Some people unintentionally force us to look inward and unearth our better selves.
Patrick Crudden was on of those people. He made you a better person, simply by knowing you.
He died last week and gone now is a stalwart of Shepparton’s literary scene, a gentle yet sweeping knowledge, and a man who helped make Shepparton an intellectually richer place.
Patrick became known to me through his creation of the Country Festival of Writing in Shepparton, and then through becoming a member of the Goulburn Valley Writers’ Group, of which he was the then president.
We came though from different worlds for Patrick was a devout Christian and, which, in my view, are beliefs substantiated by myth, but those fundamental intellectual differences did not impair our friendship rather, they strengthened it.
'He made you a better person, simply by knowing you' ....
How could that be? Respect, it seems, was the key ingredient as we could both see the passion with which the other held their views and so never ventured into what was an unspoken no-go area.
Never in the 20 years I knew Patrick, did he proselytize, attempting to change my views, but it was always obvious where he stood and what values he endorsed, which comfortingly and interestingly, were strikingly similar, except for that one basic and fundamental difference, he saw the world through the prism of Christianity, I didn’t and don’t.
Patrick was a true gentle man, passing through life pushing a significant bow wave, but, oddly, never making a ripple. He had a sense of decency about him; a decency that surpasses that of most people I know.
Oddly, the detail of Patrick’s history never seemed that important to me, rather, the man that stood before me had such a consuming presence that it was only the “now”that mattered.
Patrick’s presence was in my life long before actually meeting him as his daughter, Julie, her husband Wayne and children lived just two doors away.
Holding Patrick’s hand late in the afternoon and several hours before that last sentence was written, Julie and I reminisced about being neighbours and her lively son, Andy, who was the primary conduit.
Andy, about three or four at the time, was urgently in love with my daughter and her best friend, both about 16, and we smiled about the wide-eyed tale he told of finding a wombat hole while on holidays.
Patrick had been a confidant, counsellor and an inspiration to many and with a life anchored in Catholicism, it’s not surprising that he was a regular volunteer at Shepparton's Vinnies store.
Friend John Lawry was eager to introduce a philosophy-like session at Shepparton’s U3A and Patrick quickly aligned himself with the idea and along with John became the prime driver of what was to become “Socrates’ Cafe”, something which he said helped fill the vacuum left after the death of his wife, Bev, and was “Keeping me alive.”
Patrick was a thinker, a man of the word (literally) who loved, and told a good story, seemed to enjoy all forms of writing, whether poetry or prose, fact or fiction, and just last week, with the final chapter written, the book of his life was closed.
