Last night, Moshe and Sarah and I watched the footy. Carlton v Melbourne. Great game in that we won. Not so great because we still can’t kick straight. Oh well. There’s more east to go. Half time came, and our own Melbourne born and bred Olivia Newton-John (who I just learned is a Carlton supporter so we love her even more) promoted her kick-ass Cancer and Wellness Centre that she’s building out at the Austin Hospital. I must live under a rock, because I hadn’t heard of it before last night. However. I got quite inspired by her and her amazing project, and jumped up with a smile to do my bit and call up to donate to the $10mil she still needed to complete the thing.

I get on the phone, and the guy gives me his name and asks if I’ve called to give a single-time contribution. I said yes, I have, and if I could give you a million, ten million, I would. He said oh, thank you, and then he said something I wasn’t expecting at all. He said, would you like to give it in memory of someone? Oh, I said, yes. Ah, yes of course… ah… yeah… yeah, I do…

And then I couldn’t say another word. In my head, it went like this, only really fast:

In memory of someone?

Yeah, Moshe had…

no…

oh my god

oh my god

Dad!

yeah, in his memory

oh shit

shit!

oh my god

yeah, he died of cancer

oh shit

silence

to the guy on the phone: yeah, ah…

more silence, as I tried to speak through the lump in my throat again

I handed the phone to Sarah. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I heard her on the phone to the guy, giving my credit card number, and then he must have asked her for the name on the card, and she said, Mrs. – M- R- S, spelling it out for him. She realized what she’d said to him, and cupped her hand over her mouth, laughing kinda, embarrassed. No! no, no, she said. She’d been caught off guard a little too.

She finally completed the transaction, and got off the phone. Thank god she was there with me! I couldn’t go back in to watch the footy right away, so I sat for a bit at my computer. I looked on the website of the hospital for a bit, looking for ways I could contribute, I mean, in ways other than financially. I then remembered that WordPress has donation widgets, so I spent a bit of time looking through those, but none seemed right. Either they didn’t do what I wanted, or they did, but they hadn’t been upgraded for yonks, and weren’t right for my latest version of WP.

So, finally, I created my own widget. You can see it on the sidebar. The photo of Dad and me? Yeah, that’s it. If you click on the photo, or on the link beneath it, you go straight to the website page for the hospital, and you can click on their donate button. Please do. The whole of Melbourne needs this hospital to be built. Somehow, I don’t think any of us can escape being impacted by cancer any more, one way or another.