Behaving badly
The night Mary Moody’s husband died, she curled up in bed beside him as she had so many times before. After 43 “wild and (mostly) wonderful” years together, she could not bear to say goodbye to her beloved David too abruptly. “I had visualised that I would hold his hand and we would talk before he died,” she says, but there hadn’t been a chance for that. “Because he was delirious, we never had that final conversation,” she explains, “but I slept with him that night.”
We’re eating rhubarb cake and sipping strong tea at the century-old home that Mary now shares with her youngest son, Ethan, daughter-in-law Lynne and their children in the Blue Mountains of NSW. It may be an unconventional arrangement in today’s isolated and isolating world but their three-generational lifestyle works for all concerned.
“When I got here, it was the first time since David died I felt safe, emotionally safe,” says the adventurer, best-selling author and former Gardening Australia presenter, whose conversation is as warm as her flame-red hair. “I’ve never been a ‘nervous Nellie’. Even when I was living alone on a farm I never worried about burglars. But moving here I had this feeling of coming home. It was being part of something again, not being on my own.”
The 69-year-old’s cosy, book-lined room is a riot of colour, from home-sewn patchwork
