JUST last week Annie McDonald was perched in her wheelchair in the spring sunshine at a favourite haunt, the beer garden at the Peacock Hotel in Northcote. It was a gorgeous afternoon, she was sipping Kahlua and milk and was in a reflective mood, as she had been of late.
On that Thursday, she asked Joyce Robinson, one of her coterie of loyal carers over the past 30years, what impact she had had on her life. What had Joyce learnt from their friendship?
She spelt the question out on her letterboard, with Joyce’s help - a painstaking process, despite their years of practice. ‘‘What haven’t I learnt from you, Annie?’’ was her friend’s response. ‘‘I learnt never to take life for granted’’.
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The next day Annie had a heart attack at home in Brunswick, and within hours she was dead, at 49. A week on, her presence in the house is still strong, and the two people who shared it with her for 30 years have that shell-shocked aura of the suddenly bereaved.
Since she came to live with them in 1979, the rhythms of life for Rosemary Crossley and Chris Borthwick turned around Annie and her 24-hours-a-day needs. Now they bump around the house like dancers who have lost their place, looking for a cue on what to do next.
Many will recall the story of Annie’s Coming Out, as recounted in the book she wrote with Rosemary and the movie Chris co-scripted.
Annie was the tiny girl with severe cerebral palsy, institutionalised since three, whose intellect was assumed to be as dysfunctional as her body until, with Rosemary’s help, she persuaded the Supreme Court she had the wit and maturity to decide her future.
It was a huge story. When Rosemary cradled 18-year-old Annie - then the size of a five-year-old and weighing just 16kilograms - and helped her fight violent spasms and guide her hand to spell out her wishes, who was really speaking? ‘‘It was like the Lindy Chamberlain case,’’ recalls one old friend. ‘‘Everyone had an opinion’’. The notion of intelligent life trapped in such a body distressed, and for many, including some of Annie’s family, beggared belief.
The court released Annie from St Nicholas’ Hospital - ‘‘hell’’, she called it - and she went home with Rosemary and Chris. There the book ended, but not Annie’s story. What happened next spills through the colourful rooms of their house.
After years of choking - and starving - on spoonfed hospital rations, in this house Annie ate and ate. She grew 45 centimetres after age 18 and her weight quadrupled. She lay on a trampoline in the back garden, listening to music. She floated in the bath. She studied - her Higher School Certificate, then university, earning a Bachelor of Humanities. She went clubbing with her carers.
She became an outspoken advocate on human rights - ‘‘if we keep babies alive, we have to give them a life worth living’’. The New Yorker once sent a reporter to interview her over a stoush with moral philosopher Peter Singer - who became a friend - in regard to the rights of the profoundly disabled.
The Age
