Writer's life journey reaches end

LOVED: Harry Watson holds a photo of his mother, Jean Watson, a successful author and subject of the documentary Aunty and the Star People. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Orphanage founder and novelist Jean Watson has died with family by her side after falling ill during a final journey home.

Harry Watson said his mother, 81, was returning home to Wellington after visiting his family in Masterton on Boxing Day, having arrived in her hometown two days earlier from a trip to Tamil Nadu, southern India - she founded the Karunai Illam orphanage there in 1987.

"We played board games for most of the day and had a nice meal. It really was a great day we all shared together," Mr Watson said.

His mother had rested and was sprightly before her rail trip home to the capital but was found unresponsive at the Wellington train station and died three days later in Wellington Hospital, with Mr Watson at her side.

"It was a massive brain aneurism that more than likely happened on the train. She didn't regain full consciousness but she was squeezing our hands and knew we were there when we got to her.

"It was completely, completely unexpected but her timing was impeccable. A lot of people have said there was a rightness about it happening while she was on a journey."

Mr Watson, son Andrei, 10, partner Lucetta, and more than 300 fellow mourners farewelled his mother at her funeral service at St Peter's Church in the capital this month. His elder brother, Brisbane-based Stephen Lyndly, had been unable to attend.

Mr Watson said the funeral contrasted with the service held for his well-known author father, Barry Crump, who died of a suspected aortic aneurism while digging a fence-post hole in 1996.

"There was lots of press at his funeral chasing the sons around - we ran - and it made me realise he belonged to the public more than to any family. Mum was more deeply spiritual and her service reflected that in one of the most beautiful and genuine ways I've ever seen."

Mr Watson said close friends of his mother led the service which included Catholic prayers, chants from the Upanishads, and waiata from John Baxter, son of late poet James K Baxter.

Other literary friends and peers of his mother attended the service as well, including writers Joy Cowley, from Featherston, Marilyn Duckworth, who spoke at the funeral, and actress Rose Beauchamp, who sang Goodnight Irene.

"The funeral was a wonderful thing. It was all people who knew and loved her."

Mr Watson told RNZ the founding of Karunai Illam had initially sprung from a chance encounter his mother had while on a bus in southern India.

The orphanage today includes a school and community college and became the focus of Aunty and the Star People, a documentary from Christchurch film-maker Gerard Smyth tracing the thousands of lives Jean Watson had touched.

"She was highly revered. The children all love her, they'll be very sad."

Mr Watson said the film, which featured in the New Zealand International Film Festival last year, had given him fresh insights about his mother and reinforced his view she was a courageous, independent woman.

"She told me she hadn't founded the orphanage for altruistic reasons. She said she'd done it for herself.

"But then it's satisfying doing things for people - there's a great reward in it - and I think she knew that."

Jean Watson was born in 1933 and raised on a farm near Whangarei, before living and working as a freelance writer in Wellington. Her debut and best-known novel, Stand in the Rain, was published in 1965 and was partly based on her relationship with Crump. She also published other novels and the 1992 autobiographical account Karunai Illam: The Story of an Orphanage. In 2001 she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Mr Watson plans to publish his mother's memoirs and reprint her account of Karunai Illam. He also has in hand three of her novels that are yet to be published.