In his last days, I couldn’t bear to tell my dying husband what had happened at his beloved Bondi | Julianne Schultz

In 2025 it felt as thought the world itself had dementia. But though incurable, it’s a disease that can be treated

A few days before he took his last, mercifully peaceful, breath, my husband, Ian Reinecke, looked at me intently and asked, “Is there anything going on in the world I need to know about?”

“No, nothing,” I said as calmly as I could to the man with whom I had intensely discussed events in the world and at home for nearly 50 years.

I could not be sure he wasn’t fishing for an answer. All week the thrum of helicopters, accompanied by the scream of sirens, had filled the Bondi air. Sensitive people pick up the vibes, even when the details are opaque.

In his last year I could never be completely sure how much he was aware of. Some things he talked about seemed fanciful to me but turned out to be true. Right to the end his intuition about people and events astonished me.