A Landscape of Loss | Bob Carr on losing his life partner | Club Sandwich

Club Sandwich is recorded on Gadigal Land, home of the EORA Nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Always was, always will be. Club Sandwich is brought to you by Australian Unity Home Health and Care, helping Australian families keep their parents well, independent and at home for longer. Visit australianunity.comauclubsandwich. Welcome to Club Sandwich. Now, this is a podcast for you. If you are living in midlife and possibly entering that territory that is loss, whether it's the loss of one of your parents or a partner or a friend, I feel that midlife, it all starts getting very real and it is a huge country. We enter this, that is that territory of loss. My name is Sarah McDonald and today we have a very special guest on the podcast and it is Bob Carr. Now, Bob Carr is a former premier of New South Wales, former foreign minister federally in Australia, and he has written a book called Bring Back Yesterday. And the book is about the death of his beloved wife and constant companion of 50 years, Helena Carr, who died in his arms in 2023. Hello, Bob. Sarah, hello. Hi. This book came at a really useful time for me, so thank you so much because it is another country that we know we're going to enter loss and bereavement. Nobody is immune from it, and yet we always feel so unprepared. That is true. That is true. I remember one of my vivid memories out of the first days where we found ourselves in Vienna and where Helena died, was standing on a street corner looking across at a pharmacy that a couple of times she'd dived in and come out of. It just struck me that I'm not going to be seeing that anymore. This was within the first 48 hours of her losing consciousness. And I thought, this is a strange world. I've suddenly been banished to the world of bereavement. And I never thought about it, never speculated about it, but what is it? How bad does it get? How long does it last? These were questions that pressed on me. Yeah, well, it lasts a long time and you live with it for a long time. Just before we talk about it, tell us about Helena, because when you were the premier and. And I interviewed you many times at that time when I was working at the abc, she was a different sort of premier's wife. She had her own career, very successful in her own right, and she was just a quiet support beside you, but she didn't sort of do a lot of media and she had her own life, didn't she? And her own very successful career. Yeah. During the time I was leader of the party, opposition leader for seven years before becoming premier in 1995. She was running security printing, that's the printing of passports, bank documents, currency for travellers, checks for a big publicly listed company. And at the time I'd become Minister, she'd been appointed the same week she coincidentally had been appointed to the board of the company. In the early 90s, she and her business partner got into a company, a high quality commercial printer. So Helena was in charge of the contracts with customers, looking after the customers and looking after a workforce of 80 to 100 people. So that was her life, that was her life and I respected that and so, interestingly did the media. There was no excitement about why she wasn't doing some of the things that another Premier's wife might have been, might have done, might have opted to do with different careers behind them. And there's no sense that somehow it was improper for a Premier's wife to be in business. Well, it was kind of good that she was a new type of Premier's wife. And what was she like as a person? Well, the standout fact, as I said in the eulogy, was her smile and the happiness that that symbolized. She was a very happy person, she was very positive. She once said to me, stay away from negative people, I'll just make you unhappy. And she, the smile was her reflex, her most likely disposition. And everyone saw that she was. I just thought recently, thinking about a loss we encountered in a family, we knew that how gracious she had been in the company of this friend or acquaintance of ours who was to die recently, she was so gracious. And the other standout feature among many is that she never boasted. She had a lot to boast about, like being the first woman or the only woman in her year to do honours in Economics at Sydney University. She never mentioned that to me. And some big business achievements, merging companies, winding up companies in this space, security printing, winning contracts from overseas, boasting, boasting was not part of any of her. Right. She was quietly confident because you're a big personality, so she was quietly confident and didn't need to have that public facing role. And she was the light of your life, that smile that lit up your life. And she died very suddenly in Vienna in your arms of an aneurysm. And I think for you this book is about grief and you've been understanding that landscape of grief, but there must have been shock and trauma of that too, because it was so sudden. It was like your life just got ripped away in a Moment. Yeah. The irony was we just spent a perfect day together. We didn't stop to think this day had been perfect. There'd been so many like that. And we're in a phase of our life, mid-70s, when I think we both recognised, without discussing it, our biggest responsibility was to see that the other was secure and happy and healthy. I mean, that was our biggest responsibility. And there was never a time in these years of retirement or semi retirement when we went home together, she having picked me up at my office in the city and whisked me home and she cooked a very deft home cooked meal or there might have been a bit of takeaway. And then we simply watched TV before going to bed, listening to Philip Adams as we. Watching this succession. Yeah, yeah, and watching succession it was. And I thought, this is it, I don't wanna do anything else. This is the life we've got now. And it's an easy companionship when all the battles are behind you and you've reached a position, as I said, your main responsibility is just to look after the other one. You were happy and content and yes, she very much looked after you and you looked after her. I kept her life interesting. I was the entertainment director, as I said in the eulogy. She made the financial decisions. She was the general manager. Yes, because she was so good at things and she understood finances just instinctively. But I suppose there was an implicit promise when she decided she'd run with me, she'd marry me, that I'd be delivering her a life that was of course secure but also interesting. And I've thought about this a lot without her. And I found that she did say to a few friends, and then I met Bob and that was when I started having the conversations I wanted to have. And she said to another friend, well, both of us have got interesting husbands. So there was an implicit promise that I'd give her an interesting life. And there are a lot of thrills and spills and political leadership and great travel, fabulous history, art, opera. You did have an interesting life together. Yeah, well, I saw it as a life, as a. I always saw life as a learning experience, especially off the basis of what was an utterly medium mediocre education. And she. I discussed this with a friend last week. She didn't resist this agenda. If the agenda involved visiting American Civil War sites at the height of a Virginia summer, she was still going to be there, she was still going to be there and that was part of life with me. And she had a limitless appetite for the things I wanted to show her. Yeah, great partnership. Right. And then that just all gets taken away in a flash in that moment. And it's so deep and it's so vast and there's lots of things to talk about in that. But when you came home and gave that beautiful oration at her funeral, you were forever changed. Like, did you feel like a part of you because you'd been intermeshed for so long, for 50 years? And, yes, she brought the practicalities and you brought the adventure that a part of you had gone. Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. Not to be too literary, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in Love in the Time of Cholera, which is very largely a book about marriage, has got a quote that runs something like, when they'd been married for 30 years, they were parts of a single being together. They had survived the flashes of nastiness, the conjugal glory, survival against the odds, and they'd marveled at and been grateful for their incredible triumph over adversity. And I think Anyone married for 50 years is going to look at those words and think, well, that's the stability we reached. And then, of course, you're in the danger zone where the most unexpected thing can claim the life of one of the two of you. I remember when my father died and I told my mother, and it was like she got smaller in that moment, like a part of her had gone. And, yes, she rebuilt over many years, but I could just physically see that leave her body, that presence. And you lost weight very quickly. You're a slim man anyway, but you must have felt that so strongly. But then you, I think, were also probably in trauma. And so you just started walking after you got back home from Vienna with her ashes, you just started walking throughout Sydney, like long distances, like from the city to Maroubra, like 10 kilometres late at night. What was going on there? Well, what were the alternatives? The alternatives were to sit at home miserable. I certainly recruited a lot of friends. I just recruited them, booked them in so I'd see them. So you were busy. Yeah, to keep busy. But there were moments when it simply suited your mentality to commune with her, to remember her. I was even respooling the eulogy through my head and thinking of variations on it or drafting letters to her in my head. It couldn't have gone on forever. Your body and your spirit tires of it. But a psychiatrist might say that this is one response to trauma, the walking with a somewhat manic edge to it. Bit of manic, sort of like a madness and a mania to it. Yeah. But walking it out, getting home Exhausted and with all the memories of entering the home with her after an evening event was probably the best way. You do whatever it takes to survive, as someone told me, in a condition where every aspect of your life has been thrown up in the air by the loss of your partner and by the fact that, as you put it, you are diminished. And suddenly, as Geraldine Brooks put it in her book about the loss of Tony, her husband, Memorial Days is the title. Tony's death is now the biggest thing about her, and I understand that, and that's how I feel. And I think every bereaved person out of a partnership would think the same thing. Absolutely. And she had to go to a small island off Tasmania to be alone and kind of after the business of death, after the busyness, she needed to go somewhere alone and be in that landscape to really kind of go into her grief. And she found that enormously powerful. It's a great book and a brave thing, a very brave thing to do. Yes. It's not as if we get home after a long walk, thinking about the loss and communing with her spirit, his spirit, in her case. It's absolutely immersing yourself in his diaries and in a place where they had holiday. Mm. But for coming home to an empty house is just a. That's such a awful thing, isn't it? It's just so awful. Yeah, it's just so awful. I mean, in the fridge is the jar of honey that she had bought, that was. Had been opened before you went away. Their objects, every so many objects had an association with her. A little statuette of a white horse, a variation on Tang Dynasty style. She'd bought it. The receipt showed me she'd bought it somewhere for $200. But it was hers. She'd picked it, she'd bought it. But without the animating force of her personality, these objects had lost their force, their character. She loved driving. She taught herself to drive late in life and she enjoyed it. But there's the car in the garage. Like the clothes, her clothes, filling the cupboards. Or pieces of very modest jewelry that she loved hunting down in Indian jewelry shops she might find in a city, Sydney. So you live surrounded by reminders of her merry presence. But these things aren't the worst challenges one might face in life. Coming to terms with your partner, sinking into cognitive decline, losing your eyesight, as a colleague of mine is doing, as my former colleague is finding, being locked into long Covid. And you're conscious of that every day, you can't manage it in the way you can manage the morbid or nostalgic thoughts of a bereavement. Imagine the horror, the huge challenge of motor neurone for you or your partner. It's interesting, and I've reached this view that the nostalgic, the persistent nostalgic tug of the bereaved state is not the worst thing that can happen to you. And the loss of a partner isn't as bad as is the loss of a child. But I'm sure in those first few months you couldn't see that. That's the thing about grief. It comes in, you know, people talk about stages, but it's. Yes, it's in the front of your mind, yes, but it comes in waves and different perspectives, and you work through different phases of it, but there's not really stages. So you've come to that realization now, even though you've had that wounding and you know, you felt cracked and you felt that stabbing of grief when you'd look at a piece of jewelry or something of hers. But at least you had beautiful memories. And yes, you haven't had to face some of those other issues together that are so awful. And that's the thing, as I said, it's this landscape of loss that you talk about is one that the Buddha said this. Every family, you can walk into a home and every house will have loss. It's what everybody experiences. The dead are many. The dead are many. But you're never prepared until you go into that country and it forever alters you, and you don't understand what it's like till you're actually there. So I wondered, I have wondered whether I should be advising couples to schedule conversations along the lines of, we should sit down, we should talk about this. What is it going to be like for you if I went? If I went. So you never had that conversation? No. And Helena did not want to talk about. Acknowledge the existence of death at all. And there might have been something in a Chinese superstition about that, but I don't know. And her siblings don't know where it came from, but that was her. Her view. And I don't know whether I'd be much better off if we had had those discussions. I don't know whether in the end it would have made much difference. It would have prepared me in any way. She was a good manager, but it's not as if I inherited chaos in any way. In a. Did you ever try and have those conversations? And I mean, you had to chase her down the street to sign the will, right? So did you ever try and have those conversations? No, no. Cause I knew she would close it down. O and what you want is peace at all times. And the biggest feature of life is sheer busyness, management, the management of your existence. It's hard to find space to have an existentially important discussion, but it is something that a couple might think about and it couldn't do any harm. I think the other debate you have in your head is whether to have faced something over three months instead of it happening out of the blue. But I felt that we had implicitly communicated to one another how much life together meant to us. Just little touches, deft touches. And I'm certain she picked up in recent years the sense I had that this was a good life. Going home together, having dinner at home, watching tv, going to bed, even a bit reclusive. But after the years of Frog March busyness, that is a political existence. It's more likely you're out every night. There's a beautiful respite about it. So there's comfort in that for you. She would have known it. She would have felt it. You were content. Yes. And so even if you were more prepared, that's a great preparation, isn't it, knowing that. But it also makes the grief sweeter and more pure, less complicated. But it's still stabbing pain because you were so happy together, the last day embodied. I can bring back episodes just illumined by her big, happy smile. And one of them. I remember when I had been doing a workout and returned from the exercise room. She was in the vestibule of the gym waiting for me to resume our walks around Vienna before we went to see the opera that night. And she gave me a big smile, and it was such a warm smile. People think I'm retrospectively shaping this, but no, no, the smile said everything. It said, oh, here's my friend, returned our happy times, just walking around like a pair of kids walking the streets. We'll resume. And to me, it actually said more than that. It actually said, I like this time, this sort of time together in this late stage of our life. The smile said it, just as a hospital room conversation might have said it. So you don't feel there was anything left unsaid or anything like that, even though it was so sudden, which is. That's a source of comfort, isn't it? Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. It was just such a happy time. Anytime in those last days on this holiday in Vienna, we. If you're forced to make it explicit, we would have said, this life is Terrific. I just want you to be happy and secure and healthy. Let's just go on enjoying it and not thinking about that threat out there. I suppose in the back of my mind might have been this notion that we've got another five years or so in good health. She was certainly in good health. Yes, well, you were, and you're in good health too. But this is the thing. Death can come out of nowhere like it did. It seemed like she cared for you a lot and so then you were unprepared, perhaps, or tell me how prepared you were for just the practicalities of life that she did. She drove you around, she did the meals, shopping, like those sort of practicalities. I think for a lot of men, that's really a whole other complication. Yeah. And I quickly agree, it's disgraceful. I'm not blaming. I'm not saying it's disgraceful. I'm just saying that's how the division of labour works. And I've spoken to other men who agree. What a torture it is to learn to prepare edible food and how easily our partner had done it. Lena had come out of a food culture. And in the book, I've got a chapter, and I think the fondness shines forth from every paragraph in it about her upbringing in Taiping, Malaysia, 1950s, early 60s, before she very bravely decided to come to Australia and take her chances in a country where she didn't know a soul. And Taiping, among other things, had this marvelous food culture. So there was. On the family table, there was. There was satay, almost as a routine thought, but then Indian dishes and Chinese dishes. So she was obviously the cook. Yeah, coming out of that, watching her mother shop, seeing them cook in the markets. So you've had to learn to cook. I mean, look, my husband does the cooking in my house, so anything ever happened to him, I'd have to learn to cook a lot more, too. But there was also things like the Internet banking, like she did. Like, how many things did you have to learn while you were grieving? Turning on a. Using a washing machine and then the dryer, the negotiating with tradespeople for household maintenance, and then the whole decision to move. She would have taken over that. To move to an apartment and dealing with the reconstruction of the apartment and dealing with builders, you just have to do it. You just have to learn living skills. And friends are your assistants. My biggest advice for someone who's getting shocking news in the next few days is you'll have to recruit friends. You need to fill that diary with Visits by friends, you visiting friends. It'll be hard as you sit down at a table and there are two or three couples there and you walk home. I challenge you to avoid tears on that journey, knowing that there was a missing presence. And you say at times you feel jealous of other couples. Yeah, it's understandable. You see an old couple, of which I mean someone older than I, maybe someone in their 80s, in a street or overseas. On your travel, you see a nicely dressed big Italian man, somewhat portly, and his smaller wife. And their darting eyes indicate that their one thought is for the other and they've had a wonderful shared existence together. In his book on grief, Julian Barnes says, in Venice, now look at a bridge, one of the unremarkable little local bridges, and there's a man dressed as an advocate, a lawyer, by which he means he's probably got a heavy black coat, maybe a homburg style hat, crossing the bridge. And he sees him, white tears from his eyes. And there's nothing in the weather to explain, no biting cold to explain that. And Julian Barnes just leaves it there on the page, knowing that we will understand. The man is thinking of his lost partner and so brief people make their way in the world. But it just strikes me, thinking of some literary references here and there, that it's not an indefensible thing to say. Well, look, I'm going to live in that space. Yes. Like it's. If, you know, there's a, there's a sort of beauty in grieving and going through that, like that's paying homage to your partner. It's paying like it's looking after yourself, if that, that's okay. Like you can. But you do say that people, how do people go with that with you? You kind of sort of go, oh, sometimes people like, that's enough, Bob. Yeah, I think I've given you your time limit now. Yeah. I think you, you learn that you can't talk about it, you can't force it into conversation. And that's not an unreasonable thing for a friend to hint at. There comes a time when they're going to be thinking you must get on with it. Other people do it. And I've tested the limits by writing a book. The book was helpful to me, very helpful. It allays the sense of panic that stories about her, her very essence is going to be forgotten. She'll become an historical figure. Just the snow piling on top of an image from C.S. lewis, a grief observed. I would have liked in trying to understand what this thing bereavement was this thing that settled on me like a cloud or a mist, a fog. I would have liked to have been able to pick up a book that said as much, if I can say it in all modesty, as much as mine says about my experience and how it might echo in the lives of someone who's about to encounter this in the weeks ahead. Yes. Or someone whose parent is. Which I think might be listening to this, or, you know, I think in. In our life, no one's immune. And we often see people walking around, I think, or ourselves. And you feel like the walking wounded. I mean, a lot of people find grief very exhausting. I find it absolutely. I can just. The exhaustion all over my body. Which you didn't seem to have from the walking. But did you feel that at times, too, that absolute flattening. I felt, C.S. lewis, is. It's like slight concussion or slight drunkenness. Yes. Your brain doesn't work. Yeah. And I thought the analogy I made, it's like a metallic taste, not in your mouth, not in your stomach, but in your soul. But that passes. That passes. I think the thing that closes in and enables you to see a bend in the river where the view's different is probably the crowding in of life. You got to complete the renovation, finish all the removal arrangements. You've got to look after the estate she's left behind. You've got to do things that make her feel proud, that would astonish her. If she saw how you're learning the skills that she had brought to the partnership, she'd be like, well done. You've mastered the washing machine. And I think everyone. This is a generalization, but I think everyone in bereavement is thinking, would it have been better if I had died? And you run up against the fact that, well, would I be condemning her to the empty house? And might she have found it harder to deal with than I think, Harder than I found it? Do you feel. I mean, you're a very intellectual man. You've mentioned a lot of books, and they're all really useful. Joan Didion's book, the Year of Magical Thinking, everyone seems to have read. Yes, everyone reads that, too, but I think you're a really intellectual man. But do you feel her with you? Like, do you? Yes. Yeah, I do. So if I go for a walk anywhere, my thoughts are going to gravitate to her. And after these years, two and a half years, not into tearful recollections anymore, but they can be happy, positive. Just as the grief counselors advise Think of the good times, think of the happy times. And I think that indicates. I'm just thinking it out now. I think that indicates a progress that you can, you can go for a walk, your brain gravitates to memories of your lost friend, even just walking down to the beach, which is five minutes away. But that's not a torture as it had been in the early months of bereavement. And if she's dancing around you in the air, that can be a reminder that you're the one. The reason to go on living is very largely that you're the one person with all those rich memories and she's not gone while you're still being shaped by her love, which you've taken inside you. That's beautiful. Everything that we talk about on Club Sandwich, the acronyms, the assessment, the weighting, the emotion, the pain, the grief, it's all genuinely hard to navigate alone. And that's exactly what Australian Unity's home health and care team is designed for. They have a neighbourhood care model, a local team that gets to know your parents, builds a care plan around them and adapts as things change. It's not a call centre, it's not a one size fits all service. Real people in your parents community moving at the their pace. If you're trying to figure out where to start, their team can help you. Visit australianunity.comauclubsandwich hey, Sydney friends. Here's an event that I've been wanting to do for a long time. On Tuesday 2nd June, I'm hosting an evening with Dr. Catherine Mannix. She is an incredible doctor, author and global expert on tender conversations. The evening is called Stay for Supper. We'll have club sandwiches, we'll have bubbles and we'll have a real conversation about the questions you need to be asking your mum and dad. Now, if you can, every guest will take home Vera's Put the Kettle on guide. And yes, you can get copies of Catherine's book signed on the night. It's $35 at clubsandwich.community or search stay for Supper on Humanatics. It's going fast. Get them quick. So do you think you've got to that bend in the river of grief that you talk about? I'm not sure if I'd call it a bend in the river, but it's certainly, it's certainly, certainly the metallic taste in the soul is gone. I'm not adverse to living alone. I think there's a lot of people, perhaps more people are living alone in our society than living in families or with a single partner. And that can be. If you've got lots of interests. That's a dignified way of doing things. And as you get older, the focus on the health fills a lot of your day anyway. Yes. You exercise, you walk, you do Pilates, you meditate. Yeah. So you're really looking after yourself. Yeah. There's a lot to do there. And that honors. Again, I'm just thinking this out while I talk. That honors the spirit of the lost partner. Because she looked after you, now you're looking after yourself. Yeah. And you're taking the life where. Where you've got rich memories of the shared past. You're taking that seriously. You want to prolong it to the extent you can. I think this is going to be very helpful for people who have grief of a loss of a partner, but also those who have a parent who's died and they're looking after the other parent. Do you have any advice for them who are looking after a parent who has lost their life partner that. I mean, is it just about being present for them, just understanding just how. Yes. And getting them talking. Getting them talking. Exploring aspects of the life of the lost parent. I've learned more about Helena than I knew. So talking to friends, pressing for details. I think you should honor the fact that your surviving parent will be thinking a lot in their prefrontal cortex. There'll be a big image of the lost partner. They will feel diminished, reduced by. We were saying earlier, by the loss of the lifelong friend. And to be patient, there's no time limit on this, and we need to understand that there might be a time to get out the photograph albums and recall. So having space for that, I think is important and keeping them busy. And what about for you? You've got good friends, You've got people who help you out. Has it made you feel differently about death and the end of life? Well, I think about it all the time. And it's not death that intimidates, it's dying. And the debate about assisted voluntary dying is something an older person does listen to carefully. And thank goodness it's locked into place because palliative care did not. As I once had hoped when the euthanasia debate first reared up, it does not provide comfort. It means you're bloated, you're drugged, you're hallucinating, and you know there's no hope and you just want a way out. So that's. I'm glad. As someone who'll turn 79 this year, contemplates it. I'm very glad that that legislation's there. So am I. Yes, and James Valentine used it and made his final act one of public announcement about that. And there's still limitations to it that some people worry about. That's a whole conversation for another day. But yes, it is something very present in very many people's minds. Thank you so much for talking to us today. I hope it gives some idea to people who are living in this space now or who know that it's going to confront them. That's very confronting, but it's really important that we understand what could be somebody's experience. Everybody's different, but there is so much to learn from understanding what different people go through and how they enter this landscape of loss and grief and bereavement. So thank you. When Helena died, I wanted to find out how others had survived something and you've survived. Please send this episode to a friend or a family member or someone you know who is really suffering from grief and bereavement. Please follow us on podcast app that you are following or find us on another one and give us a follow and a recommendation there. You can email us and you can also go to clubsandwich.community for our events, what's coming up and more information about the show Notes. You are doing a great job. Remember, you've got them and we have got you. Today's episode was supported by Australian Unity Home Health Care, proactive local care that helps your parents stay independent and living well at home. Visit australianunity.com. Hey Clubbers, if you're lying awake at 3am and you're running through that mental to do list, mum's appointment, your kids, hecs debt, your own exhaustion and you're thinking houston, we have a problem. But you're not even sure what the problem is anymore. That's exactly why we've built Vera. This is a free 15 minute AI voice conversation that gives you a really structured and steady look at where your parent stands and how you're traveling as you care for them and everything else. Vera is grounded in real clinical frameworks, but it's going to feel like a pretty natural human conversation for you and it ends with a personalised guide. So instead of all that vague 2am anxiety, you've got some clarity and you've got some practical next steps. Access Vera 75. It's free, it's in the show notes and you can also find it at Vera Guide. Thanks Bob, that was incredible. Thanks Sarah. Thank you. Who thought you'd be so articulate. Thanks. Thank you.