It was the Very Nice Young Man who gave her that nickname. Mrs. Daft was of course the lady I have otherwise indicated with the name "Dopey" because, well, she was rather. I think that we, the Very Nice Young Man and I, both agreed on the nickname one evening when I was showing him in my basement studio a painting I was still conceiving. It was a large canvas of three peacocks in a stylized landscape. I was adapting this from three peacocks I had seen in a formal garden with a small black feral rabbit. I thought the black rabbit added a certain edge so I tried to adapt it to the composition. As soon as Mrs. Daft saw what I was doing she exclaimed like any daft bourgeois matron, "Ah! You put in a little bunny wabbit!" This was said of course without any irony at all. I immediately painted out the rabbit. When I explained this later to the Very Nice Young Man I mimicked Mrs. Daft about the "little bunny wabbit!" and from behind the closed kitchen door upstairs we heard her mutter "I heard that." We had lots of fun.
Mrs. Daft really wanted to come across as a progressive, modern with-it and hip granny. It was so pathetic. She would say "I like the Beatles", or "I like Van Gogh" or "I like the herb basil", as though trying to impress on me that she was someone other than she was. Pathetic really but she was also a very good and faithful friend till she eventually ended our friendship, so maybe not so faithful after all. But we did put up with each other for a good sixteen years or so.
I first met her at the local Anglican parish church when I moved to Richmond in late 1987. She seemed a rather nice, not dreadfully bright woman in late middle age. Within a year she was a regular visitor and soon asked to be part of our community. I found her incredibly kind if controlling and eventually overcame my initial distrust towards her.
She was a grandmother, isolated from her daughter and grandchildren by geography and the professional circumstances of her son-in-law's career. She was a nurturing maternal presence and I knew that she would be exactly what the people downtown we were trying to support would be needing.
Mrs. Daft sold her condo and found a house with Dippy in East Vancouver. They were going to provide a house of hospitality and friendship to the many dispossessed, lonely and unwanted misfits we appeared to attract. From the modest old bungalow with a basement Mrs. Daft and Dippy were lied to, stolen from and defrauded by sad soul after sad soul and their endless sad stories of endless woe. They had earlier scorned my advice and desire to help and now that I was busy caring for my dying mother I was not going to be available even though Mrs. Daft had already repented of her stubborn and obstinate pride. Too late and from my mother's deathbed I winced as I saw the community and ministry I had helped conceive spiral downward to its inevitable conclusion unable to do a blessed thing to undo the damage being done by inexperienced novices..
When my mother died Mrs. Daft remained supportive and close. For a week she lived with me in the house in Richmond which I basically signed over to her before I went off to Europe. She never became for me a mother substitute even though being friends with someone with her would make this the most likely appearing explanation for our friendship. But I also think that her presence as a woman of my mother's generation did have a grounding effect on me even if I didn't depend on her to care or do things for me. Mrs. Daft met my mother only once. We stopped by to visit her. She had perhaps four months left before her death. When Mrs. Daft came into the living room my mother ran over to her to hug her. She said to Mrs. Daft "You must have been very pretty when you were young." I was also aware that she was consigning me over to Mrs. Daft for after her death. Mom was determined to see that I would still be okay.
Mrs. Daft begged me in her letters to return from Europe since Dippy had been creating problem after problem for her and it appeared that their safety and possibly there lives would be in danger. When I returned two and a half months later there was a frightful mess to clean up and police were involved in getting rid of this violent young drug addict with whom Dippy had been having sex. Dippy, Mrs. Daft and I ended up all living in the house in Richmond together.
We survived two years more in this house together till it was requisitioned by the owners and then we found a place in southeast Vancouver. While Mrs. Daft and Dippy remained close friends to the bitter end we still found ourselves colluding together against her, if only to make life bearable while living with such a self-destructive idiot. We eventually persuaded her to move out. That was when things got particularly tense between us. I did not want a mother substitute and she appeared to be projecting her dead husband onto me. We went through two successive new roommates, both young males. The first was an absolute loser, the second meshed well with us and we actually all coexisted well, despite my annoyance with the way she often treated us like her resident servants. Of course she was aging rapidly and getting frail but I also felt too depended upon for which reason the Very Nice Young Man, our second roommate following Dippy, was a breath of fresh air.
I want to take care not to demonize her. She was as I have already indicated a phenomenally generous and caring woman, someone who really wanted to live out in full her Christian faith. I learned a lot from her as I found her to be a very grounding presence in my life. I learned a lot from her about plants, flowers and gardening, but also absorbed much of her fine civilized British sensitivity. I learned much from her about how to deal with difficult people and with demanding situations. She taught by example.
We all moved to different places. We remained friends. I began helping her regularly in her home. Seeing that I was struggling financially she opted to pay me for my services. When I came under the care of a psychiatrist our friendship began to deteriorate. My shrink warned me about this and that one of the inevitable consequences of therapy was going to be losing all my friends and eventually making new ones. I was emerging in therapy into a strong, confident and self-possessed man. This was someone that Mrs. Daft was not prepared to reckon with and I certainly had transformed into someone other than the fragile, wounded young man she had befriended. In hindsight I marvelled that not one single male friend of hers was what I would call emotionally or mentally healthy.
I confronted her about some sensitive issues of our relationship. She dropped me like the proverbial hot potato. I never saw her again. Four years later she was dead.
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