Another beautiful email from a friend of Helen's with some words for her coffin

Dear Natasha and Louis,

 

For a long time now, I have wondered what I would say about your mother as her death draws near.

 

I suppose the first place to begin is with you both. Your devotion to doing whatever you could for Helen, no matter how small, was everything that could be done to make her time comfortable and meaningful. For those of us not in Darwin, the blog has allowed us to share in your pain and anguish, but, until I read the recent e mail from a former colleague, I don’t think that I appreciated the personal cost to you both.  And like the colleague, I am sorry that I was not able to be more supportive of you both.

 

I have been thinking quite a lot about Helen in recent weeks. I tend not to throw out postcards that friends send me because they are happy reminders of them. So, I have been going through a number from Helen, some in English, others in French. All have Helen’s particular gift of making even small interactions personal, and an occasion for sharp, witty observation. All are written with that care for the right word, or the phrase that had just the nuance to describe a person. I recall one occasion when an American women was loudly berating her husband across a large dining room. Helen described her as “foghorning”. Who else would have thought of that?  This attention to words flowed into reports she prepared in children’s disputes. Always fastidious to ensure that people were listened to accurately and described fairly.  I will miss that most about Helen.

 

I wonder if that unformatted poem was written about the mid 90s as the result of certain events in the Family Court?  I can recall that it was her practice, when she had been away from her office at the Court, to go straight there on her return to Brisbane, and catch up on the correspondence and other papers that had arrived in her absence. I remember her ringing me one evening to say that she had just found a letter abolishing her job. No one had bothered to tell her. Not even a phone call. She was just left to find the letter. It was a disgraceful way to treat someone who had given so much to the Court. Certainly, the mood of the poem reflects my recollection of that time and some of the issues of which we spoke then.

 

So, they are my memories of Helen -  a wonderful observer of the human race and a passionate fairness for describing them. If there was room to put something on the coffin, perhaps it could be those words.

 

Thinking of you all,