This is Gail

by O'Brien, Gail

  For a long time, there was no evidence of the emotional toll that this was taking on my mother. She had been going along fine, holding herself together. But a simple incident caused her to unravel. She had arranged to meet a friend for coffee and was rushing to find her work uniform so she could go straight to the hospital afterwards to start her midday shift. She was running late and did not have the woman’s telephone number to let her know. Gail arrived at the café about fifteen minutes after the appointed time. Her friend wasn’t there. The café staff confirmed that she had left. Gail would later learn that the woman had left because she was unwell, but in this moment she felt awful and thought her friend must have been annoyed.

  Mum walked back to the car and slumped into the driver’s seat. A wave of defeat washed over her. She felt completely beaten. She reached for her phone and called Carmel, who she knew would have something comforting to say. Before she could speak, Gail began to weep. She couldn’t stop, and as she tried to explain she was sobbing. Carmel knew a broken coffee date wasn’t the cause for Gail’s tears. This simple thing had triggered something much bigger, and Carmel put it into words: ‘Gail, you have got so much going on. You’re juggling work, Lifehouse, all these talks you give. You’re worried about Juliette and James. You’re wondering if you should sell the house. You’re concerned about money. There’s so much sadness for Chris and our darling Addy. You’ve got all those practical things to deal with. And there are the ashes.’

  Especially the fate of the ashes. Carmel had vocalised what Gail felt. Gail knew her husband and son needed to be together and in the earth. Not having settled that created immense internal strain that she carried every day. She realised that finding a place for their ashes was the most important thing right now.

  She had been told of the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens in Sydney’s north, where there were beautiful places that could be bought. Gail had a look online and saw a small landscaped area with a garden seat that looked out over the Lane Cove National Park. She made an appointment immediately.

  As she sat in a light and airy reception area waiting to be taken into the office, a man stepped through a doorway. ‘I’m Stuart!’ he said. ‘I used to play guitar with Chris.’ It turned out that Stuart lived next door to us once and, being a great guitar player, he had regularly come over to jam with Chris and his guitar teacher, Peter Pik. Stuart knew everything that had happened. He was gentle and kind to Gail. It was another of those coincidences.

  Stuart drove Gail around the stunning gardens, with their open avenues and private circles, the towering green trees that hung over flowers and bush rock. They arrived at a row of plots near a large rose garden. White pebbles were scattered over small curved areas, framed by evergreen hedges. Each memorial had a plaque at its head and wooden seat at the foot. They were on the edge of the gardens, under the shade of large silky oaks and overlooking the wild ruggedness of the national park. It was serene, peaceful and private. Here, the ashes could be with the earth, rather than confined in a capsule. Gail noticed that a boy who had been Adam’s age when he died was just two stations up. It felt right. They went back to the office to discuss the details.

  ‘They’re not cheap,’ Stuart warned her. Gail expected that, although the amount he quoted far exceeded anything she had guessed. It was hugely expensive. But Gail had already made up her mind. She had been paralysed for so long. Now she was unstoppable. She resolved to dip into her superannuation.

  A short time later she received a phone call from her financial adviser at Westpac, asking her to give a talk at BT Financial’s meeting of advisers. The subject of the talk was holistic treatment of people and how lessons might be applied to looking after a person’s financial wellbeing as well as their physical health. The best thing about the job was that it paid. Gail’s talk was so successful that BT asked her to travel around Australia, speaking in every capital city about financial wellbeing after a serious diagnosis. Gail laughed about being the ‘talent’ on a road show. Then she learned that the fee was the exact amount that the memorial garden plot would cost. ‘Westpac has given me so much more than money,’ Gail told her adviser. ‘You have unburdened me of this huge thing to deal with: my husband’s and my son’s ashes.’

  When we did eventually place the ashes of my father and brother in the ground, it was with a feeling of rest. Wrapped in earth, under dappled light by the bush, they are together now. At home, without their ashes any more, my mother could finally rest also. The physical remains of her husband and son had gone, but their spirits had not.

  Pocket Rocket

  The seven-year anniversary of Dad’s first cranial operation was on 30 November 2013. Again, we were at RPA, metres away from the jacaranda tree where Mum and I had sat together while he was on the operating table down below. But this day was not one of despair; it was a day of joy. Chris O’Brien Lifehouse had opened its doors to patients, and we were at a party to celebrate. The centre was to open progressively and this first stage saw all aspects of cancer care rolled out for outpatients including chemotherapy, radiation therapy and day surgery. Education, research and complementary therapies would begin, as well as clinical trials, allied health and emotional support. Specialist clinics for a number of cancer types were opening, including breast surgery, gynaecological oncology, head and neck, radiation and medical oncology and chemotherapy.

  A few weeks earlier the freshly minted prime minister of Australia had visited — Tony Abbott, whose party had won the general election in September. Mr Abbott was the fifth successive prime minister to take office since Chris had begun lobbying for a centre of excellence seven years before. Over that time, the travelling circus of politicians and staffers had intermittently entered the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse orbit. Kevin Rudd had been a loyal supporter through both his terms as prime minister, as was Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, in whose seat Chris O’Brien Lifehouse sat. She always hugged my mother warmly when they met. Tony Abbott stood in the vast light-filled atrium. ‘I never expected to find myself standing here, in this capacity,’ he said with a smile.

  On the evening of 30 November, hundreds of people who had worked to create this place came together. The room was filled with energy and excitement: everybody could take deep satisfaction in the result of what ‘a critical mass of people with a unity of purpose’, as Chris said, had achieved. Journalist Helen Dalley, an elegant MC, told the room that she had filled the same role for Chris and Gail back in 2002 at the launch of the Sydney Head and Neck Cancer Institute. She spoke about that first ball and how much had happened since in the past eleven and a half years.

  My mother was the last speaker. I stood at the back as I listened to her speech for the first time — she no longer asked that I be the ears for her to practise upon. ‘Today has been a most significant and wondrous day,’ she said. Her voice was strong and measured. ‘On this day, seven years ago, I sat in the perioperative room at RPAH with my much-adored husband, Chris O’Brien, and my daughter, before he was taken away from us to have his beautiful brain opened surgically in an attempt to remove a cancer that was threatening his life. The devastating news of this diagnosis had only been delivered to us days earlier and he had spent the previous few days on high-dose steroids. I can still see him, magnificent in the calm acceptance of his fate.

  ‘A piece of paper that was pinned to a notice board caught my eye,’ she continued. ‘The admitting sister photocopied it for me and I still have it. It says: YOU MUST NOT QUIT. It went on to say that things don’t always work out the way we plan them . . . and in the midst of the confusion, we wonder how things could ever be right again. But things have a way of working out and sometimes they work out better than we ever dreamed they could. This may be one of those times. Prophetic.

  ‘Chris said publicly on many occasions that no Australian should ever have to go to the United States for their cancer treatment and that we should not be relying on the US to come up with all the breakthroughs. Chris started the narrative. He took control of th
e narrative and his opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald after his diagnosis fused the notion of comprehensive cancer centres with his illness. However, the learning to us, through his illness, was that cancer care, and indeed the care of any patient, needs to be holistic. A holistic approach, looking after a person’s body, mind and spirit, has been a crusade for me for the last four years. This is a direct result of the fact that, on three separate occasions, Chris’s illness, the death of our son two years ago and another child’s serious illness last year . . . despite my medical connections, I found the system anything but patient-centred and holistic. However, I now feel fortunate that armed with an experiential understanding and a place to stand, I have been able to play my own role in making a meaningful contribution towards change. And now — finally — after seven years, the wheels of Chris O’Brien Lifehouse are officially in motion.

  ‘Although it may seem like the end of a long journey, we are all aware that this is really just the beginning of a new chapter for Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, to now — in Chris’s own words — “burn on discovery, to live for discovery” . . . with a unity of purpose aimed at innovation and improving patient outcomes. I value the extraordinary diversity of relationships I have been privileged to develop over the past four years. There are many people here tonight — and some not able to make it — who have all put their absolute heart and soul into this project. And despite our variety of beliefs and desires I know we have all been powerfully significant to each other’s personal development as well as to this very honourable cause. I thank each and every one of you for what you have contributed. It has been a true coming together of the human spirit — and this is exactly what Chris brought out in people.

  ‘The Chris O’Brien name will always continue to inspire hope, trust and integrity. To those who are entrusted with the name for the time you are here at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, I wish you well as you enter a new chapter of creating the ethos and producing the results that will put us on the world stage as the gold standard of integrated, holistic, patient-centred cancer care.

  ‘As Chris, the renaissance man, said at the end of his speech at the launch of Lifehouse in 2009, “it is a consummation devoutly to be wished”.’

  Jenny — my mother’s dear friend who had convinced her to apply for residency at RPA all those years before — looked at me and said, ‘That was her best yet, don’t you think?’ I agreed.

  My mother stepped down from the podium and sank into the crowd. I found her with Jan and Max Moore Wilton, Jan with both her hands on Gail’s cheeks, squeezing them as if she was one of her grandchildren. ‘I’m just so proud of you,’ she said. Then, she looked down at Gail’s petite frame. ‘But you’re just so little, there’s nothing of you!’

  ‘She’s a pocket rocket,’ Max boomed. He wrapped his arms around her in the same way that Adam would have.

  At a function a few weeks later, I was seated next to Peter Overton at dinner — the gentlemanly Channel 9 reporter who had entered our lives seven years previously when Dad was first diagnosed. He had done several reports since then and stayed in close contact with the family over the years, emceeing many Chris O’Brien Lifehouse functions. ‘You know,’ Peter said, ‘it has been such a privilege watching your family throughout this period, especially your mother. We’ve seen a transformation in her.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ I asked. We both looked at my mother, seated across the table. She was chatting with those on either side of her. She laughed, throwing her head back and revealing that splendid smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She has absolutely transformed.’

  At the time I genuinely agreed. But now, after many hours of contemplation while writing this book, it has occurred to me that perhaps my mother has not been transformed. Perhaps Gail has been revealed.

  Dear Mum,

  Recently, I had the flu and was coughing through the night. I couldn’t sleep, so got out of bed in the wee hours to make tea. You appeared, tapped on James’s door and asked if he knew where the cough medicine was. I sat on a stool and watched as you and Jamie, in your dressing gowns and with blurry eyes, opened every cupboard and drawer looking for the medicine for me. It made my heart ache. Watching you both, I realised how much I still have. How rich we are still.

  As I write this, I am sitting in the library at the University of Sydney, looking across the green lawn to the university’s Great Hall. That majestic stone building has stood witness to many milestones in your story: your and Dad’s graduations, marriage, Dad’s doctorate of surgery at the zenith of his career, an oration on his transition from esteemed doctor to terminal patient. A year after he died, his face shone through the hall in a large projected image at a memorial fundraiser. The image hung over you, Mum. While you stood in his place at the lectern.

  So much has happened but a stone’s throw from that Great Hall. It would seem we haven’t come very far. But we have travelled galaxies in our hearts and minds. What an odyssey it is, just to be and to love in this life.

  With a heart full of love, Juliette

  * * *

  My darling Juliette,

  With deepest gratitude I write you this final letter. You have pieced together the jigsaw of this tale with such grace and skill. As you are aware, I had been approached by publishers on several occasions over the last few years to write about caring for your father. I not only found the task too daunting but the story seemed to keep unfolding. It did not end with his death. Instead, another door opened.

  You ask me whether I ever thought I would be capable of doing all that I have done these last few years. The answer is simple: I never thought about it, it just happened. (But if I had given it any thought at all, the answer would have been, most certainly not.)

  As your father wrote in his memoir, ‘life is not a linear experience but rather a circular process, as if it all began when myriad pebbles were cast upon a vast pool’.

  It’s important to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Each day, the sun also rises. In the words of Guru Rinpoche, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, ‘Breathing in I calm my body, breathing out I smile, twenty-four brand new hours lie before me.’

  I have learned the hard way to go with the flow and try not to resist or force. Perhaps there is indeed a map for each and every one of us to follow if only we will listen and trust. Certainly opportunities present themselves and we have the choice to either take action or not. We have free will.

  Regarding Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, I think of it as a place of healing, rather than cure. There is so much more to cancer than simply killing malignant cells.

  For myself, I am not afraid of that final sleep. I know there is nothing to fear. Surely Hamlet was pointing out how little even the most educated people can explain when he said, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

  We have in our small household a spectrum of personalities, attitudes and beliefs. But your father and brother are ever-present in each of us, my darling. It is as the poet Robert Fitzgerald wrote and is inscribed on the plaque that rests over your father’s ashes beside those of our beloved son: ‘Time is a fool if it thinks to have ended, one single splendid thing that has been.’

  With my love, Mum

  Photo Section

  My mother’s parents, Grace Burrows and Murray Bamford, circa 1950. They met at a dance in Dublin city from which he chauffeured her home on his bicycle crossbar.

  Gail, age three, pictured here with her older sister, Adele, in Ireland. Over sixteen years their mother gave birth to six children in three continents.

  Murray longed to be near the sea, so when the family immigrated to Australia they settled in Cronulla, where Gail grew up. Here she is with her dog, Sandy, at age ten.

  On Gail’s first day at university in 1973, a photographer asked whether he could take her photograph. On the back cover of the Union Recorder’s next issue was this picture.

  Chris O’Brien was a medical r
esident from Sydney’s western suburbs with star quality. By the end of 1975 he and Gail were an item. This photo was taken on a camping trip to the south coast of NSW in 1977.

  Everything about Chris seemed right to Gail. Being with him was so much fun: he was boundlessly energetic and, like her, filled his life with work, a hectic social scene and physical activity.

  The pair travelled to Europe in 1978 and enrolled in a fine arts course. Gail chose ballet and cuisine classes while Chris did painting and photography. He visited her in the dance studios and took beautiful black-and-white photographs, including this one.

  Chris and Gail married on 16 February 1980, in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney. In a white lace crinoline-style dress matched with a wide-brimmed hat, lace gloves and parasol, she was feminine beauty personified.

  My older brother, Christopher Adam, was born on 16 October 1981, I on 1 February 1984. As Dad’s surgical training required stints overseas, we lived in London, England, then Birmingham, Alabama. Pictured here in our flat in East Finchley, London.

  My younger brother, James Michael, was born on 25 October 1989. As Mum tried to breast-feed him on the ward, his lips started to turn blue. He was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension and for weeks he was not expected to survive.

  I now understand that it took great stamina, patience and a certain cunning to be married to Dr Chris O’Brien. A world-renowned cancer surgeon, he was on full throttle most of the time. But none of my parents’ commitments ever got in the way of their duties as parents. Pictured here at my high school graduation dinner, which Dad emceed.