My mother has died

Yesterday morning, September 8, Louise Irene Rennie died, aged 96.

This was my mother, Irenie.

Now she has gone, everything feels empty.

This lady was more than a mother.

This lady was a woman of substance and courage.

She taught kids all her life and she was very good at it.

In her retirement she just naturally taught adults, everybody and anybody, right through to the attentive taxi-drivers of the Coast.

She was a relentless enemy of injustice in all its forms.

She understood the importance of intellectual honesty, being honest with oneself.

She fought campaigns throughout her life.

She fought for Ban the Bomb, anti-nuclear, anti-Vietnam War, anti-conscription, free university education, pro-public schools, TAFE and universities, anti-privatisation, anti-corruption, across-the-board gender equity, pro-equal pay, pro-lower school class sizes.

She learned from environmentalists, gays, progressive-thinking democrats.

She despised greed and obsession with money.

She celebrated thinking, reason, educated intelligence, the push-back on ignorance and medieval thinking.

My mother was a strong unionist and a relentless teacher until she died.

She was a feminist, and these will be the colours at her farewell.

Her funeral will be managed by White Lady Funerals and will take place at 12 noon on Thursday, September 21, at Greenway Chapel, 460 Avoca Drive, Green Point.

Email, 9 Sep 2017

Van Davy, Pearl Beach