The last video call Michelle and Carolyn had with their dad was on Christmas Day. “Two of my daughters made bids for his attention by singing bright songs, accompanying them with actions. I joined in,” Carolyn says. “It was so much fun … he roused from his drowsiness and smiled and clapped.”
Three weeks later, Apostolos Ioannis “Jack” Moulos died in aged care from Covid-19. Like so many others, his family were unable to say goodbye.
“The last two years we’ve had really limited contact with Dad,” his daughter, Michelle says. “And it’s not anyone’s fault … it’s just sad.”
Jack was born in 1924 in a weatherboard cottage in Singleton, a riverside town on the banks of the Hunter valley.
Sixteen years earlier, his father had arrived in Australia via ship from Kythera – a small, poor Ionian island in southern Greece – with no English and little education. He was one of hundreds of Kytherians who carved a unique place in Australia’s multicultural tapestry, establishing what were then modern cafes in regional towns, known as Greek cafes.
The Niagara Café , opened in Singleton by his father, would be the place Jack grew up and devoted much of his life. The Niagara was housed in an old art deco-style building, with potted palms and soda fountains. It was a cultural hub in Singleton, the place where Jack fell in love with books, jazz and classical music.
At age 17, Jack signed up as a fitter and turner in the second world war.
He experienced no direct conflict in the three years he served in Labuan, Malaysia, but he later told his daughters he missed books so terribly during the war he would go to the latrine just to reread old newspapers hanging as toilet paper.
‘Dad was very, very thoughtful, very introverted,” Michelle says.
“He had an interest in the world … strong views that he kept to himself. He chose his words so carefully and sparingly … when he said them, they were precious.”
When Jack returned from the war, he continued to help out in the shop and enrolled in university in Sydney, where he would meet his future wife, Doreen, at a debutante’s ball.
Jack didn’t know this till much later, but Doreen took one look at him and thought: “I want him to father my children”. They would marry in 1951, and he did, fathering Carolyn and Michelle.
The couple went on to spend 20 years “minding the cafe”, at night sleeping above the shop where Jack grew up as a child. Every day, he donned dark trousers with a leather belt, a collared white shirt and a long white apron.
Customers would roll in from the Strand Cinema next door at all hours of the day and night, filling large jugs with wine and spirits from barrels in the shed or drinking an espresso served by Jack from the first machine in the Upper Hunter.
When he wasn’t cooking in the kitchen or serving behind the counter, Jack developed a deep passion for photography, and constructed a darkroom at the end of the veranda above The Niagara. Later, he opened a studio where he took many portraits and wedding photos.
Jack’s talent was such he became the stringer cameraman for the Upper Hunter for ABC, Channel 9 and Channel 3 news stations, when television in Australia was still in its infancy.
His daughters say his light meter and his camera were like his wallet – he rarely left the house without them slung around his neck.
“He was just an incredible person,” Michelle says.
“When I rang to tell one of our cousins that Uncle Jack had died, he said, ‘Uncle Jack, not Uncle Jack. Oh, he was so kind and so open minded.’”
In 1986, Jack and Doreen moved into a duplex six doors down from Carolyn to take care of Doreen’s mother. Carolyn and her family lived with them for almost two years on and off while their house was being renovated.
She says Jack and Doreen became like second parents to her five daughters later in life.
Always busy working long hours when Carolyn was a child, in his retirement Jack finally had the time to devote himself to his grandchildren.
“They love him deeply,” she says.
“In his last years in residential aged care, his face would light up when the great-grandchildren and their cousins visited. He loved being with them, talking to them and singing with them. They brought him joy and delight.”
The deep family bond was what made it so difficult for Jack when Covid restrictions prevented his grandchildren from visiting.
At age 88, Jack began to develop dementia, made hard by Doreen’s death seven years later at the beginning of the pandemic.
“We found the frequent and prolonged lockdowns heart-wrenching,” Carolyn says.
During restrictions, a staff member was able to facilitate video calls between residents and families, which, despite his dementia, Jack eventually warmed to. It wasn’t the same, but it was something.
Then the floor went into strict lockdown after positive Covid cases were detected. Only essential staff were allowed to enter – the video calls stopped. Jack’s late stage of dementia prevented him from making phone calls unassisted.
“For a man who loved and cared for his family all his life, extended periods of separation must have been so lonely,” Carolyn says.
“He would ask sometimes, ‘where have you been?’ or, ‘when are you coming to see us again?’ Each time we would explain that there was a really bad flu going around and we are trying not to spread it. He’d agree we were doing the right thing.
“That was no lasting comfort because his short-term memory was so poor. He was aware of time passing and that it was a long time between visits when there were lockdowns.”
On 15 January, Jack passed away at Presbyterian Aged Care with Covid-19, two carers by his side. They both knew him well – they used to call him “Papou”. He was 97.
Before he died, Jack was comforted by the knowledge his daughter, Michelle was on her way to see him. At 6.30am, the family had been instructed they were allowed an end-of-life visit, just three hours before he died.
“She’s on her way,” the nurse told Jack. “Michelle is on her way.”
Sadly, Jack passed during her drive from Milton to Sydney.
“He breathed in, one breath out, and that was it,” Carolyn says.
“We were glad someone was with him, because that’s what he said when we did advanced care – ‘all I want is someone holding my hand’.
“We [just] wish it had been us.”
Michelle says there’s a context to her father’s death – to have died at this particular time, in this particular place, that makes it so sad – so wrong.
“Normally, we would have gathered with him when he first became unwell,” she wrote, after his death.
“He would have had lots of visitors, and maybe Carolyn and I would have been with him at 9.17am when he died.
“We would have, then, spent some days together – me at Carolyn’s house, receiving lots of different visitors of different generations for cups of tea and stories. We would have cried and laughed together.”
Instead, Michelle and her daughter stood in full PPE to view Jack’s body through a glass door, while Carolyn and the rest of Sydney family were confined to their homes with Covid-19.
“None of this is normal,” Michelle wrote. “Me driving three-and-a-half hours back from Sydney to my home in Milton, alone.
“Sitting on my front veranda, feeling like I’d been to outer space and back, while everyone else just had a normal day.”
