Since everyone is sharing the last words of their dear departed on Tweeter with the hashtag #famlastwords, I might as well share mine. This was my great-uncle four times removed, who I was slightly closer to than usual since he would always send me yachts on my birthday. Like, every year. I’d have to go down to the docks, find my new yacht there, read the birthday card taped to the stern, send a thank you note for the latest yacht, and then my parents would usually sell it because I’m 21 now, and 21 yachts is just too many for one person. I don’t think Great Uncle Jerome really knew how to communicate with his family, so he defaulted to yachts.
Anyway, his last words: “Jason, my boy. This may be the first time we’ve actually met, but there’s this great place for brake repair near Moorabbin, and it’s totally lit, my lad. You should totally invest in the brake repair industry, my fam, because it’s lit and dank.”
The doctors say he was regressing to childhood in his last days, hence all the hip slang, but jury’s out on the brake repair thing. So far as I know, Great Uncle Jerome had a fear of motor mechanics and vehicles his whole life due to an incident when he was a kid where the local child-hating millionaire started driving around throwing custard balloons at children coming out of school, and Jerome caught one right in the face in front of the girl he liked… wow, the early 1900s were such a different time. Anyway, he ended up being really into supporting auto service centres. Bentleigh mechanics were the supposed beneficiaries of half of his fortune, for ‘the advancement of mechanics in this part of town, and for their good work servicing the community.’
The other half he left to a balloon factory, and he left his collection of 162 yachts to me. Um…great.
-Jason