Braunias: For happy and lucky Meg

The Hoar family in happier times.

Steve Braunias remembers Meg Hore, 1999-2019

This one is for Meg Hore, who I met once, at her family home in Christchurch on a winter's day. I was there to interview her father. Richard Hore is blind and plays the organ fantastically well. I flew to Christchurch on a Friday morning and on to Wellington that afternoon to conduct a second interview - with Shaun Johnson, who is blind and plays the piano fantastically well.

Richard and Shaun made numerous albums in the 1970s. I have their records in my collection and wanted to meet the two musicians. I was curious whether there were symmetries in their lives and expected that there weren't very many. There weren't very many. Blind, played the keyboards – that was about it. They'd led really interesting and really different lives and I liked meeting both of them very much. Shaun was sharp, witty, decisive; Richard was dreamy, emotional, fragile.
My story about the two men ran in last Saturday's Weekend Herald. It ended with a line stating that Meg had died. She was 19.

Meg was a lovely girl, bright, radiant, courageous and determined to live. Her chances weren't great when I met her. She was diagnosed in 2017 with osteosarcoma, cancer of the bone. She had chemo treatment, surgery to remove her fibula and muscle in her right leg and another operation to remove four-sevenths of her left lung. Her mother, Marilyn, said, "She has a 30 per cent chance of survival."

They were making plans for the future. "We're planning to do Disneyland next year, in Florida, for my 21st," Meg said. She died a month short of her 20th birthday. She was diagnosed with leukemia five days after I visited. She went downhill fast. I called Richard and he said, "She is dying."

I was in the house for a couple of hours on that Friday in winter. Richard sat in the lounge for our interview; Marilyn made instant coffee, sat beside him, came and went. Meg and her older sister Amy were at home and they came and went, too. The sisters shared an armchair. They held each other, I wrote in last Saturday's story, "for dear life". I asked Richard about the songs he likes playing the most on his Yamaha organ and he said, "The song that has meant the most to me since Meg's diagnosis is from Beauty and the Beast. It's a Celine Dion song called How Does A Moment Last Forever. That can move me to tears." Just thinking about it moved him to tears.

How does a moment last forever? How does our happiness endure? Through the darkest of our troubles Love is beauty, love is pure.

He included it in his set-list when he busked to raise money for their trips to Disneyland's around the world. They'd been to the theme parks in Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong. They loved the rides, the whole place; Meg took her fantasy life seriously. She spoke about meeting the character of Rapunzel at Hong Kong Disneyland. People queued for a meet and greet, a quick selfie, just a moment or two, but Rapunzel gave Meg 15 minutes. "She was so nice," said Meg. "I cried for a full five minutes."
Richard said, "I kissed her hands and told her, 'You have just made my family extremely happy.'"

The cancer was in remission when I visited. They were taking each day as it came; Meg had scans every three months and they were just wanting to hold out for the results of the next one. She moved around the house with a light step and a big smile. Actually, she was in pain. "Meg's been given a new medication and it's not reacting very well," Marilyn said. "So we're going back into the hospital to see if we can sort it out."

But they were the halcyon days. Not long after the diagnosis of leukemia, she was taken to hospice. I phoned Richard a couple of times while she was in there, one time on a Saturday, when they were all about to go out for a family meal at Cobb & Co. It was Meg's idea. She always planned their trips to Disneyland, sorted out timetables, made the arrangements; she had a kind of genius for organised happiness. She was determined to sit at Cobb & Co at the table like everyone else, not in a wheelchair - and that's what she did.

After she died, I liked hearing Richard talk to me about that night at the restaurant. It reminded me of something he said during our interview. I asked what sort of life he'd led, and he said, "Happy and lucky." Meg was the same.