Ralph Cordingley had three great loves – his family, golf and music. In his final months he asked for his favourite sheet music to be brought to his nursing home because he couldn’t bear the songs they were singing.
He was 85 when he died. His daughter, Deborah Clarke, is sure that if it weren’t for contracting Covid-19, he’d be alive today.
“There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t have lived longer … he was fully cognitive and smart,” Deborah says.
At the same time, though, it’s not about that, not really.
“It’s about celebrating them, not just being a statistic,” Deborah says. “These people had lives.”
Up until his 80s, Ralph was still playing golf with a tidy handicap of nine. Then a near-death fall meant he decided to enter aged care.
He’d been residing at a Blue Care aged facility in Caloundra, Queensland for 18 months before he caught Covid. He was so fit and healthy before then, Deborah says he’d been considering leaving the home because he didn’t like the food.
She used to speak with Ralph on the phone every day. Now a grandmother herself, the wild days of her youth are far behind her. She still has purple hair, though, in homage to her enigmatic father.
“My dad was a bit of a character,” she says. “He read encyclopaedias from cover to cover; he was very smart – larger than life.
“When he was on his way to the hospital [after acquiring Covid], I spoke to him on the way and he said ‘I might get better food.’ That was how he was.”
Deborah only found out her father was Covid-positive when he rang her himself. She received no correspondence from the aged care facility until the morning he was transferred to hospital.
“It was a shock to me, I thought: ‘How did that happen?’” she says of his diagnosis.
“Then I didn’t know how sick he was. He said he was dizzy when I spoke to him in the ambulance on the way there … they thought they could medicate him, but I knew it was serious because the nurse was really emotional.
“I thought they’d put him on oxygen and he’d pull through but he was too far advanced by the time he got there.”
Born on 20 November 1936, Ralph spent much of his life in the Sunshine Coast town of Caloundra, where he was a longtime president of the Lions Club and a popular councillor – instrumental in helping to buy the local hall.
“He was always helpful, understanding, a big personality,” Deborah says.
“They all loved him … he put others before himself, and he had a good sense of humour. Even at the nursing home he thought they weren’t running their meetings properly.”
Ralph loved his great-granddaughter Kirra, and accompanied her to her school formal last September. Kirra is a top swimmer at her high school and Deborah says her father was the 18-year-old’s “number one supporter”, financially and emotionally.
In the end, though, she thinks her dad made the choice to go.
“He didn’t want it to be prolonged, he’d just had enough,” she says. “He told me – ‘I want to be kaput’, but he stayed on oxygen so he could say goodbye to my brothers and sisters, and to FaceTime my granddaughter.
“When I went to see him at the end-of-life visit, they went to give him water, and he said ‘No, I want cordial.’ They told him he was being bossy and he said ‘Bugger it, I’m not drinking water any more.’”
Spoken like a man who knew how to suck the marrow out of life until the end.
Deborah says she still has a stack of postcards from various cruises her dad went on in his retirement. He loved them because they were an opportunity to “show off his dancing and singing skills”, two of his great pleasures.
“He loved all of that – very much a gentleman. He loved dressing up in his suits and travelling the world,” she says.
The last tune Ralph sang was his favourite of all time – The Impossible Dream – and he bellowed it from palliative care unit in hospital just four days before he died.
Made popular by the 1965 Broadway musical Man of La Mancha, it is sung by Don Quixote, a man doomed to fail but strident in his belief the world would be bettered for his trying:
To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, and to run where the brave dare not go …
And I know, if I’ll only be true, to this glorious quest, that my heart will lie peaceful and calm, when I’m laid to my rest.
“It’s such a poignant song,” Deborah says. “It was the last piece of sheet music he got me to bring him in November when he didn’t like the songs at the nursing home.
“I remember sitting with him that month [before he tested positive] and he saw a picture and said he hated it because it reminded him of Covid. He said anyone this old has to have concerns … I think in a way he knew Covid was going to take him.”
Ralph passed away in hospital on the 30 January, where his family members had to dress in full PPE to visit him. Less than 24 hours later, Deborah was told to collect his possessions from the nursing home.
She says she will remember her dad as an “old-school gentleman” with a cheeky streak that he’s had since her childhood.
“When they rang me to tell me he passed away, I said, ‘I’d rather remember him wanting cordial than seeing the body,’” Deborah says.
“I don’t even know if I’ve processed it, it’s easy to go into destruction and denial. I’m happy for him and the life he had, but it’s also sad, there’s so many different emotions.
“It’s not even about his death, it’s about dignity and how people are treated … I’m just so grateful I got to spend the time with him.”
