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I’m not going

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Traecey was in a car accident when she was in her early twenties and nearly died. She spent many long days in the intensive care unit, fighting for her life. One day Traecey was unconscious and delirious. She told her mother, Pat that her Auntie Bonnie had been to visit. … Read more

Grief and letting go

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  “Grief is the unavoidable consequence of ‘letting go’,” says Catholic priest Monsignor  Tony Doherty. Tony has sat with families and friends at the bedside of the dying on many occasions during his 50 years as a priest. “One of life’s fundamental human equations goes like this: the more you … Read more

Flowers for Jean

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When my friend Susan’s mother Jean was cremated at Leura Memorial Gardens in Autumn this year, her family used lots of flowers and foliage from her garden in the Blue Mountains of NSW to adorn her coffin. It was a way of expressing something about Jean, who’d always loved the … Read more

Tributes to Parents

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John Faine, then of ABC Melbourne, interviewed Susan Wyndham, Margaret Rice and Chris Hall on 24 October, 2013. That interview is just as relevant today as it was back then. Today I planted cuttings from my father’s garden to remind me of him. I had taken them from his garden … Read more

If only I knew

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Palliative Care Australia’s pamphlet “If Only I knew” tells the story of Suzanne, who is dying. “I’ve thought a lot about dying because my Dad was living with us when he passed. We had a lot in common because we were both facing our mortality. I could talk to him about … Read more

Saying goodbye to a cousin

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We said farewell to my lovely cousin Kim this week, a beautiful woman and another cousin who died too young. Cousins are the first friends we have as children, they are different yet familiar. With them we have our early experiences of comfortably moving into someone else’s life, then slipping quickly … Read more

Men and grief

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The ABC’s Man Up series and Gus Worland’s ad campaign.

  “Now tough blokes like us don’t have to worry about grief because we just get on with it, right?” Anthony suggested, to nods from thirty other men huddled in the man cave. Wrong. (We weren’t exactly huddled, either. It was a balmy Sydney evening and the men were sitting … Read more