Last Tuesday morning, I took my darling Fiona to the hospice. It all happened very quickly. Somehow, we were pulling into the driveway only an hour after we agreed with the nurse we should go. I wished later that we had paused for a moment to say goodbye to the home we’d made together.
We got her settled, and I fussed over her phone, her iPad, her Bluetooth speaker – and then there was the question of what I would do with myself. I had tickets to the world premiere of Ngā Ao e Rua – Two Worlds, Ursula Grace Williams’ film about the road to Marlon Williams’ reo Māori album Te Whare Tīwekaweka. It seemed a better idea than sitting at home with my thoughts. We had the album; we’d always loved Marlon. I dutifully emailed the publicity firm to say I wouldn’t be needing my plus-one.
As we – a dear friend, her friend and I – scooted through the rain and into the clamour at the door of the Civic, I briefly wondered whether I was up to this. I hoped I didn’t see anyone I knew, or, if I did, that they wouldn’t ask me how I was. We got to our seats. Marlon’s Ngāi Tahu/Kai Tahu people and his East Coast people spoke and sang, the director told her story, Marlon told his, and Stacey Morrison told jokes. It was fully 45 minutes before the lights went down.
Ngā Ao e Rua is a marvel. It could have simply been an electronic press kit for the album, and it does that job well enough, but it’s also funny and soulful and intimate. It explains who Marlon Williams is, but it also casts light on the people around him: his parents, his band, his co-writer and reo teacher Kommi, who is the possessor of great vibe. Aldous Harding appears as a neighbouring artistic planet whose orbit periodically intersects with Marlon’s.
In the current social and political climate, Te Whare Tīwekaweka – a personal journey into te reo Māori – already feels like an important statement. Ngā Ao e Rua deepens and expands the meaning of that statement. It briefly acknowledges the climate itself, when the voices of Sean Plunket and Don Brash clank out of a speaker. They sound small and sad and mean against everything else happening on the screen. What good, Brash asks an interviewer, could te reo Māori do for him? He sounds like someone not interested in the experience of being human.
The room washed back and forth with the emotions of the film, like waves in a harbour. There was permission in it. In the dark, no one can see you cry. Besides, everyone else is crying, too.
Afterwards, it had loosened me enough from my careful thoughts that when my friend poured me a glass of wine, I poured out my emotions. Just for a bit, but it was helpful to get a glimpse of the tsunami of grief that loomed. The following evening, I thought about what it was made of – those 45 years of shared experiences (we first met in the sixth form) and understandings. That world was leaving.
The phone call came at 5.10am on Sunday morning. Fiona was gone. Her breathing had shifted too quickly for them to call me in. But we’d done what we needed to do over the past couple of days. The Bluetooth speaker, which I’d set going with sweet rocksteady reggae when I left on Saturday, had played until its battery ran out.
I hugged our younger son, a neurodivergent night owl who had been about to go to bed, and sent a couple of messages. Then I made myself a cooked breakfast, the way I always made them for us on a Sunday, taking care this time not to rush. And Te Whare Tīwekaweka played on the turntable.
