Daffodil Day: strong personal relevance for many
Motupipi School raised $1120 for this year’s Daffodil Day. Photo: Supplied.
Daffodil Day holds great significance for me.
I was sitting beside the bed of my beloved Peter, reading quietly to myself, in our hospital here in Takaka. For much of that day and the day before, he had lain in a morphine-induced coma, his brow furrowed tightly in some eleventh-hour puzzlement. The journey to this point had taken us through two-and-a-half long years of hope and despair. But close to 6pm that evening, as I looked up from my book, I caught the moment of his last breath. I told the three other women in the room who had been sharing stories and reminiscing, often with laughter. They stood up, faced him, and sang a departure song as I held him, feeling the last bit of his living warmth drain away. That was August 29, 2008. Daffodil Day.
Unfortunately, mine is not an uncommon experience. According to the Cancer Society, one in every three deaths is due to cancer, making the mad cellular disease the leading cause of death in New Zealand today. Every day, approximately 54 people are diagnosed with cancer and 23 people die of it.
It is difficult to find anyone in New Zealand who has not been affected by the illness or the loss of a loved one to the disease.
Some speculate that cancer has been around since the age of dinosaurs, as evidenced by fossilized bones. Mummified remains indicate the disease was present in ancient Egypt and Peru. It was Hippocrates, the Greek “Father of Medicine”, who named the disease in 300 BC, calling the lumps and bumps of tumours carcinos and carcinoma. As early as 50 AD, the Romans noted that surgery sometimes aggravated the spread of cancer, and that some tumours grew again.
Daffodil Day provides an opportunity to raise awareness of this disease.
The history of Daffodil Day began in 1957, when the Canadian Cancer Society volunteer Fran Shannon acquired a donation of 5000 daffodils from a grower in British Columbia, and along with other volunteers, went to hotels and restaurants throughout Toronto, encouraging them to buy the flowers for their patrons. That first year they earned $1300.
From its humble origins, the tradition of Daffodil Day has grown and spread to several countries, including Ireland, England, Slovakia, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The Cancer Society of New Zealand adopted the event in 1990 and volunteers, like Takaka’s Sharon McConnon, have been brightening streets of New Zealand for one day at the end of each winter.
For three years now Sharon has been organising Daffodil Day on behalf of First National Real Estate. Her motivation is personal.
“We all know people who’ve lost their lives to cancer. I’ve lost five in the last 10 years. My sister-in-law was only 39. I could see the help they received from the Cancer Society, the transport to and from the treatment centres.”
Sharon said organising Daffodil Day in Golden Bay seemed like a big job at first, but it gets easier and easier. “It more or less takes care of itself, with many of the same volunteers coming out year after year. You hear a lot of personal stories, and people volunteer to honour the memory of their loved ones.”
Sharon mentioned a young woman who was volunteering for the first time this year to honour a relative who recently died. The anniversary of her own mother-in-law’s death to cancer occurred 29 years ago this Daffodil Day.
This year the team at First National, along with its wonderful volunteers, raised $5644.30 (of which $1120 came from Motupipi School). The money generated in Golden Bay stays in the area, said Sharon.
Donations provide awareness education, information on treatments/living with cancer, support services for patients and their carers, such as transportation and accommodation, and of course, research.
In addition to the efforts of First National, Sharon said several of the area schools raise funds too, but none as active perhaps as Motupipi Primary, which raises about one quarter of the donated funds from our area. Every year the school holds a Gala Daffodil Day, selling lemonade and sausages, and runs fun events.
Em Hofstede
