Hello everyone. > Elouise Lobascher was born on 24/7/1926. She would have been 84 this Saturday. She was the oldest of three girls, Elouise, Marjorie and Miriam. When she was eleven they moved to 219 Dandenong Road, which turned out to be a very fortuitous move. She went to Methodist Ladies College, and that is where I went to school, Emily went to school and so will Darcy when she is in senior school. > To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a young handsome Jewish man in possession of a medical degree must be in want of a wife. So Elouise was in the right place at the right time many years ago, when Neville came to visit his older sister Bernice who lived next to Elouise. Although she was just wearing her gardening clothes, and Neville was in the company of another attractive woman, he couldn’t take his eyes of my mother. As you all may know, this happened only a few hundred yards from where they are now buried. > Elouise was a trained nurse and worked night shift. Neville called on her at the hospital frequently and was so smitten that he started to pester her with marriage proposals after only knowing her for one week! One night after a particularly stressful shift, Elouise was once again cornered by Neville, and she told him that she could never marry a man with a moustache. > We all know that Neville turned up the next day clean shaven and they were married 1st June 1950, which was 60 years ago. And of course, he never grew a beard or moustache since. > I am the youngest of the three children as you know. My mother loved to tell me a story from when I was born. She didn’t know what she was having, but she was sure I was a boy. When the doctor pulled me out and hung me upside down, he took one look at me and then he said, “The family will be pleased with this!” > My mother did love me almost too much. And I didn’t realize or understand this until I had my own darling daughter. And then I got it. I realized how amazing it is to be a mother, and how much love you can have for your child. She was a wonderful mother, and she always was very proud of me and supported me in anything I did. When I was younger, she encouraged me to do ballet, piano, drama and do an extra subject in VCE, which helped me to get into medicine. She always told me, “Medicine is a good profession for a woman”. And this was one of the wisest things she ever said. Because now, finding myself without a husband or parents, I have a tremendously fulfilling career that I know makes both my parents proud, and gives me the ability to support my daughter and have enough time to help her with anything she wants to do. > Her whole life revolved around her children, and then her grandchildren. > She was always telling me that she was so happy that I was a girl. So I suppose when I was pregnant, and only having one child, I was very happy that I had a little girl too. So many of you know that having Darcy in the last seven years, has kept my Mum going, because she felt she had something to look forward to in life. > In the last eight weeks, while she has been in hospital, we have been able to talk about everything. She was worried that I was being left alone. And she kept saying that she was sorry that she had to leave me, but I told her that she has given me everything that I will ever need. I know that she gave me my looks, and certainly passed them on to Darcy. And she has given me my strength, because she was a very strong and brave woman to fight this disease for such a long time. > I am sorry that her sisters Marj and Mim can not be here today. But they are here in spirit, and have been ringing me and supporting me through this difficult time. I asked Mim if she could remember any stories from her childhood about Mum. And she told me how much Mum’s grandma Louisa loved Mum. And that is really nice, because if you walk to the other end of the cemetery, Louisa is buried in St Kilda cemetery too. She died on Mum’s 21 st birthday, and she was a very special woman. Mim tells me that if Mum didn’t want her dinner and left the table, Louisa would make a plate of different food and hide it under her big apron and sneak it up to her later. It sounds exactly like me coming home when Mum had babysat Darcy, and finding out that Mum had given Darcy anything yummy that she had wanted! > When Mum was nursing sometimes she would be running late, and Mim remembers dropping her off and Mum had to climb the fence to get back into the hospital without being caught! This rebellious and adventurous spirit was passed on to me, and I know it has been passed on to Darcy! > > I was born on Christmas day, Andrew was born on Labour day , Geoffrey was born on d-day, and when we went to live in America we found out that > Dad was born on groundhog’s day! We used to joke that mum wasn’t born on a special day. However, she has made up for it on Monday evening. She died on Tish b’av, which is a very important religious day, with the destruction of the temple. Sad and tragic things happen on this day in history, and for our family, this week. > Another tragic but magical thing happened this morning. My darling friend Anat, who cared for my mother in the last few months of her illness, lost her grandfather. He didn’t have the opportunity to see her or her children in the last few years. But my mother was very attached to Anat and her children Danielle and Sky. They pretended that she was their grandmother, because they are best friends with Darcy, and they have no grandparents in this country. It is lovely to think that Anat’s grandfather will now hear from Elouise how wonderful and loving his granddaughter and great granddaughters have become. > I would like to thank Emmy monash and their staff for their care and support. It was fantastic for Mum and Dad to be able to live so close to me and to share in Darcy over the last four years. > I would also like to take this opportunity of thanking again the staff at Bethlehem, who cared for her so beautifully in these last six weeks. They have made this difficult journey much more bearable. > I would like to thank all Mum’s friends who have visited her, supported me and enriched my life and the lives of my whole family. In particular, I would like to make special mention here of Bruce and Jill who have tirelessly visited her every day in the last painful eight weeks, since she first went to hospital. > > My mother was a very generous woman. She has always been very generous to her children and her grandchildren. Over the last few years, she has helped quite a few of the people that have been very kind to her. In particular just recently she has made a large donation to the Royal Women’s Hospital, to support ovarian cancer research. It is the largest single person’s donation ever made to the hospital. This is in part to say thank you to Professor Michael Quinn for looking after me with my history of three ovarian cancers, and to celebrate the miracle that was Darcy’s birth. I will be very proud to see my parents honoured as luminary contributors on the main board in the foyer of the Royal Women’s Hospital. > > I would like to thank Rabbi Stern for being an important spiritual and religious guide in the last few years. My parents became very close to him while they lived here at Emmy Monash and I was heartened to see that my mother‘s faith had returned by the time she passed. She knew that she would be with my father, and I’m sure that now they are at peace together. > Mum, you will be forever missed, but never forgotten. I love you. > > >