Wattle Day – the first day of Spring – and I’m back!

Life

It has been a very long time since I last wrote a post on this blog. It seems most of us moved to shorter form posting on places like Facebook and Instagram. They were lovely places in the beginning where we could connect with old friends, make new friends and exchange ideas and inspiration. But it has all changed especially with many of these platforms being absorbed by bigger entities and losing a lot of the soul of the communities they created with the idea of ‘marketing and selling’. It has become all about the money alongside losing some of the respectful community dialogue. There seems to be a lot of shouting and anger.

And so I have come back to my blog. I will post from here to my Instagram and facebook with links back to here. I have thought about this for a long time. I opened a substack but that is like starting all over again with no backstory. So here I am.

Life – Caring for my Mum and Dad

It has been four years since I last made blog post. At that time Covid restrictions were still in place and I recorded my Dad, Colin Perkins at the Anzac Day Service in our little street. Mum and Dad had moved in with us as Mum was really unwell and after a few months it was eventually found Mum had a rare cancer. After surgery and chemo she was very unwell and despite being declared cancer free after surgery she wasn’t, as it returned very quickly when she had a break from the punishing chemotherapy regime. She ended up with severe painful lymphedema in one of her legs and a blood clot from the leg caused a stroke leaving her with very limited little patches of vision.

For a highly intelligent curious person who was extremely visual this was both frightening and devastating. She recovered briefly from the stroke but then passed away in hospital about two weeks later on 5 February 2023.

It was a terrible time for her and the family. Mum was ready to go and we all accepted that this is when her life would end. Having cared for multiple people on this journey I was prepared and accepting but was not prepped for what happened to my lovely Mum in the process.

Mum had wanted to go peacefully but the ‘system’ within the NSW hospital system and the circumstances around what was happening to Mum, meant it did not happen that way. I still find it difficult and traumatic to think of that time and how terrible it was for her.

It is difficult to understand how there can be a hospital system without a fully staffed dedicated palliative care unit to assist both the person dying and their family to navigate end of life especially when a person’s dying is physically difficult for them. I think a well funded, dedicated unit of Doctors, nurses and counsellors should be within every single hospital. Although doctors not trained in Palliative care think they can assist a person dying it is most certainly not always the case.

Palliative care doctors and nurses are amazing, they are trained to assist the person dying and everyone involved in that journey and although we were able to access a little of that care within this hospital system designed to save lives, we saw the difference for my Dad who was completely cared for by the Palliative care staff assisted by GP’s and Home Care staff.

Mum was much loved by all the family and her many friends. She was the one who organised everything for everyone and taught us to be self sufficient, pragmatic but caring. She is so very much missed by us all.

A few weeks after Mum died, Dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. Dad was 87 years old and decided not to proceed when faced with the realities of what was a significant surgery and what that would entail including the risks. He had said he wanted to ‘just fade away peacefully and just go and see Mum’. He wanted to die at home with us and so the whole family set about to help him on this final journey.

I admit it was a sharp learning curve into palliative care at home as previously I had help care for family within a Palliative Care Unit, nursing homes and hospitals. At times it was a lot of hard work and stress but it was in the end so worth it.

Dad was very comfortable and told all the doctors and others he saw about how he was very comfortable and well looked after. He had his moments when it was a bit rough but they were a limited short time and passed quickly.

He slowly faded, life became days of reading, watching his favourite shows on television, daily visits from lovely home care staff, talking to our little dog, listening to music, sleeping, and just slowly watching life go by sitting on the deck or in the garden watching the birds and thinking.

He got his wish. On the 16 January 2024 Dad passed away peacefully at home. It was evening, the sun was just going down, the birds were in the garden outside his room and the kookaburras made their final call for him. He did just slip away peacefully at the end and was conscious up until the final couple of hours. He did just fade away as he had asked to be able to do.

After

Since then we have been readjusting to life. We went away for about six weeks travelling down to Melbourne via the Blue Mountains and Canberra, then across the Gippsland and Victorian coast back up the south coast and home to the north coast of NSW. We have been a few shorter trips since then as well.

Inspiration – Annemieke Mien

I had wanted to see the Annemieke Mien: A Life’s Work – A Retrospective at Gippsland Art Gallery as I have loved her work since the 1980’s. It was an absolutely fabulous exhibition of her work which is stunning especially in real life. I purchased her original book in the 1980’s and have always admired her skill and attention to detail across all of her works.

All I could think of is how much my Mum who was a dressmaker, tapestry, patchwork and craftswoman would have so loved to have seen this exhibition.

Along with the artworks there were cabinets of snippets of the works in progress and the process behind the work. Below are three photos I took at the exhibition.

If you ever get the chance to see Anemieke Mien’s work I would encourage you to go and see it, her work is exquisite.

I believe her work should be shown at the National Gallery of Australia, it certainly deserves to be seen wide and far. I must say this was an absolute highlight for me to be able to finally see this work and wonderful for the soul.

Genealogy

When Mum and Dad moved in I decided to finally organise all the family history and photographs they had gathered over many years. They had both been very keen about their family stories, where they had come from, and been to various reunions on both sides of they parents families.

So that was the start, then Mum and Dad started to ask questions and so I started to research answers for them, then it certainly snowballed!

It was also a project we could all share and talk about especially when I uncovered that Dad’s father was illegitimate! Most unexpected and lead to a lot of research and head shaking from both Mum and Dad as they said my great grandmother had been the kindest nicest gentle woman and they could not understand the circumstances she found herself in. Anyway you’ll have to read my Genealogy blog site to know more!

So now it seems I am also a Genealogist.

I have always been interested in history and Australian history studying it at school, art college and privately myself.

I enrolled in research subjects at art college so it was now a matter of transferring those skills and then finding where the resources are for researching family histories. They of course are different in every State and every country which make it both challenging, interesting and very frustrating. Sometimes I think it is a bit like the Australian railway line gauge wars between States where passengers would have to disembark from one train at the State border and board another train to continue their journey. Wallangarra at the border of NSW and Queensland was one of those stations.

My thoughts in pursuing Genealogy is also in terms of seeing it as a mental puzzle challenge looking for the pieces that fit together, not unlike the visual puzzles we do in solving or creating artworks. I had a dear friend pass away not long after my Dad from vascular dementia and so as I age I am aware of keeping my brain active and challenged.

Below is a link to the landing page of the various research projects for each of my family lines. I have only completed two which are public but some are also close to being made public. I say when I ‘fall off my perch’, an old saying in my family, at least the research won’t be lost in the back of a cupboard to be thrown out and lost because I was always saving it to write a book! So I share it freely.

Life and Art

I have had some health challenges and I have been working through lots of doctors and diagnoses, nothing serious just catching up with things and finding out some diagnoses that explains things I have struggled with.

I have had trouble with my hands for a little while and my thumbs have arthritis. This has made working on my artwork more difficult. I think I’ll leave that to the next post!

In the meantime here are some wattle photographs I have taken over the years and my artworks for today – they are older works, I am yet to share the new … so Happy Wattle Day and Happy first day of Spring!