Last week an old friend of mine died. His name was Gary Cook.
We met here in Byron Bay, when I was 23. He would have been in his early 30s. He was handsome. And funny. And weird. And self-involved. He used to come to Ringos, where I worked as a waitress. He’d sing to himself, bludge cigarettes, and shine up the serviette holder. He loved looking at himself. He’d laugh and say, ‘God, I’m a handsome man,’ and then he’d laugh this really infectious laugh. It was a joke and it wasn’t a joke at the same time. We dated for about two weeks. Then we became friends. I like to think I decided that, but I think he did. I remember him telling me he was broken. That he had nothing really to offer me. That we would be better as friends. He was right. We were better as friends.
He’d been an actor, a fairly successful one. He looked familiar because he was. But the trauma in his childhood had overwhelmed him and he’d lost his way. An orphan poet with his hands deep in his trench coat and his head in the clouds. He sang fragments of lyrics in a beautiful lilting voice. Like an Irish folk song, half-remembered, half-improvised. He walked off halfway through conversations. Was often a terrible listener. But was kind. Really really kind.
We shared a house in Shirley Street for 12 months or more. We cooked dinners, watched movies, wrote jokes, dressed up and made stupid plays, he voiced a role in a radio series called Van Park, I co-wrote with my then comedy partner Stella (I have the reels but no way of playing them!) We had long conversations into the night. He smoked all my cigarettes, and paid me back with profound wisdoms. He seemed to channel insight from a higher source. So able to reflect and see all that was around him with deep kindness and compassion. So unable to enact that compassion on himself.
I asked him to move out so my new boyfriend and his son could move in. He told me once that he understood but felt hurt that he could be moved on so easily. I apologised, but years later I did it again. He was a forgiving friend. And after all, we were just friends.
Gary turned up for me when few people did. I trusted him with my worst self. On my darkest days, when I was a mother of a small baby, trying to leave a relationship. I would turn up at his door, he would make me tea, smoke my cigarettes, and say wisely, ‘darling you will leave when the pain of staying becomes greater than the pain of leaving.’ Or his favourite: ‘It’s not the reality that will kill you, it’s the fantasy.’ I hated that he was right. I loved that he was there. Gaz. With a sausage curry and kindness.
When I did leave, and I was a single mum to a toddler and a new baby, he came to live with me again. When he saw me struggle to cope, he got up in the night to my baby Sophia and sang to her. He’d sing Molly Malone, and Frère Jacques, and he’d patiently pat her back to sleep. He stepped in. That kindness saved me. I met someone else, they moved in, and I asked Gary to leave. Again. This time he wasn’t hurt, he told me he was happy for me.
We stayed friends but drifted, as friends do when your lives no longer intersect. When one moves on and one stays behind. Gary always stayed behind. The brokenness in me had started to heal. We would have coffee occasionally, then not at all. I ran into him a few years back and I said, ‘Gary you should come visit!’ He said, ‘Why? We have nothing in common.’ It wasn’t in a nasty way. He just acknowledged that our lives had moved on. He said, ‘I am so proud of you, and the woman you have become Mandy. But we don’t need to reconnect. I love you.’ I couldn’t leave it there.
I did get him for dinner, but I could see he was uncomfortable. I didn’t have the insight to accept the life cycle of our closeness. To accept that you could deeply love and respect someone for who they were in your past, while understanding that they don’t really belong in your day to day.
So here, on Gary’s passing, I want to acknowledge his kind heart. He was one of the people in my life whose belief in me, saved me. And I know that Gary did that for a lot of people. On their dark days, Gary had a way of bringing hope.
It might seem to some that he didn’t achieve much. He never wrote his opera. He lived it instead.
Gary Cook was a good man. Close Curtain. Applause. We who had small roles stand in gratitude.
Thank Gaz.
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, and was the Greens candidate at the past two federal elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
