Dear Inner Circle,

In an unusual week, I’m writing this note from Adelaide. The next few days we’ll spend catching up with my dear old Mum. Visiting a dementia ward is a difficult exercise. I can’t help but think that modern science is making us all live too long. In Mum’s ward, few people want to be there. Most want to live in a life now long gone and only dimly remembered. One dear old lady who is 105 in Mum’s place said to me once, “Growing old is not for wimps”. Another lovely old lady in her nineties is a bit inclined to find male visitors attractive and she will confidentially tell them, “I’m going to have your baby.”   Although Mum doesn’t remember who I am, if you put her in front of a piano, she can play beautifully and sing all the words to the songs she loved years ago. It will be sad when that skill is lost too. The little frail frame is still my Mum. She’s still gentle and kind. She still has a tone of voice that belonged to my Mum. She still looks around her and finds plenty to love even if it all feels unfamiliar to her. I will treasure our time this week even though it will reaffirm my sense that there are much worse things in life than death. There is a time to go and when Mum’s time comes, I’ll celebrate an awesome life and celebrate a long-awaited release.

After conducting a wedding on Monday, I jumped onto a plane to Melbourne and from there drove to the Murray Shire just over the river from Echuca. For some years now I’ve been an Australia Day ambassador which means I travel to a rural community and share in their celebrations for Australia Day. It’s an honour and a joy to enter into the life of a place that is so different from Kings Cross and The Wayside Chapel. A few hundred people gathered in a beautiful park in the land of the Yorta Yorta people. As I was speaking a massive truck drove past and a pig on board made such a loud squeal that it shocked me for a moment. Someone yelled out, “I bet you don’t get squealing pigs in trucks in Kings Cross.” It got a good laugh. Actually we had quite a few laughs as we celebrated a “warts and all” Australia but affirmed with each other that the best citizen is one who constantly ponders, “How can I help?”

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