practical living
Looking back
The biography service helping
palliative patients leave a legacy.
By Conor Burke
N
orm wasn’t having a bar of it.
Talk to a stranger about his life?
No way. What did he want to tell
someone all of his secrets for?
“My life is very boring,” he told his
wife of 25 years, Christine. Undeterred,
Christine sought the help of the volunteers
at palliative care services in Mount Druitt
Hospital, NSW, and they organised a
meeting with a biographer anyway.
“When the gentleman arrived, he
introduced himself, and Norm is sitting in a
chair, and he said, ‘And what do you do?’
“The man said, ‘I’m Don. I’m here to write
your biography,’ and Norm says, ‘No, you’re
not.’ And he just went off, and he was
adamant,” Christine remembers.
Norm was a stubborn man. She tells me
his ‘no’, normally, meant ‘no’.
22 agedcareinsite.com.au
“I said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ and left
the room,” she says. “About 10 minutes
later I came back, and Norm’s lying in his
recliner, Don’s sitting on a chair in front of
him, there’s a dictaphone on Norm’s lap,
and they’re both chatting and laughing.
“Don stayed for about an hour, and after
he left, Norm said, ‘Oh, I forgot to tell him
this and this.’ I said, ‘Well, write it down.’
And he couldn’t wait for Don to come back
a week later.”
Don is Don Stewart, a former nurse
in mental health and now a volunteer
biographer. He remembers that first meeting
with Norm much the same way – in what
was only his second biography experience.
“I was anxious because, well, I’m anxious
every time I meet a new person because
you do not know how it’s going to go,” he
tells me.
“And then Norm says, ‘I don’t want to
do this. No, no, no.’ I thought, oh well, this
is going to go nowhere. But I just stayed
there talking to him for about 10 minutes
and all of a sudden the story started – and
six sessions later we had a book,” he says
with a chuckle.
Family
“I was born in Mitchelton on the 2nd
of September 1931 to Dorothy Maude
and Albert Victor Green. I was one of
11 – six boys and five girls. The oldest
was Nancy, then Iris, Albert (Digger),
Dorothy, Ivy, Ronnie, Gordon and then
me. So, I would be eighth down. They
had Roy, Carol and Noel after me.”
The Western Sydney Local Health District
(WSLHD) biography service is based on a
similar program that runs at St Vincent’s
Hospital, also in Sydney, and the project
was driven by Kylie Clark, volunteer
manager of the district’s Supportive and
Palliative Care Services.
“I worked in a nursing home,” Clark says.
“It was one of my first jobs, and ever since