I was so lucky to be able to look my mother in the eyes before The Big C finally claimed her after a four year battle. With both of her parents living healthily into their mid-90’s, it was a surprise to us all that she would be gone before her 78^th birthday.

Cancer is a cruel disease robbing a person of all vanity, dignity, and hope. It ravages the body, is successfully excised with toxic drugs, only to sneak up in another area where no one is looking.

My mum was lucky in many ways; she had my father beside her for the whole treacherous trip and he tended to her every need without complaint, nor a moments wavering of resolve. It began in 2008 with a diagnosis of secondary lung cancer developed from undiagnosed breast cancer. Ironically mum was never a smoker.

They beat the lung cancer but the chemotherapy wiped out her immune system. The cancer morphed into Leukaemia. As an Australian with white freckled skin inherited from British ancestry she had already been treated for many years for squamous cell carcinoma. The Leukaemia needed an accomplice so the SCC assisted. Time after time the skin sores budded, bloomed and were excised by the surgeon’s knife. Bigger and nastier they became until skin grafts became the norm.

It was a skin infection arising from Necrotizing fascitis that proved to be a foe too mean for her weakened immunity. How cruel!! How much indignity can a person bare?

As I sat holding her hand in the intensive care unit watching her machine-assisted breathing get slower I considered the double-edged sword of the privileged Western existence. Cancer is our plight borne of our environment, production, food, lifestyle, modern developments, and privilege. It runs rampant among us. Yet she lay on a high-tech bed connected to multi-million dollar equipment in a brand new ICU in a public hospital on a public health scheme. Our taxes might be high but we know how to care for our loved ones when they are sick. The hospital staff were amazing catering to all the psychological needs of the family as we fumbled with our personal goodbyes. This was an exceptional level of care that Mum and Dad received from Day 1 through all of their varied treatments and doctors rooms.

Last night as I sat in the glorious St. John’s Anglican Church listening to the music of dead composers, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Paganini, and Borne, brought to life by Sergey Didorenko, Evrydiki Iladou, Alexandra Castle, and the Chamber Philharmonia of Cologne, I realised that my love and appreciation of classical music was a precious gift given to me by my mother.

Margaret Smith
22 December 2012

Thank you Margaret Lillian (McKinna) Smith ~

(17/3/1935 – 23/01/2013).

Funeral to be held on Tuesday 29th January 2013.