I have not written to anyone for several days. It has been hard to write. But now I need to tell you about my father.

Interestingly, my neglect has not affected the deluge of e-mails and phone calls from most of you folk. Thank you for your continuing love and support - it has made all of us a large circle of people who know and love my father who are thinking about him and focusing compassion and love towards him and us.

Dad is a very special person and in many ways a very private person. He is complex and diffident about his self worth though very sure of that of others. Somewhat blind to our failings, but, with my mother very quick to praise, commiserate or celebrate with the good things and never neglectful of our interests or anxieties.

He is a truly ethical man and a very kind person. He remains genuine in his admiration of others and puzzled at the huge respect he has garnered from so many.

A gentle youth and lover of good books, who applied his energies to music, especially the organ, though his Auntie Elizabeth and Uncle Thomas would have also appreciated more application to academic pursuits. He went to university and found himself thinking about issues far wider than his immediate locality. He volunteered into the medical corps where he served in Egypt, Libya, Lebanon and Italy; he was unwilling to harm any person but more than willing to develop his knowledge and skills to help people in a practical way.

Indeed, though a romantic - I think he would smile to hear himself described thus, but I think my mother would agree - he leavened this with a somewhat weird sense of humour and practical bottom. Some of this has been bequeathed to his children, and his grandchildren will tell their grandchildren, these two aspects of him continue comfortably to the very end.

Dad did love music very much. He married a very beautiful girl, Eileen Rankin who also incorporated many of the aspects he loved. She was loving, hard working, and a lover of music - also interested in learning about the world outside. He wrote daily letters to her over the war years that he was away from NZ, aware that there would be many who would wish to slip into his shoes. He has always been prepared to do everything he could for things that were really important and he made it very difficult for Mum to think seriously about anyone else. She was not to be snaffled.

Briefly in Auckland, the young couple went down to Oamaru for his first real job. Three years or so later, they went to Whangarei, with their three children, Bruce, Heather and John. They moved homes twice, but all homes were within a pretty small area in central Whangarei.

Their music developed more. Mum sang in various church choirs and in concerts that were recorded for the equivalent of today's Concert FM. Dad eventually became choirmaster, organist and music director at Christ Church Anglican Church in Whangarei.

As fitted his concern to provide music from the best possible instrument, he donated each year's modest organist honorarium to the organ fund and after many years and he helped to design the new pipe organ from which so much music issued. Music within the church-life and secular music too in the form of many organ concerts through the years. He continued his belief in seeking out the new and good as he introduced music written by modern composers (sometimes to the astonishment and puzzlement of the parishioners) alongside the music of older and tried composers.

His great love was the music of J S Bach, and today the house has been filled with the music of Bach.

He and my mother have put many decades into developing and supplying good music for the people of Whangarei. Their practicability meant they supported music for young people. They were for many decades part of the Whangarei Music Competitions. My brothers and I will remember those competitions where a week of the August holidays was given up to performing, listening and watching. My parents were on the committees that beavered along behind the scenes organising the competitions.

They also performed - Mum singing and Dad accompanying. People talk of heart food. Good stuff, I know, and my Dad has always liked a good apple pie or Christmas plum pudding. But the music of the Competitions were heart music for me. David and I played CDs of songs that were practised by singers with Dad in the weeks leading up to the competitions and Bach instrumental music as we drove up from Wellington to Whangarei two weeks ago. I remembered listening to my mother singing many of these songs – accompanied by my father, of course. One of my strongest memories of the Competitions was the Ronald family in the Family Group class. Dad had transcribed some music - He played the piano, Mum sang, Bruce played the trombone and John and I played recorders. Unfortunately, those were not the days of video recorders as it would be very funny to revisit that. Umm, yes, we did win.

Chamber Music, too. Mum and Dad were at the heart of visitors to Whangarei bringing their music with them. At the grand age of 81, he was trotting around Whangarei, making sure posters were well distributed for the first concert of the 2001 season when his own grandson, Christopher was performing in a cello-piano duo concert. He certainly had stickability.

He loved his work at the laboratory. When they came to Whangarei, The Medical Laboratory up at the Whangarei Hospital was tiny, under-funded and behind the times. Dad learned to develop its technical status whilst he trained a couple of generations of fine medical technologists who carried on his traditions of hard work, perseverance in learning, awareness of the importance of supporting their medical colleagues in other parts of the hospital and mindful care of the processes that underpin a truly professional setup. Yes, his colleagues did recognise this by eventually honouring him with a Fellowship in Medical Technology and later a Life Membership.

Many of those men and women he trained and encouraged have visited him over the last couple of weeks, showing him their love and gladness that they did have him as mentor and role model. He has been taken aback by their praise and friendship but my mother smiles her lack of surprise. She knows well the value of the man she married.

The general community, too has benefited from having my parents in their midst. Encouraged by my mother, who wisely realised that all people need to be with people outside their most immediate ambit, he joined first, the Whangarei Masonic Lodge and later, also the fellowship of Rotary. Within the friendship of these two groups, he quietly set about adding his bit to help others. He tried to be imaginative, creative yet wise in supporting young people and needy folk within these groups. My parents have both believed in helping people by giving a leg up, in a way that encourages them to get on with life themselves with confidence that they can be successful - so long as they also put in independent effort themselves.

Anyone who has been to my parents' home know of my fathers love of a good garden. I hasten to add that his interest in their garden was not all-faceted. I remember well his doing the initial digging for the ubiquitous vegetable garden that my mother then planted, watered, weeded and produced a range of fine vegetables. But, his interest was more deeply bedded in his beautiful roses, fruit trees and grapevines. He pruned, sprayed and watered according to the seasons and specific needs of his loved trees, vines and bushes and both my parents have shared the produce with countless others. My parents’ house always have vases of flowers. Maybe a bunch, maybe a lone perfect rose in a bud vase.

At age 80 years, he suddenly decided that he would like to join the brotherhood of computers; the internet beckoned and he realised that he and my mother would benefit from being able to touch relatives and friends by e-mail. He had never touched a typewriter before, let alone a computer. Armed with Mavis Beacon, he taught himself basic word processing (yea, with 10 fingers!) and gradually, the power of the Internet. Aided and abetted by the next generation, a special neighbour and Seniornet, he worked hard at mastering the skills and techniques that he needed for his purposes. His children and grandchildren were thrilled and proud. They could send off a note and get a quick return, information, wry comment or carefully worded advice. They could send him digital photos which he could print out for Mum. As Mum’s sight worsened, he printed out e-mails so she could see them clearly. We all knew that my parents knew what was happening and we shared our successes and worries, knowing that they would be read.

And today, Dad is very very close to end of a life which many will value for many years to come. To the last he has shown his love and pride in his wife, children and their spouses and his grandchildren. He has had very little energy over the last couple of weeks, yet all he had has been directed at showing his love in any way he could.

All his children have been sharing this very special time, with him. All his grandchildren and their spouses and partners, too. The three who are overseas have been part of the magic circle too as they have e-mailed and phoned him from England and USA, keeping in touch with so much love that both my parents have been palpably warmed by this. Both my parents have been folded in a warm blanket of love and pride. He has been able to stay home, thus far, supported by family and hospice nurses.

My parents are special.

My father, soon will be gone physically, his frail tiny body capped by humorous, interested and loving eyes will have worn out.

But my father will live on in those many many lives he has touched. We let him go, willingly, with much love.

Heather.