Peggy Joan Russell-Jones - Autobiography

Following the death of her husband of 33 years, Colin, Peggy spent her time at the family residence in Deakin. There she pottered around producing more manuscripts and artworks, and holding exhibition after exhibition.

Finally, however, her health got the better of her, and following a fall and subsequent hospitalization, she was admitted to the Fred Ward Gardens Nursing Home in Curtin, ACT. There she passed away peacefully in her sleep on 12th August, 2016

Close friends and relatives attended a small funeral at the Norwood Park Cemetery 23rd August 2016.

Obituary Given at the Funeral of Peggy Russell-Jones Norwood Park Chapel Service

Tuesday 23^rd August, 2016

A Celebration of the Life of

Peggy Russell-Jones

28^th October 1926 – 12^th August 2016

Obituary given by her son, Gregory John Russell-Jones

My Mum,

Peggy Russell-Jones

Several of you have known mum for as long or even longer than I have and also have known her in many different guises wearing many different hats. Hats which were often a feature of her life. Mum was a very organised person and typical of mum even wrote her obituary a long time before she had dementia and so a long time before she passed away.

The obituary is rather long, but I would just like to read a couple of quotes from it that describe mum, as she saw herself.

At the end of the obituary mum quotes:

“Finally, I am a very ambitious, single-minded person. Time is my enemy. I have always felt pursued by time. I like to begin work at 9 am. I am never happier than when I am writing or painting. I get a sensuous feeling as my pen moves across the page. I feel totally happy, resolved as a person, when I am working”. End of quote.

This may explain why mum never really got to be comfortable with computers, nor why perhaps she didn’t want to become comfortable with them.

Mum was generally right about everything and so too was she right about time, as it was the ravages of time that eventually got mum in the end. Perhaps in the end she didn’t have the strength to keep running from time.

Mum’s quote is also quite interesting in that I remember asking mum about how she saw her life and her achievements and at that time she told me that she was very happy with what she had achieved in life and really had no regrets about how she had lead her life and what she had managed to achieve. It may also explain why mum managed to fill her life with her works, and in fact they were often spread throughout the house, particularly on the dining room table and in her studio. She always seemed to have a little mound of papers beside her chair, which were part of her current literary creation.

Another quote from mum’s obituary:

“I think I am very lucky to have had parents who believed in education. To have had the wonderful University experience. To have married a super-charged, optimistic person and have had three beautiful children who now work in jobs which they like”.

Of course, we children cannot but agree with this. Mum did however also greatly appreciate her early interactions with her grandchildren and this is perhaps no more apparent than in some of the pictures that will be in the slide show at the end.

What mum does not elude to in her obituary is that she also had a quirky sense of humour, and perhaps some of the happiest moments that I can remember with mum, were when we would all be around the dinner table recounting events of the day and telling jokes. Many are the times when we would all be laughing sometimes with tears of laughter in our eyes. I can also remember her exclaiming after many such events “Oh Julian”, who was usually the instigator.

We all know that mum was very creative and also curious, but one thing that became apparent in her later life was that she also like to travel, and being quite competitive by nature like to travel more than her kids. This meant that we had the feeling that if we ever went anywhere, mum would have to go and do another trip to make up for it.

As time (which was always her enemy) passed mum managed to combine both her love of painting with her love of travel, much of which involved frequent trips to the Australian “outback” to more and more isolated places. Some of this also involved mum having to camp overnight in these places miles from anyway.

Now we are not sure, but perhaps this should have alerted us to her ultimately developing dementia. I mean here was a person, who swore that she never really liked living in outback Queensland, who had been brought up in the centre of civilized Sydney and who we understood hated camping, and yet was constantly going back into the dry red-dust that is Central Australia, to sit out in the sun, only protected by her hat, breathing in the dry dusty air, and painting. Many have said that you would have to be crazy to be a painter, and perhaps they are right.

Mum also liked the beach, and many of our holidays were spent down the South coast where she eventually bought a holiday beach house. We would spend countless hours wandering around rock-pools and exploring beaches up and down the coast. During this time mum and dad would always be able to identify this or that creature in the pools. The coast house was a central meeting place for the family and many Xmases were spent there with her children and grand-children. These experiences must have had a lasting impression on mum, as finally when she left her home of 40 years and was admitted to Fred Ward Gardens she would tell us that she was down the coast visiting friends and had just come back from swimming.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see mum walking along the beach at South Durras and hopefully always will be able to do so. Maybe it truly was the “sands of time” that finally caught up with mum.

Bye mum, and thank you for bringing so much to my life.

Reading by Jane Russell-Jones

So is Woman

Jane Bradhurst

Part 1. The division of the ego

From the moment her child is born, woman is never hereafter totally her own person. Part of her intrinsic self, her essence, flows into the new life. Like a river, it is divided - the main torrent still flowing, but a separate stream exists, coursing gently at first, then more strongly, which will not be denied.

It is after this that woman, never ever, can gather all her forces under one umbrella. She is splintered, pulled in diverse directions, by the new life she has created. It is not just that the physical needs of the new life require attention, but that her very consciousness is divided, existing as a divine spark in the new life. She is in touch almost telepathically, with elastic extensions of herself.

Through out her life, Peggy was passionate about the bush and wild-flowers, and she always wanted to go to Western Australia to visit the Wreath Flowers. Following her death, her son, Gregory and wife Helen, traveled to Western Australia. We include some pictures, as a tribute to her passing. RIP.

The Magnificent Wreath Flower

Wreath Flowers Lining the Road Western Australia

RIP MUM