Seniors Celebrating Lasting Friendships
This exhibition gave testimony to the enduring friendships people enjoy. It highlighted the value of friends in the lives of older people and captured the essence of these friendships through written expression and studio portraits.
The exhibition featured ten sets of friends who were selected from ‘The Seniors Celebrating Lasting Friendships’ competition held in Mental Health Week October 2005. Participants were asked to write about a close friend who had made a real difference in their lives, why they valued this friendship and what support it had given them over the years.
Among the portraits and testimonials in the exhibition you will read of life long friendships. Enduring friendships between mothers and daughters; between sisters; husband and wife; between neighbours and between carers who supported each other through the loss and grief of their spouses.
This exhibition reminds us how essential friendship is to us all, and highlights how necessary it is in the lives of seniors.
Warringah’s Aged Services organised the project, Council’s Centennial Committee provided the funding for the photography and Steve Cummings (local photographer) took the charming portraits.
Please click the links below to view each photograph and accompanying text.
Mary by Sadie Simmons (1st Prize Winner)
Ann by Lois Singer (2nd Prize Winner)
Catherine by Pam Bayfield (3rd Prize Winner)
MARY
by Sadie Simmons (1st Prize Winner)
Friendship is an essential part of life. ‘Best friends’ are needed to share our experiences – both daily pleasures and sorrows.
Mary became my friend in our tertiary days. We met in 1940, sixty-six years ago, when we joined the same choir. This month we are still enjoying music together as we are subscribers to Opera House concerts. One of us lives at Castlecrag and the other at Dee Why. We are both widows in our eighties. We met our husbands when we were studying. We all liked music and it was one of our recreational pleasures.
My husband, Geoff, was an Anglican minister and he performed the wedding ceremony of Mary and Lin. Similarly, he both christened and performed the marriage ceremony of each of their children, as he did for ours. Thus, before long we had become quite a clan.
Anniversaries and holidays produced many events too numerous to mention. Both families have had their ‘ups and downs’ however they remain our chief ‘supporters’ and ‘transporters’.
Life has its flows of births, marriages and deaths. These days Mary and I remember our past, celebrate the present and look forward to the future. The happy and sad moments we have shared have helped cement our friendship. The richness of fellowship has friendship as its base. No wonder that the celebrations we have together are so precious.
How much more time have we to be true friends I wonder? Perhaps others wonder too.
ANN
by Lois Singer (2nd Prize Winner)
My enduring friendship with Ann Dalton has spanned 25 years.
We enjoyed a wonderful relationship meeting when our children were little. With no immediate family close by we quickly became each other’s “family”. We are true friends that can walk into each other’s homes, and raid the fridge without recrimination. Whenever I have a party Ann arrives early to help cook and stays late to help clean up. I know that she will always be there, whatever the emergency.
Ann arrived in Australia, a bride of 19, with her husband, Brian. They recently celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. Proud to be a “$10 Pom”, she is even prouder to call herself “true blue”. She quickly produced two spectacular Australian children and, with a young family, went back to school to do her HSC, completed a Science Degree and later completed her Masters. She recently retired from CSIRO but not before gaining her PhD. Whenever I am too tired to complete a task I think of her and gain inspiration and strength.
I am proud and lucky to have her as my closest friend. She has stood beside me through sickness, loss of my parents and recently the death of another precious friend from breast cancer. She is always calm, never judgmental, a great listener, ready to give advice but not bothered if it isn’t taken. I would never tell anyone that her real name is “Beatrice” not “Ann”, well not until now.
Now she has faced all her mental challenges she is enjoying some physical ones. Last month she completed the “Oxfam Trail Walk” (100 km) in an over 60s team, raising $5000 for charity. I find her achievements, true grit and overwhelming loyalty awesome – my friend – Dr Ann Dalton.
CATHERINE
by Pam Bayfield (3 rd Prize Winner)
I have always valued friendship. All through school I had to have a best friend, someone to be able to share the ups and downs and someone with whom to go out. It was hard keeping friends as my family moved with my father’s job and I was always saying goodbye.
When I settled in Sydney it became easier to make friends and keep them. Many of the friends I made through playing tennis I have today. In retirement I found a love of writing and I met Catherine at the Manly Community College doing the same writing course. We hit it off straight away and had the same sense of humour and love of writing. Our friendship has grown over the last five years and Catherine is the one I phone when something exciting has happened or when I have a problem. I listen to her sound, sensible advice and she doesn’t mince words if she feels strongly about a subject. We belong to the same writing groups so we see quite a bit of each other.
Last year I had a bilateral knee replacement and Catherine gave tremendous support during that time. I really appreciated her visits to hospital as she always cheered me up, brought flowers and a good book to read. My long convalescence was assisted by the support of all my friends and for that I will always be grateful.
I hope I gave Catherine a shoulder to cry on when she went through her son’s separation last year. Life is more rewarding if there is someone at the end of the line who will listen, offer words of comfort, advice, support and of course friendship. I have all this in bucket loads with Catherine. She is a true friend.
CLEO
I have had a special and devoted friend for 60 years. We were young ‘teens’ who met in a social club and instantly connected. We played sport together; went to church together; went to dancing together and in our ‘twenties’ went overseas separately!
Both our lives seem to have followed a pattern – we ended up in the same country, same city and eventually made unfortunate marriages. However, we each had a child and eventually both boomeranged back to Oz with our babies and became sole parents. We each bought a home and now enjoy being grandparents, living in Warringah and Manly.
We are as close as ever. We have shared so much during the years – highs and lows – health and sickness – holidays – tears and laughter but above all – love and gratitude for our enduring friendship. We both thank God for each other.
ROZ
Like all 80-year-olds, I have had many close friends in my life – all of whom have made a significant difference to my life. But my best and closest friend is Roz. The woman who became my wife and help-mate, and who is a deep and understanding companion in sickness and health.
Roz is also the devoted mother of our three wonderful children.
Roz and I met and married in 1963. I was a 39-year-old ‘out of work’ actor and ‘odd job man’ in the South African Theatre. When we met I was 15 years Roz’s senior, and considered myself a confirmed bachelor. Beautiful young Roz was the 24-year-old physiotherapist who treated me for the injuries I had received from a vicious mugging. I had been attacked by a group of ruffians who had robbed me and left me unconscious on the sidewalk. The next day I attended the local medi-clinic and my wounds were treated by Roz. The sweet concern and the gentle touch of this ‘angel of mercy’ restored my battered countenance in a matter of days.
I took her a bouquet of flowers and made a date with her. This started a friendship and romance between us that led within a short time to wedding bells, newfound happiness and bliss.
Roz and I have been together for 43 years and ‘it ain’t a day too much’. I value our friendship greater than all else in the whole wide world. Roz has enriched, and continues to enrich, my life on a daily basis.
