Cecilia

 Cecilia and her husband Charlie were our landlords when Mark and I got back from our working holiday overseas. We had no money so we rented a one bedroom bedsit at the back of Charlie and Cecilia's Camberwell home just off Burke Road on Broadway. We slept on an air mattress, God, for a good couple of months until we bought a second hand bed in the Trading Post.

Cecilia and Charlie were Filipino. Cecilia was very outgoing and Charlie, the opposite. Cecilia told us Charlie had a high paying job in the Phillipines and was a qualified engineer, but when they migrated to Australia, the only work he could get was labouring so he travelled long hours every day to get to different work sites around Melbourne.

Cecilia was very generous. She was always knocking on the sliding door at the back of our bedsit, offering us all kinds of things she had cooked up. One day it was "porridge", except it wasn't the porridge that we were used to, it was a savoury porridge, oats, cabbage, chicken and spices. Another time she had her Filipino friends around and they cooked satay skewers on a makeshift barbecue in the back yard and shared them with us.

Then, one day, we found out Cecilia had cancer and it was terminal. She had to have chemotherapy.

At night, we would be lying in bed and we would hear her vomiting, endlessly. Night after night. She grew very thin and weak. Eventually, she was admitted to hospital. We visited her in hospital a few times. She never returned. Charlie came and told us she had passed away and we were invited to the funeral, just up the road on Burke Rd. Her casket was open but I was too distraught to go up to it but I had bought her some Asiatic lilies and Mark went and put them near her coffin for us.

Eventually, Mark and I got married and moved to Eildon and one day shortly after we moved, an amazing parcel arrived. Charlie had bought us a wedding present and it was a complete pasta set, a serving bowl and smaller bowls. We were really touched.