Bye-bye daddy

By Dion Teasdale
A QUILT commemorating the life of musician Darren Jones will be made by family and friends and given to Mr Jones’s 20-month-old son, Jett.
Launching the quilt project was one of the ways family and friends chose to celebrate Mr Jones’s life at a memorial service held in Healesville last week.
A former Healesville resident who had spent the past five years living in and around Belgrave, Mr Jones, 28, was fatally stabbed on a Lilydale-bound train near Box Hill about 1.20pm on Thursday, 23 February.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at an outdoor amphitheatre at the Maroondah Reservoir Park on the outskirts of Healesville last Thursday afternoon to celebrate Mr Jones’s short, but exceptional life.
Family and friends, fellow musicians and artists, congregated under gum trees and umbrellas, seeking shelter from the late February heat, while they listened to recordings of songs written and performed by Mr Jones, an accomplished guitarist and singer.
Healesville resident Chelsea McNabb, a close friend who went to school with Mr Jones, said he would have approved of the setting.
“It has been turned on for Darren. He was such a beautiful person who loved nature. He would have loved this,” she said.
“With his music playing, and all his family and friends here, it feels like he is here with us.”
Throughout the memorial service family and friends performed a series of musical tributes and speeches to honour Mr Jones.
Mr Jones’s grandfather, acclaimed trumpeter Kingsley Jones, played a heart-wrenching rendition of Cry Me a River. Mr Jones’s sisters, Jess and Corinne, performed one of their brother’s own compositions.
Other family and friends scattered rose petals and burned incense around Mr Jones’s coffin, which was adorned with vibrant gerbera flowers.
Mr Jones’s son, Jett, wandered on the grass in front of his father’s coffin throughout the ceremony.
Mr Jones’s mother, Annette, wrote a moving eulogy which was read by her sister.
In it she recalled her son’s birth in Ferntree Gully in 1977 where he spent the first nine years of his life, and the family’s move to Chum Creek in the mid 1980s.
Mrs Jones said her son was a born musician who, as a boy, made his own instruments using elastic bands, plastic bags and milk cartons, and who entertained the family by playing his toy guitar while standing on the dining room table.
She wrote of how proud she was of her son’s musical achievements.
As a child he played music in church, and when he was 14 he had a music program on a local radio station.
In secondary school he was voted Best Guitarist of the Year in a school band competition, and as a young adult he got to record his own music in an ABC radio studio.
“I am not only proud of him as a musician, but also as a person,” she wrote.
Mrs Jones also wrote of her son’s love for his partner, Kate Salisbury, and their son, Jett, and of his satisfaction at commencing studies at the Victorian College of the Arts this year.
“Darren was content with his life and loved his family. Now we will miss him all our lives,” she said.
Friends and family spoke of a young man who was accepting, talented and spirited, a friend with a big smile and pure heart, who was respected as a musician and a man.
At the conclusion of the memorial service, guests were invited to contribute to the creation of a quilt that will be given to Jett Jones as a reminder of his father.
After the service mourners gathered at the Aztec Bar in Belgrave where Mr Jones performed his final gig on 17 February.