Joy

When I was a student, back in the early 90s, there was a laboratory support lady who prepared whatever was needed for practical classes. As students we didn't need to see her very often but occasionally lined up at the barn style door to collect resources. Joy was most decidedly not joyful and we would comment to each other about her incongruous name.

I can still see Joy's cheap canvas shoes and no nonsense blonde hair, which I would best describe as a bob but not a manicured bob, more a combination bob/ bowl cut designed for easy care. Whenever I saw Joy walking to the station, she walked with her shoulders hunched as if to protect herself from the weathers of life and her face had long ago forgotten how to arrange itself into anything but her usual resting bitch face.

In my final year of part-time study, I  found myself unemployed. By that time I had been in and out of the lab for years and and the lab manager, Maolcholm, offered me six months of work, aiming to use up his budget.

I was assigned the bench facing Joy and so we spent large chunks of our days together, her pet cane toads in a tank between us.

The reason I thought of Joy was that I was considering that I have 12 years to pension age but once upon a time, women could receive a pension at 60 and in that case, I would only have 5 years to go.

Joy had been caught in the change over, looking forward to retiring but then with the changes was being forced to work an extra two years and she was not happy about it.

I found that while Joy was not terribly happy, she wasn't as bad as we students thought. I also realise with hindsight that she was probably sick to death of students and likely treated us better than we deserved.

Joy had been the eldest girl in a large family so had spent much of her young life caring for her siblings. This had led her to decide she didn't want to spend more time looking after children of her own and she had limited social connections so lived a quiet life with her second husband and two cats, in the same street as Australia's largest mosque. She was never racist about the mosque but I know the crowds and the noise were sometimes overwhelming for her.

Joy once commented to me that she never should have divorced her first husband, that in hindsight there was really nothing wrong with him but that their relationship had got a bit stale and they had divorced. I don't think she was unhappy with  her second husband, more reflecting about the hardship and loss she had experienced for possibly no good reason.

I liked Joy well enough and was happy to chat to her but our relationship was in the moment, I now wish I could go back and meet her again. I wish I could ask more about her life. I'd like to know what she had achieved, what she had enjoyed, what were her significant memories and what hopes and dreams had been lost along the way.

Thinking about Joy, I was trying to figure out if she could possibly still be alive. I didn't remember how old she might have been but if she was thinking of retirement in the early 90s, she would have to be over 90 and I doubted she was well enough to live so long.

A cemetery search revealed that Joy Eileen was interred at Rookwood on 14th March 2002, aged 75.

Rest In Peace, Joy. I'm certain you deserve it.