Rest in peace, Jane McGrath
June 24th 2008 00:24
Mortality is the sting in motherhood.
Yesterday, I was standing at my favourite coffee bar, having nipped out to get some lunchbox goodies for my son, waiting for my skinny cuppacino, glancing through the newspaper, as one does, while I was waiting for my barrista to do his thing with the frothed milk, tears pouring down my face.
I didn’t know her. She was the wife of a cricket hero. I wouldn’t have recognized her had she passed me in the street. But she was 42 and her kids are 6 and 8 and this I know: no mother wants to die and leave her children before they’ve lost all their milk teeth and don’t know how to cross the road or insert a tampon. Fuck you, breast cancer.
All day long, I had this grief-stricken feeling. And though she is a stranger to me, her life is no stranger to me. Her love for her kids is no stranger to me. I know something of her story. Her death has touched me, in all its ordinariness, because a mother died and left behind a life in which she had only just planted her buds.
If Buddhism is right that death is a messenger, in Jane McGrath’s death, I was reminded not to waste time; to give thanks for health, to hold my children close and listen to their secrets.
For every Jane McGrath, there are thousands of other young mothers living with this disease, waiting to rob them of everything that matters.
I grieve for this stranger, and for little ones, and her husband. And I pray that someday we will find a cure for this monstrous disease.
A pocketful of sequins - inspirational quotes by people whose lives have been affected by breast cancer - all funds go towards breast cancer research
www.joannefedler.com
Yesterday, I was standing at my favourite coffee bar, having nipped out to get some lunchbox goodies for my son, waiting for my skinny cuppacino, glancing through the newspaper, as one does, while I was waiting for my barrista to do his thing with the frothed milk, tears pouring down my face.
Jane McGrath
I didn’t know her. She was the wife of a cricket hero. I wouldn’t have recognized her had she passed me in the street. But she was 42 and her kids are 6 and 8 and this I know: no mother wants to die and leave her children before they’ve lost all their milk teeth and don’t know how to cross the road or insert a tampon. Fuck you, breast cancer.
All day long, I had this grief-stricken feeling. And though she is a stranger to me, her life is no stranger to me. Her love for her kids is no stranger to me. I know something of her story. Her death has touched me, in all its ordinariness, because a mother died and left behind a life in which she had only just planted her buds.
If Buddhism is right that death is a messenger, in Jane McGrath’s death, I was reminded not to waste time; to give thanks for health, to hold my children close and listen to their secrets.
For every Jane McGrath, there are thousands of other young mothers living with this disease, waiting to rob them of everything that matters.
I grieve for this stranger, and for little ones, and her husband. And I pray that someday we will find a cure for this monstrous disease.
A pocketful of sequins - inspirational quotes by people whose lives have been affected by breast cancer - all funds go towards breast cancer research
www.joannefedler.com
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