Sharing words from Patrick.. time to think I think

Patrick wrote.. and I responded.
I thought I'd share both.. with full citing apologies and plagaristic begging for forgiveness from Patrick.. (you can discover his wonderful thinking and writing and talent from my followers list..)

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Vale, Judith Adams

It seems that this is happening more often lately.


People who I've briefly encountered or felt affected by have passed away. Each time the news strikes, I'm for a moment dumbfounded by the need and desire for some reaction. What reaction, though, can ever be adequate or original enough to justify its utterance? There's something so very banal, after all, about the platitudes of 'RIP', or 'Vale', or...


What's there to evoke but shock, silence, and dumbfoundedness?


I realize that by writing this I am, in effect, negating my own argument: not because I have found something that is an adequate response, but rather because the utterance of such banal sentiments and platitudes and utterances are all that are left to say. In this sense, it isn't the words themselves that offers meaning, but rather the articulation of the words in the first place betrays the struggle to offer it meaning.


My only way of responding to the death of Judith Adams - a Liberal Senator for Western Australia - is to recall my encounters with her at Parliament House. I've mentioned before that I worked there as a waiter in the Members Club, so I don't need to recount that here (though I just did).


I remember, however, observing one night that Senator Adams was wearing a wig, and that her walk was slower than usual. It wasn't un-obvious what was wrong, for only a few weeks before my mother had begun a course of radiotherapy for her own breast cancer, and had come home with a few choice wigs of her own.


The nights that I saw Senator Adams at Parliament House - whenever she'd come up - intermingle with that tense and often pitiful time in my own home, where my mother's breast cancer left her tired, weak, depressed, and brittle. I recall my mother eating bowls of porridge for dinner - the only thing she could keep down - and am struck by the recollection and way that Senator Adams only touched the dessert buffet - the same thing: small portions of sweets were the only food she could keep down.


I spoke to her one night, properly - and by that I mean that I stood and she stood and we talked as people, not as a waiter and a customer.


I asked her how she was.


Tired, was the simple response. Between flights to WA and Canberra, between the work as a Senator, between the demands of her own body and the world around her, the most of her that was left was, of course, tired.


I tried to tell her, feebly, that I understood, somewhat. I told her about my mother.


Senator Adams was, as always, warm and personable and sympathetic and understanding, even as she was afflicted herself.


My mother, by then - two years after the diagnosis - had finished her course of radiotherapy, had abandoned the wig, and was eating more than porridge at dinner times.


But the thing I remember now is that each time I saw Senator Adams after that night we spoke was her constant question: 'Hows your mother doing?'


It was a simple reminder each time not only of the widespread and recurring curse of breast cancer, but also the delicate connections between people.


Senator Judith Adams was, simply from my small encounters with her, a person who was warm, understanding, giving, and unfailingly lovely. Her ability and will to remember such a thing about me and my mother - the random guy in the restaurant at Parliament House - when she was a Senator of the geographically largest state in the country, with all the demands on her time and mind that that exerted, with a brutal and callous disease ravaging her body - that she was able and willing, despite that, to reach out and keep that connection says a great deal about the person she was.


I didn't know her well, but the encounter and small platitudes that I can offer hopefully betray the shock and sadness that I feel at news of her passing.


Condolences to her family and colleagues.

1 comments:

CatherineApr 2, 2012 05:24 AM

Ahh.. glad you wrote this.

I too, was very saddened.

I was so worried for your mother at that time.

I was so worried about you.

I was also very worried about my own mother - but I didn't have the understanding then that comes from the extensive public reporting and explaining that occurs now. And the grabbing of grief from celebrities..

People used to cross the street so they didn't have to speak to my mother once her diagnosis was known. Worse when her breast was removed. What kind of woman could she be now, after all.. shocking. Unforgiveable.

Understandable. Now that I know more.

Then she undertook a lifetime (well, the rest of hers) dedication to speaking about it and walking for it.(I have her T shirts to prove it!!) She made a diffferncce to many.. cleaners, shop keepers, farmers wives, young mothers.. even waiters!
The Queen of Everything I used to call her, but secretly proudly..

People are so afraid (again, understandably) of cancer. It is a shattered mirror, a shard of fear into their own uncertainty and fragility.

I am not at all surprised that this wonderful woman remembered you - and your mother. In the midst of the madness and chaos of public life, the dinners and the h"ors d"ouvres of secret corridors, its the baked beans on toast, the creme brulee and the genuine smile that would have helped her keep her hair on and the smile on her secret face.

Thank you for writing of this.. and for your acknowledgements of that beyond our every day.