Salvatore and MaryAnne out at a dinner dance sometime in the late 1970s perhaps. That velour bow tie is a beauty – it comes with a plastic clip that lets it sit in front of the collar. Mum showed it to me the other day. In this shot dad makes me think of a Las Vegas Jewish comedian. And he was, of course, very funny. The Peking Duck joke anybody?
The clockwork metronome of that Moonee Ponds <<>>Westgarth bus, passing by the garden fence. MaryAnne can tell you precisely the arrival time of the first one each morning.
Mum took this photo this morning, Wednesday 16 September, as the sun was coming up. The lucky old sun, as Luke’s Louis Armstrong song goes. This is his home, and we are his people, and today is three months since he died.
Salvatore and MaryAnne on their wedding day at St Joseph’s church in Hawthorn.
And yep, Salv took an extra leg with him and MA took an extra arm with her EVERYWHERE in those days.
Once May arrived, Salvatore was pretty much confined to quarters (quarters being the lounge room).
That evening, Dan turned up from Sydney.
Having returned from Dandenong Hospital with the diagnosis of cancer, Salv would go outside and soak up sun in the garden at 41.
In this drawing he is talking to Lawry Twining.
This was dad’s view out of the south-east window of the lounge room, which was his bedroom for the last two months of his life. One day he looked out and asked mum, “What's that handsaw doing in the tree?” And it’s a good point. The curve of the bird's neck does resemble the handle of a handsaw. I got reminded of Hamlet's line, "When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." But yeah, Salv, I reckon that those pink birds get asked to do handyman stuff all the time, I’ll bet. Like I’d often ask you. (Hey! Can you spot the second flamingo?)
This photo got took a week or so ago, as we moved into two months of Salv being gone.
This booklet was put together in the weeks following Salvatore’s death and mailed out to friends and family. Because Salv died in covid times, his memorial ceremony on Thursday 18 June was attended by just 27 of his immediate family (including him). When in the lead-up to his death, MaryAnne discussed the necessity of this small number given the pandemic, Salv said: “Everything’s going my way.”
Our father Salvatore died on the sixteenth of June 2020. After his death, Anna discovered that he had set up this blog back in 2017, never having posted anything to it. It is obviously absurd to hang on to a digital space and put words and pictures about dad in a world that already has too much stuff, particularly digital stuff, in it. But so is death, absurd. Absurd, absurd, absurd.
Bernard Caleo August 2020
Remembering Salv Caleo 