Giving thanks - without the turkey

My parents happened to be in town a fortnight ago and for the first time in 10 years their visit to the State's capital coincided with the annual thanksgiving service for organ donors. The event has been going for 20 years, and my parents usually attend a service in regional Queensland, travelling for over an hour each way to get there. A bit of a hassle for those who dislike travel, but they would never dream of not going.


I’ve mentioned before that my father was very fortunate to have received a heart transplant almost exactly 10 ½ years ago.  Physically, he’s relatively well for a 72 year old man, but as a result of (well… whatever) he has vascular dementia, which is fast becoming his biggest health issue and the most challenging for my mother (his carer).


Our whole family, but especially my parents are eternally grateful for the generosity of the stranger and his/her family which has allowed my father many many years he would not have otherwise have had.  Which is why, each year, they attend the thanksgiving service, coordinated by Donate Life, to recognise the selfless acts of organ and tissue donors and their families.


Because my parents were here in Brisbane my brother and I were able to attend the service at the University of Queensland with them. It was the first time I’d attended and I was (more than) confronted by the fact that I hadn’t ever been before. After all, I too benefited from the anonymous gift, by having my father in my life over 10 years longer (to date) than I would have otherwise.


Of course I should admit at this point that I basically cried through the entire thing. It was beautiful but it was sad. Very bloody sad.


While my brother was parking I accompanied my parents into the venue. We shared a lift with another couple (most likely in their 60s). Given the tenor of the occasion, we also shared circumspect but comforting smiles. Amazingly, despite a crowd of about 1000 I saw them twice inside. And by then they had donned their green ribbons.


Green ribbons were provided to donor families; maroon ribbons to organ recipients. On seeing their green ribbon I felt immense sadness. Perhaps it was a distant relative who had inadvertently given generously, but I could not help but think it was their child they had lost. I clung to some hope that they had other children elsewhere unable to attend, and that they hadn't lost their only child.


People packed into the huge hall. The stage was beautifully decorated with fairy lights, candles and roses. A choir sat to one the side. As I looked around the room I was overwhelmed with sadness. I watched two girls in their late teens come in alone wearing green ribbons and wondered who they were honouring. I saw people sitting alone, felt their grief and tried to imagine who they'd lost. I felt both gratitude and guilt to be with the recipient of a maroon ribbon, rather than a green one.


The event ran smoothly. I cried when a lone bag-piper played Amazing Grace and again when country singer Melinda Schneider sang Wish You Were Here and later What a Wonderful World, with the choir. I cried when 20^th anniversary footage was shown to Wendy Matthews’, The Day You Went Away; a song which has continued to play in my head ever since. Constantly and relentlessly.
The first speaker was a mother of a 5 year old girl who died tragically several years ago. Through her devastation she took solace in the fact that 5 people have been given a second chance as a result of her family’s heartbreak; one for each year of her precious daughter’s life.


There was a moving speech from a woman who was the recipient of a double lung transplant. She was hospitalised and had given up all hope when the lungs became available. Her impassioned plea for us to make the most of our lives and appreciate each breath we take was heart wrenching. And yet, she was one of the lucky ones.


My mother leaned over to me at one point and asked if I thought that the family of my father’s heart donor was there. We looked at each other. The enormity of that the question was too overwhelming to contemplate.

• Australia also has one of the lowest donation rates in the developed world. In 2010, the Australian population had 13.8 donors per million people


• 40% of Australians do not know the donation wishes of their loved ones


• Around 1700 people are on Australian organ transplant waiting lists at any one time


• On average, people on the transplant list must wait between 6 months and 4 years


• In 2010, 309 organ donors gave 931 Australians a new chance in life, the highest in any year in the past decade


• When my father received his donor heart in in December 2000, fewer than 200 heart transplants had taken place in Queensland


• Although I joke that I'd like to be cryogenically frozen, I've registered as an organ donor and my family (more than any other) knows what that could mean to others.

I’m extremely grateful that I got the opportunity to go to the thanksgiving service with my family. I like to think I’d go in future.


Before the service started the Emcee told us not to worry about our tears or try to stifle our sobs. “We are all in this together,” he said, “no one here will judge you.” As I shed endless tears, I could see shoulders shaking and people comforting one another. He was right. We were one large family sharing each other’s grief and gratitude.


As we were leaving I again saw the couple from the elevator. My red-rimmed eyes would have been obvious, along with my father’s maroon ribbon. We smiled understandingly at each other as we went our separate ways.

WWAMT: What would Aunty Myra think?

It’s an embarrassing thing to admit, but a few years ago I bought a t-shirt (online of course) that said ‘What would Buffy do?’  Don’t get me wrong; I am not embarrassed by my love of the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In fact, the show’s writing in the early years (in my impressionable mind) is only rivaled by my other faves: West Wing; Deadwood; and Big Bang Theory.  But with the benefit of hindsight, buying a black shirt with orange print dripping across it wasn’t one of my finest moments.  I mean, it’s not up there with ‘dressing like a Trekkie’ but almost as scary.

I’ve always assumed the "What would Buffy do?” quote came from one of the episodes and can almost imagine her Scooby gang colleagues, Willow and Xander wondering exactly that.  But my extensive research (Google again) reveals it to be the name of some spin-off book about the series.

A similar quote appears in The Jane Austen Book Club (What would Jane do?), so it possibly didn’t derive from Buffy and may have originated elsewhere.

My ignorance aside I find myself often struck by a variation on the quote: What would Aunty Myra think?  WWAMT? Meaningless to everyone but me, the words sometimes offer me the jolt I need.

I was stuck twice by these thoughts last weekend and both times it was in response to songs playing on the radio. The first song was Dirty Talk by Wynter Gordon.  I actually downloaded the song from iTunes a little while ago so listen to it regularly.  And although I mentally sing the lyrics on my commute each day, it wasn’t until I was sitting in my car at 6.20am on a Saturday morning that they hit home:

Blindfold, feather bed,

tickle me, slippery,

G spot,nasty pose,

in a video,

love machine, by myself,

climax,hot wax

S&M on the floor, I like it hardcore…

I might have forgotten my shock at the radio station’s choice of programming, until I was again in my car to travel to the grocery store and Kanye West’s Runaway came on:

Let’s have a toast for the douchebags

Let’s have a toast for the assholes

Let’s have a toast for the scumbags

Every one of them that I know

By then it was about 9am. On Saturday morning when parents are usually driving their 10 year old kids to cricket.  Or ballet or football or similar.

Now, I’m no ingénue: in fact I swear like a trooper and am pretty hard to shock.  But occasionally I am jolted to do a bit of a stocktake.  My barometer used to be my 14 year old niece and I would ask myself if what was before me was something that I would want her watching or listening to or reading. But more often than not now, my yardstick is my Aunty Myra.

She was actually my great Aunty Myra, and she died in 1991 aged 91 years old.  That means she was actually almost 70 years old when I was born.  My mother used to tell me that Aunty Myra and her husband were already retired when she met them.  They were always ‘old’ to her.  Which means they were always ‘ancient’ to me.

Aunty Myra was old school.  Not a fuddy duddy and not really prissy.  She grew up on a farm, so was hardly a pretentious girly girl.  But she was most certainly a different generation.  She was older than my grandparents and (unlike them) lived in my hometown.  As a result – I was subjected to (at least) weekly visits until I was old enough for my non-attendance excuses to sound even vaguely convincing.  Her children lived elsewhere and weren’t the most attentive of offspring, so my parents did everything for Myra and her husband. (I should mention that when I returned as a young adult, I willingly visited her in a nursing home before she died - so I'm not all bad - surely.)

I never saw Aunty Myra wear trousers as she considered them improper. She always wore unattractive nylon dresses with a petticoat or singlet and bra strap falling down her arm as her body shrunk before my eyes. She used to bake for my father and made him suet puddings, jam pastries and tripe. She hid money in handkerchiefs and biscuit tins. She liked bingo and used to buy a gold lotto ticket each week. I try to imagine her now, in a world where everything’s online and digital. I’m not sure how my parents will transition from a video recorder to a DVR, let alone someone a whole generation older!

So it is Aunty Myra I think of as I sit watching shows on television (like my faves, Deadwood, or Entourage etc) where the f-word and c-word are dropped liberally and indiscriminately. It is Aunty Myra I think of when I hear swear words thrown about on commercial radio stations; and Aunty Myra I think of when I see music videos with scantily clad gyrating women.

They don’t shock me, but they would sure as hell shock the bejesus out of my Aunty Myra. WWAMT? I wonder at these times.

I tend to assume that television and radio programmers make sensible choices about what they play and when. I’m sure that’s why we have rating classifications. Which is why I was surprised to see Weeds showing on Oz cable television at 3pm during a weekend some time ago, or the Robbie Williams' Come Undone music video showing the aftermath of a party and a woman on the bed with snakes screening as I'm eating my morning toast.

I’m all for free speech, not a big believer in censorship and don’t believe I’m judgmental, but it doesn’t stop me from sometimes wondering: What would Aunty Myra think?