A tribute to Lyn & Marissa

Marissa

Every morning before breakfast, she left her husband and daughters at home, and took Holly the collie for a long walk. Through the streets near her Kincumber home. Lynette McKeon and the collie covered kilometres, at a really brisk pace. They never missed a morning. The time out was as much for Lynette as it was for Holly.

As a schoolgirl, Lynette was a very good basketball player, and she wanted to get fit again to play touch football in a big competition this summer. The trouble was, she hurt her knee a couple of years ago and had to work hard to regain her strength. So at Kuta Beach, she trained every morning walking, running and swimming, on this, the McKeons' first Bali holiday as a family.

Ross and Lynette had lived in Kincumber for 11 years, moving onto what had been their investment block. He had known Lynette since school days, when she was known as Lyn May, the daughter of Ron and Muriel May. People thought her first name was Lyn-May, like Sally-Anne or Peggy Sue. But she didn't mind what they called her.

At Maroubra High School, Lynette was just intent on playing the best netball and basketball she could. After school, she worked as a data entry operator in the Department of Defence before she married Ross, an electrician who had worked for John Fairfax Publications and now works for P&O.

Last year, Ross gave Lyn a gold chain necklace for their 15th wedding anniversary. Anniversaries make you think about the future as well as the past, and now that her girls, Marissa, 14 and Kristie,12, were growing up, Lynette planned to get a job, devote more time to herself, perhaps travel around Australia, and return to Bali next year. She shared her plans perhaps with Holly. Each afternoon they repeated their morning routine, another walk, another think, before dinner.

Lynette's favourite song was My Heart Will Go On, played at her funeral last week.

Little girls like to do what Mum does and when she was only 8, Marissa was already playing touch football. Four years later, she became district team captain. At 14, her dream was to make the all-schools team this year. Her father, Ross, says: "We knew it was going to be hard to get in. She didn't get in. And she just said: "I'll have to try harder next year." She never got upset. If she came off the field and had lost, she would just say "oh well". She knew you're not going to win everything. Marissa set her own goals. She would set her mind and do it. She was very forthright. She knew what she wanted. She also had a heart of gold."

You could tell just by looking at Marissa she was a sporty girl. Like her mother, she was not tall, but her physique was strong. Like her mother her hair had blonde highlights and in Bali, she wore a frangipani in her hair.

Marissa loved to swim. She played netball too. Her room was full of trophies and medals. Every year, the collection would grow.

But Marissa did not plan a life devoted to sport. She had set her heart on being a flight attendant, for the adventure of it all.

At school, said Ross, "they would give her awards for consistent effort. She always tried harder, whatever she did. She never gave up, at anything."

-- Valerie Lawson, Reprinted courtesy the Sydney Morning Herald