A Unique Story of Ann Kennedy

By Ann Kennedy

Either a sad or a happy ending story of my life, would you care enough to satisfy your curiosity?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Jul 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543496437

Book preview

Chapter 1

I have always wanted to write a book, so I thought I would start this on the first day of the pandemic as I am a person who needs to keep busy and could think of no other way to occupy my mind.

As this book is about my life, this book is going to end very sad or very happy, but I hope this will inspire you to achieve anything you dream of being, for the sky is no limit. No matter what comes your way, enjoy your life, as it is very precious. I love every minute of every day, whether it is laughing or crying.

I was brought up in a small country place in New Zealand. I went to a small country school from primary 1 to form 2. While at school, I was always striving to be the best. I still had great difficulty with English and reading. I got 98% in geography and 76% in maths. I was in a class of four pupils, and they were all girls. My mum and dad were farmers, and I think we were seen to be quite poor, as we didn’t have a car.

My father was very clever with money. In 1960, he froze his wool cheque of $33,000, so he didn’t have to pay the tax that year and could spread it over a few years. I was ten years old at the time, and I can remember him talking about it to my mum’s brother. We had relatives from Auckland who would come and stay with us, and I looked forward to them coming as they were the same age as my brother and I.

I was about thirteen when we got our first car. I have three brothers: Bryan was two years younger than myself and twin brothers, David and Noel, who are eight years my junior. The twins were born when we had a massive flood in 1958. I was staying with my mum’s sister during the enormous rainfall which caused a flood, and my aunty went by boat to the shoppes. Our farm was severely damaged with massive slopes as it was a hill country farm. My parents had broken in the farm from native bush, and we had had a hut a couple of kilometres from our house where we would sometimes stay for the night, so it gave them all day working.

David was born two minutes after Noel, and there were some complications during David’s birth, and during the time of David reached school age, he was very slow at crawling and walking and just everything in general. My mum was told when he went to school that they thought he was intellectually handicapped. My mum was devastated that she wasn’t informed earlier about my brother. My mum was a great mother for everything she had to put up with. Mum and Dad had him at home until the age of seventeen, and one day my mum was hanging clothes on the line outside when my dad heard my mum screaming. He came down the track at the back of the house, and David was attacking her. He was then admitted to a psychiatric hospital. During this time, David had shock treatment and was on powerful medication, and it was a scary place to visit; not that many people had visitors. My mum was familiar with the hospital as her brother’s wife had a nervous breakdown and was admitted a few years prior.

Quite a few years later, my brother came out of the hospital and lived with me for quite a few years. But he started hitting my children on the head and doing various other things, so I had David put into a unique and fabulous home I found that cared for people like him.

He would come to my place for a couple of days at a time. He got cancer of the bladder and an infection, and a couple of weeks later, her died in the hospital. He lived until fifty-eight years old.

My mum had organised her grave and made provisions for it to be dug more in depth, so when David died, he could be buried above her. I had his service at the graveside, it was lovely, and the home played David’s favourite song about Ford cars they dreamed up. He loved Ford cars and had models of them in his room, and he loved everything about Ford. Some relatives were disappointed that it was a private funeral, but no one had seen David for years, so I only invited those people who were connected to him over the years.

Noel worked on the farm after he had finished his carpenter’s apprenticeship, built two woolsheds as there were two farms. He later left the farms and started his own business and was very successful, making money exporting trusses to South Africa, until one day his whole world was turned upside down.

He went to the bank to get the money to pay his workers their bonus for a job they had produced earlier. When he arrived in the bank, the teller said his wife had been down and drawn out everything as they were changing banks. Noel was blown away, so he went straight home to find the house stripped with a mirror, gun, bullets, and single bed, and that was it. He picked up the gun and shot himself underneath the jaw of his chin, and it came out at the top of the head, leaving a hole the size of a 50-cent piece. It didn’t kill him instantly, and he ran outside down the road and collapsed. He was found by some people who called the police, and he was helicoptered to hospital.

At that time, I was staying with my uncle in Auckland with my first husband and two children. About ten thirty, the phone went for me, and it was the police telling me my brother had been in a terrible accident. He would be in an induced coma for at least fourteen days, and I couldn’t do anything. We were then on our way to stay in Queensland, Australia, for seven days. I was his nominated guardian, so they gave me the doctor’s number at the intensive care unit of the hospital. This must