FROM THE ARCHIVES
Brave Eve Van Grafhorst broke our hearts
Even when she was too young to understand what dying really meant, tiny pixie-faced Eve van Grafhorst knew she would never be a teenager. The dreadful burden of a terminal disease cost this precious little girl her childhood innocence and gave her an inner wisdom far beyond her tender years.
“Sometimes I get sick because I have the Aids,” Eve once explained to a journalist when she was just seven. “It does not make my blood very well and I always have to be careful of taking my pills. I always say to Mum, ‘I don’t want to have this Aids any more. How can I give it away? ‘ But I’m going to live until I die.”
Eve’s brief life touched the heart of our nation from the moment she stepped foot on New Zealand soil. She was just three when she and her family turned their backs on Australian prejudice and ostracism to be welcomed here with open arms.
With seemingly boundless
courage and a mischievous sense of humour, the adorably bossy, matter-of-fact and determined little girl won the love and admiration of her adopted homeland. Despite her failing health, Eve radiated tireless energy and an infectious sense of fun wherever she went.
Her heartbroken mother Gloria Taylor, whose strength and love added years to Eve’s life, said her daughter was not afraid of death.
It was something she had dealt with since she was old enough to say goodbye to the many friends and fellow sufferers who had lost their battle against the disease.
“She has never been afraid of dying,” Gloria said. “She told me when she died that she was going to paradise. I asked her where that was and she said it was heaven.”
In June, after the death of seven-year-old Australian Aids boy Troy Lovegrove – one of Eve’s best friends and the son of Suzi Lovegrove, Australia’s best known Aids sufferer – Gloria told New Zealand Woman’s Weekly that Eve had already planned her own funeral.
“We’ve often talked about her death,” Gloria said then. “She said she wants to die
‘at home with Mummy’. She doesn’t want to be in a hospital when it happens. She wants to be cremated and she’s even told me what she wants to happen at the service, all those things. She’s not scared, she’s not afraid.”
Eve survived so many death sentences that Gloria had hoped against hope her daughter would somehow continue to defy the odds.
She was always small, a legacy of her premature birth on July 17, 1982, and a result of the contaminated blood transfusion which gave her the disease. But her positive outlook and love of life grew to giant proportions.
It was only in her final days
Eve began to lose faith in her own will to live. As her condition deteriorated, she lost her appetite and her weight plummeted. Her hair began to fall out and she suffered from night sweats.
Eve saw many wishes come true during her short, delicate life and she just had two wishes outstanding – to meet Princess Diana and Michael Jackson.
She went to her paradise with those wishes unfulfilled, but with lovely memories of many other meet-the-star sessions – some of them thrill-of-a-lifetime treats made possible when Lotto winners Hazel and Eddie Mollier sent her on a trip to Disneyland.
In Los Angeles, Eve met her television hero, MacGyver’s Richard Dean Anderson, who cancelled a prior commitment to greet her. She saw The Phantom of the Opera, went for a limousine ride around Beverly Hills and received a phone call from teen idol Bart Simpson. “He must have known my number,” she later teased.
Eve has also rubbed shoulders with Sir Cliff Richard, singing superstar Sir Elton John (during his 1993 New Zealand concert), Governer-General Dame Cath Tizard (whom Eve simply “adored”) and a variety of New Zealand TV celebrities including Thingee and Jason Gunn (her “all-time greatest hero”), Phillip Leishman, Lana Coc-Kroft and Sir Paul Holmes.
On July 17, 1992, her 10th birthday – which doctors thought she would never live to see – Eve received an autographed photo and personal message from
Princess Diana.
Time and again little Eve astounded doctors by bouncing back when they feared the end was near – she fulfilled her secret wish of seeing snow and dressed up as a blushing bride for her 10th birthday; she donned a gorgeous princess gown and tiara to attend the Australian Ballet Company’s gala performance of Romeo and Juliet; she joined other children with Aids and the HIV virus at a camp run by the Kiwi Kids with Aids trust.
Eve was never out of the public eye, using her courage to bring hope to others and end prejudice against Aids. She forgave the people of Gosford in Australia and they finally said sorry for forcing her to leave.
In many ways, Eve was an adult before her time. But she never lost that unselfish wish to help. Her spirit and bravery warmed the soul of a nation, and gave New Zealanders a reason to be proud. We will never forget her.