I miss Mum, I always will
Jack Georgiades was just 11 when his mum Elisha died of ovarian cancer. Death stalked his family three years in a row. Now 20, he thanks his mum for teaching him resilience in the face of immense heartbreak
At just 11 years of age, Gold Coast schoolboy Jack Georgiades broke our hearts. After losing his 36-year-old mum Elisha Neave to ovarian cancer – a tragic consequence of her family’s hereditary BRCA2 gene mutation – he put on a brave face to still play in his under-12s AFL match because “Mum would want me to”.
Georgiades, now 20, who was nine when his mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, is all too aware of the terrible toll this gene mutation has had on his family.
All the women in his family had or have the high-risk BRCA2 gene fault, leaving them much more susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer.
Elisha’s great-grandmother, great aunt and grandmother all died of breast cancer by the time they were 50.
Her mother – Georgiades’ grandmother – Claudette Neave, was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 49 and she would ultimately succumb to the cancer in April 2015, at age 70. Tragically, this was just a year after Elisha, her youngest daughter, died in April 2014.
In May 2013, the family had also suffered the loss of Elisha’s father Colin Neave, 67, to pancreatic cancer.
And so for three horrifying years in a row, the Neave family was devastated by loss to cancer with Jack Georgiades losing his granddad, then his mum, then his grandma who were his three primary carers for most of his young life. Elisha, a single mum, lived with her son in her parents’ house.
Elisha’s sisters Chrissy Keepence, 57, and Veronica Neave, 55, who have the BRCA2 gene fault, have both had preventive surgeries of radical hysterectomies and double mastectomies. In 2009, Veronica wrote a book, titled Pieces of Me, about her family’s genetics and her decision to have preventive surgery.
All three sisters were then subject of a 2012 ABC documentary of the same name. Hauntingly, the program shows Elisha, who wanted to have another child, choosing to wait to have the surgery. Time, as it would turn out, was not on her side and she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 34.
While cancer and heartbreak have circled this family relentlessly and Elisha’s story – and that of her family – is shocking and incredibly sad, it is also one of strength and resilience.
Jack Georgiades, who moved to Perth to live with his father, Joe Georgiades, two weeks after Elisha passed away, is now in his second year of an electrical apprenticeship. He has a year-long girlfriend, Amberley Parker, 19, he has future ambitions to be a firefighter as a “hands-on way to help people’’ and he still plays AFL as a forward for Trinity Aquinas Amateur Football Club in Perth.
Georgiades has also maintained a loving and close relationship with his Queensland family, most recently visiting in June after a long spell of not being able to travel due to Covid restrictions. He also remains close to Brendan Hopp, who was Elisha’s partner.
Georgiades says he still feels guided by his mother and recently had a tattoo etched on his left arm symbolising the significance she had, and continues to have, on his life.
Designed by Georgiades, the tattoo features praying hands symbolising his mother’s religious faith, a blue ribbon for ovarian cancer and a dove representing hope, love and peace – three qualities Elisha worked hard to instil in her son.
“I think about Mum a lot; all the time really,” Georgiades says.
“When I’m struggling with something, it feels like she is coming to me to tell me everything’s all right … when something is hard and difficult in my life, I feel that strong connection with her. I do feel like she guides me. It helps me get through whatever I’m going through.
“In the later stages (of her life), the way she was trying to prepare me was pointing me in the direction of love and faith and family – be with your family, have close relationships, be honest and trustworthy. Everything that she was, the sort of person she wanted me to be, she was trying to instil in me while she still had time.”
Georgiades also credits his mum with teaching him resilience and a way of looking at the world that stood him in good stead to face the tragedy and upheaval in his young life.
“It definitely wasn’t easy losing Mum and moving states. I didn’t want to move to Perth; I didn’t want to leave my family and friends,” he says. “But Mum taught me resilience and never to say. ‘Why is this happening to me?’ Because if it wasn’t happening to me, it would be happening to someone else,’’ he says.
“I didn’t really have the world to blame from that perspective so I didn’t have a going-off-therails phase in my life. I accepted what had happened for what it was and tried to make the best of things going forward.”
The BRCA gene mutation – that stands for
Breast Cancer susceptibility – came to international attention when American actor Angelina Jolie revealed she carried an inherited BRCA gene fault which put her at significant risk of developing ovarian and breast cancers.
Writing in The New York Times in May
2013, Jolie said her doctors estimated she had an 87 per cent risk of breast cancer and a 50 per cent risk of ovarian cancer and described how she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy. She would later also have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.
While the gene fault is rare, Jolie’s highprofile disclosure led to what has been dubbed “the Angelina effect’’ with a spike in the number of women being tested for the mutation.
The BRCA gene can also be passed on to men who can have higher susceptibility to breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers, as well as melanoma. Men can also pass the gene fault on to their children.
Georgiades decided to be tested for the mutated BRCA gene at the end of last year. He says he had resigned himself to believing he had the gene but the test found he is negative.
“I did the test just to know for myself … I wanted to be on top of that for my own health but also knowing what it meant if I wanted to have kids in the future,” he says.
“I had sort of come to terms with the fact that I did have it. I was trying to confirm it, just so I knew. I didn’t expect to be negative at all, if I’m being honest. So it was a surprise and a relief at the same time.’’
The Neave family are aware they need to be ever vigilant of the risks from their family genetics.
Chrissy of the Gold Coast and Veronica have two brothers – Denny Neave, 52, who is negative to the gene mutation, and John Neave, 44, who is untested. Chrissy’s son David, 38, is positive to the gene mutation. His young children, a daughter, 13, and son, 7, will wait until they are older to be tested. Veronica also has a son, Kaspar, 19, who is yet to be tested.
In January 2015, Chrissy, then 50, despite doing all she could to reduce her risk of cancer with her hysterectomy and mastectomy, was diagnosed with bowel cancer. After chemotherapy and radiation treatment, she is now in remission.
Veronica, of Mount Tamborine, an actor and producer for the Brisbane Powerhouse, is the only woman in her family to not have a cancer diagnosis by the age of 50.
As a legacy to Elisha, the sisters now run a not-for-profit charity called Beauties
Feeling Fabulous (BFF), realising the wishes of their little sister. The charity runs six free pamper sessions a year at the Labrador Community Centre, on the Gold Coast, offering massage, nails, haircuts, makeup, “flower therapy’’ and “giggle therapy’’ to women living with a cancer diagnosis. So far, they have pampered an estimated 600 women.
“Elisha was young and beautiful, she knew how to do make-up and she was a fashionista,” says Chrissy, who owns Swing On In dance school and vintage styling Lindy Charm School for Girls.
“When she became sick, she didn’t want to learn how to put a wig on or learn how to apply make-up. She’d much rather, if she was feeling up to it, go and get her hair done or her nails done if she had no hair. But my sister, like myself and my mum, didn’t want to spend money we didn’t have on spoiling ourselves.”
An unexpected outcome of the BFF sessions has been a connection between women sharing their cancer stories, information, advice and contact numbers.
“People walk in like deer in a headlight from a doctor’s office with a new cancer diagnosis and they don’t know what is going to happen, the timeline or what they can expect,’’ Chrissy says. “We also get flowers donated and I collect jars and write affirmations so the ladies come and create their own ‘joy jars’ we call flower therapy. They take that home and it reminds them of the day.”
Chrissy and Veronica are endlessly proud of their nephew who has say, into a “fine man”. In 2018,
Georgia
Parliament House in Canberra at a Teal Ribbon Breakfast to raise awareness of ovarian cancer and he says he would like to do more work in this area in the future.
“Jack is great. I’d love to have him here to be closer to us but he is building a life in Perth and he is so savvy,” Chrissy says.
“He is determined that he wants to be successful, make his family proud and be a good human. We are really blessed with him. We’re so grateful that he is happy now.”
Veronica admits she was worried “it could have gone a couple of ways” after Jack lost so many people close to him at such a young age and then moving to WA.
“He was so young. I worried how that trauma would manifest,” she says.
“My brothers and sisters were proactive in helping him through that trauma over the years. We used to fly him over from Perth every six months through high school and we’d surround him with lots of love. We’d just take care of his little heart.
“I’m just in awe of him and how he navigated it all. Despite his circumstances, or maybe as a direct result of them, he has an enormous amount of empathy.
“Elisha had such a special bond with Jack. When she was sick and dying, the only thing she complained about was her heartbreak at leaving Jack. She didn’t care about dying, it was just leaving him. He was everything to her.
“When she died, Jack could have acted out and his anger could have manifested in really destructive ways. It was always a possibility but he didn’t do that. He is very special.’’
When I’m struggling with something, it feels like she is coming to me to tell me everything’s all right. I do feel like she guides me
Georgiades’ favourite memory of his mum
is her bedtime stories to him; her funny, spontaneous, made-up stories that didn’t come out of a book. She told her stories to her little boy until her illness meant she no longer could and Georgiades still holds those tender memories close to his heart.
He also remembers his mum for her “positive charisma’’ and her ability to “light up a room”.
“Even being in a hospital room when it is dark and gloomy, the charisma and energy from her lifted everyone else’s spirits,” he says. “She didn’t want everyone to be sad and miserable. I feel like that was her strongest quality.”
He also treasures and finds comfort from a notebook of his mum’s handwritten affirmations that give him strength if he is struggling.
“The affirmations are really powerful if you read them,” he says.
“She wrote down everything she was grateful for and it is all positive. She even said she was grateful for her health when obviously her health was in a pretty dire state. But, at the time, it could have been worse and she was grateful for her life and what time she had left.
“Her affirmations are things like: I’m happy with myself; I’m everything I want to be; I’m honest to myself.
“Whenever I’m struggling a bit, I turn to that and it makes me feel better. If someone is going through that much struggle in their life and they can still be grateful, I can look around and see what I have. There is so much to be grateful for.”
The extended Neave family don’t believe their story is particularly special. Plenty of people, they say, experience tragedy and hardship.
But they have learnt some things through it all. They have learnt to not fear death and to embrace their grief. They know that every day of living is a blessing. They don’t sweat the small stuff. And after retreating into their grief, they have emerged closer to each other.
They are also grateful for their “wonderful long goodbyes” that cancer afforded them, rather than some terrible, tragic, sudden accident.
Georgiades, mature for his years, has learnt earlier than most about appreciating life, about being resilient, about not wasting the time he has.
“What happened is a really strong message for all of us – life is not something to be taken for granted,’’ he says.
“I miss mum; I always will. But I’m also grateful for everything she did for me and our family and for her making me the kind of person I am today.
“She was the sort of person you wanted to be around. I’m kind of using her as an example to strive for. If I can be anything like her, then I’d be pretty happy.”
with
Therewere smiles aplenty when Leigh Caldwell officially launched her first book, Hope Grit and Gratitude at Flinders Lane.
The book was 12 years in the making, and has been described as inspirational, captivating, entertaining and uplifting.
In the book Leigh outlines how, with the power of hope, her family chose to fight son Ashley’s leukaemia diagnosis with positivity and quiet confidence.
She also shares in the book how she founded the hugely popular dance troupe for people with special needs.
With no formal dance or special needs training, but armed with determination and commitment, Leigh established the hugely feted Happy Feat.
The amazing dance troupe was established in 2010 and has members with various challenges ranging from Acquired Brain Injury, Fragile X, Down syndrome, Autism, Asperger’s and hearing impairments.
To buy the book go to hope-grit-andgratitude---leigh-caldwell.square.site