Book Review
Someone you know - A friend's farewell
Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli
ISBN: 1862542716; 1991; 188 pages; Wakefield Press, Adelaide;
Peter Lumb
School of Nursing, University of South Australia, Underdale Campus, SA
This is such a personal, intimate story. Jon is a gay man with an Adventist background. While we know him he teaches biology in a Catholic school in Adelaide. Maria, the author, is heterosexual and a married Italian-Australian. Maria writes about her friendship with Jon, and about friends and family who are important to them both, in the years prior to Jon's 'farewell' due to AIDS.
The intimacy is heightened as Jon and Maria drive around Adelaide, and visit Jon in homes in Unley and Sturt Street. Kevin, Jon's erstwhile partner, was a nurse at the RAH. Secondary teachers and nurses drift in and out of the story and on occasions we move to Sydney.
Much of the book is dialogue. It feels real. There is some interior monologue, and Maria doesn't evoke place strongly. The focus remains strongly on feelings and relationships built up in the school staffroom, waiting rooms, over meals, in homes, during walks, on car journeys and soon. I found the story involving and very moving, without it being complex. Both Jon and Maria were conscious of social labels and refused to accept their confines. Social 'niceties' came to mean so little in the face of their love, and for the overwhelming issues of facing death.
In a wider context the book forms a part of two social changes which seem relatively widespread in our society and both are interconnected. The first change is that the experience of dying with AIDS appears to have helped create a re-commitment to dying with dignity and with family and friends. Perhaps it is because those whose sexuality has placed them at the further margins of society, are those who have sufficient distance from it to see more clearly society's needs, and in some cases claim the initiative, or at least support the reforms.
Certainly 'clients' of the system, like Jon, and his carer/friends, are active in shaping the climate and function of the hospice.
Jon dies in a hospice close to the heart of Sydney's gay beat. And while his death is carefully dwelt on, is awful and awesome, it is with the support of friends, and to some extent family. Maria, for example is with him till the end and Jon's parents are in a room down the corridor. Maria, Kevin, another friend and a crowd of others share a Saturday night together, in the hospice, before Jon's Sunday morning passing. The nursing staff are the technical and emotional supports in this case.
The second change confirmed here is that of men as carers. Gay men have established a movement whereby many of those suffering with AIDS are cared for by a crowd of friends, as they proceed towards their 'farewell'. Here men are demonstrating their abilities to nurse and to care, when the constraints of male socialisation are thrown off, or male hetero stereotypes denied to them. It may often be gay men leading other men, to recognise their feminine attributes.
Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli does more than document through the social, emotional and physical pain of a dear friend dying with AIDS. The book is significantly autobiographical. It is about Maria, a daughter, a teacher, a wife, and in the course of the book (which spans about 6 years) a mother. It is her journey as a young woman intimately confronting death for the first time.
It is also a biography about Jon, their friendship, his other loves, his life. his teaching and his eventual death. I thought the author held the balance between the autobiographical and biographical in neat balance. This is a warm, serendipitous friendship. Maria reveals herself as a young bon vivant, facing new life and death, and struggling to integrate both.
It is also a straightforward book, likely to disarm the cynic. It cuts away stereotypes on many fronts. The school where Jon was employed is seen as caring (although Jon was unable to allow most staff and all students, to know of the nature of his illness while living). A rich diversity of Italian-Australian family life is revealed gay and heterosexual people appear to relate without insurmountable tensions, and even the health-care industry comes out roses.
The author 'cuts up' the narrative by juxtaposing different times. On a few occasions I was momentarily stranded. However the story never lost its hold on me.
Are we led astray by the media and our own fears, or when confronted by the dying and eventual death of a lovely human being, are all, whatever their social labels, capable of recognising the obvious - the bonds in our humanity? I wonder where Jon's parents are now?
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