4 minute read
Finding hope
How I dealt with grief
WHEN FORMER JOURNALIST AND MUM OF TWO EVONNE MADDEN LOST HUSBAND PAUL TO CANCER AT AGE 37, SHE COPED THE ONLY WAY SHE KNEW HOW – BY TALKING TO OTHERS WHO HAD SUFFERED HEARTBREAKING LOSS AND WRITING A BOOK ABOUT IT. THROUGH THAT PROCESS, SHE FOUND HOPE.
AS TOLD TO LIZ MCGRATH
“I met Paul the way many people meet their other halves, in a pub. We realised we’d lived in the same country town as kids, but missed each other by six months when our families moved. I remember thinking that night that he had such a lovely face. He looked warm and open and happy. Paul was one of those people whose face matches their personality. He was very accepting of others, and always had a way of lightening the mood and making people laugh. He was a teacher.
We got married a few years later and had our son, Joseph. Life was really good, very normal. I was five months’ pregnant with our little girl, Heidi, when Paul was diagnosed with bone cancer, and everything happened very quickly from then. Fifteen months later, he was gone. You’d think a terminal diagnosis gives you time to prepare, but it wasn’t that way for us. We knew Paul was very sick, of course, but we couldn’t believe he would die. I know Paul hid a lot of his pain from us. The kids and I, as well as Paul’s family, had a lot of support around us after he died, but I still felt really lost and quite removed from normal life. I found it very hard to accept I’d never see him again and that Joseph and Heidi would grow up without their dad, and that Paul would miss out on so much. Even years later, I could barely believe it. One thing that really helped was reading about other people’s experiences with death. I’d read
after I put the kids to bed at night and that helped calm me down and to think things through.
This will probably sound very morbid but I became quite interested in grief itself. I’d been so lucky in life and had never experienced anything like this before and I wondered how other people dealt with loss. What was going on in their heads? That’s when I started interviewing people for Life After. I’d certainly never compare myself to the people in the book — some of them have suffered the very worst of human nature and survived extreme traumas, like Holocaust survivors Abram and Cesia Goldberg — but I have learnt a lot from every single person who agreed to be interviewed. That’s the whole point of this book, really, that people who are struggling with grief can get some comfort reading the stories.
I’m very grateful to the 62 people who agreed to be part of the book. Some I’d met or had interviewed before, but most didn’t know me at all. They were all so open and honest about their experiences, and motivated to help others. There are some well-known people in it, like Damien Oliver, Bev
Brock, Samuel Johnson and Red Symons, but many are regular people just trying to work things out.
Often it was the little things about grief that jumped out at me during the interviews. Robert Gropel lost his wife, Marisa, in tragic circumstances — she died of altitude sickness, in his arms, while they were climbing Mt Everest. Robert talked about how he wasn’t able to throw out Marisa’s conditioner bottle or old running socks. They’re the little things you might obsess over, like what to do with a wardrobe full of clothes. Robert is a very intelligent man who has climbed the highest mountains in the world, and yet those little things were also hard for him. It’s good to realise it’s normal to feel like you’re not coping emotionally, and even basic decisions can seem difficult. I think most people in the book would say that grief takes time.
Joseph is eight now and Heidi seven, and there’s so much Paul in both of them. Heidi is a clone of her dad and Joseph has a lot
of his mannerisms. We talk about Paul a lot. I want the kids to know all about their dad — his brilliant sense of humour, his kindness, and how much he loved them. They get a lot of that through Paul’s family and mates.
I’ve also packed away a lot of Paul’s clothes and belongings. These are for the kids to keep, when they’re older and when they’re ready.”
— Evonne Madden
Life After by Evonne Madden, published by Affi rm Press, RRP $35. Available from all good bookshops. * Half of the royalties of Life After will be donated to Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in memory of Paul Madden.
