret attracted people — she had a distinct gravitas, but more than that, she listened with an open heart. No wonder people from all walks of life were drawn to her.

Margaret’s stories were up there with a good novel. She had an excellent memory for detail that comes from a genuine fascination with the lives of those she encountered daily. I miss her stories, her kindness, her steadfastness, and our laughs.

Margaret baked shortbread biscuits for her friends and anyone she respected or cared for every Christmas. She was a fine cook. For many years, Margaret taught English to migrants and was herself always learning. A few years ago, already fluent in English and French, she set out to refresh her Italian, and I met even more people in Margaret’s life through her stories.  

The Plan Stopper

Margaret had arranged to return to France to live after Graeme died, but COVID slammed Australia’s borders shut on her plans. Soon after, she had to move from the flat she had grown fond of to another less to her liking. It didn’t bother her initially because she saw it as a temporary thing as she’d already booked and paid for tickets to France. But ill-health and COVID conspired against her.

COVID 19 hit Melbourne especially hard. Mandatory lockdown, separation from friends, illness, and inability to go to the library or the Citizens Advice Bureau where she had volunteered for 25 years or attend her Italian lessons and other groups took their toll. She could not even go for coffee in Chapel Street, leaving Margaret bereft.

In a few short years, Margaret lost her partner, moved house twice, had breast cancer surgery, an amputation followed by a knee reconstruction while all along being at risk of blindness for which she had regular ocular injections. It was too much for her tiny frame, and her mental health began to suffer.

The Irony of COVID

One night, I took a call from France. Something in the back of my mind told me to answer it. Sure enough, it was Albertine. We had never spoken before, but for me, it was as though I knew her through Margaret. Albertine was concerned because Margaret had not been answering the phone.

When I told my daughter, Vanessa, of my concern and Albertine’s call, she suggested I contact the local police to do a welfare visit. Margaret was over 80, frail and alone, as I have described. The police were helpful and cheerily rang a few hours after I spoke to them to say that she reported herself as being alive and well. She told them that she would call me.

No call came that night, so I rang Margaret the following morning, but there was no answer. I was therefore relieved to get an email from Albertine saying that Margaret had been admitted to hospital. It confirmed my thoughts about the happy tone in the young constable’s voice — that Margaret had charmed him in her uniquely proud way.

Soon after that, Albertine arrived in Australia to take Margaret to France to live, where she had wanted to go two years earlier, before COVID. I spoke to my clever, unique and wonderful friend just once after she had settled into a comfortable care home in Paris. I could hear in her voice that she had started to gain strength, but COVID took Margaret’s frail body within three months.

Sadly, Margaret can no longer play the French Pastry delicacy contest with her children. Each day on her French holidays, she’d select a favourite local pastry, a croissant or pain au raisin and try one or the other from a different bakery. She used to vote for the best one, but each day they got better, so her verdict would always be, ‘l’ll have to come back next year and start all over again.’

I am pleased that my dear friend left this world in the bosom of her children’s embrace.

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