Earlier this month, his devastated widow Patti told media she missed being by Bert’s bedside as he took his last breath on October 30th.“I left at ten past seven, and I was just pulling around to come into my drive and I get the call to say he’d taken his last breath at 7.22pm,” she told 7 News reporters.“So I missed him, but maybe he didn’t want me to be there for his last breath,” she added at the time.In a letter penned by his daughter Lauren, read out during the service, the 40-year-old mother of six echoed the sentiment while speaking of the family’s pain watching Bert’s health deteriorate in hospital over the past year.But she noted it was Patti, Bert’s wife of 46 years, who suffered most.“Saying goodbye has been heartbreaking for us all, especially mum,” she wrote.“They loved one another so much, and I know how he waited until she left the room to take his last breath, because while she was with him, he couldn’t have gone. “My beautiful dad will be with us forever in our hearts and memories. But life will never be the same without him. I love you, dad.”The four-time gold Logie award-winning entertainer, who had a leg amputated in May this year due to a life-threatening infection, died at a private clinic in Melbourne in palliative care.His son, troubled actor Matthew, who is based in New York and was unable to attend today, also shared his fond memories of his dad, recalling the last phone call he had with the TV legend while he was in hospital.“Everyone knows he was a great entertainer but what a lot of people don’t know about dad is that he wouldn’t just be around for the laughs. Those close to him experienced how he’d show up in the tough times too. No-one more than me,” Matthew, who is understood to have had a strained relationship with his parents in the past, wrote. “One final conversation a few days before we lost him was different from the usual, and we both knew it. The change was never directly stated but we eschewed the stories and the laughness and just said how much we loved each other.“During that wonderful chat, my mother was pottering around in the background, adding her two cents every now and again, and doing lovely things for dad, as usual. At one point, she took something into another room, and the second she left, dad leaned into the phone camera and whispered, “I think she’s poisoning my food, Matthew!,” he added to laughs from the crowd.Addressing his mother, he said: “You know, there’s not a lioness in the world who loved, supported and cherished her lion as much as you did dad. You two were a team, are a team, and even though your partner isn’t on stage any more, the show goes on, and you’ll be OK, mainly because you‘ll have Lauren’s 97 children to take care of you,” he joked.
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