Page 1282 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
American College of Surgeons. He was recognised by the Australian National University when awarded an honorary associate professorship at that institution. More recently, the ANU established the John Buckingham Research Project Prize, yet another testimony to this unique and special Canberran. Dr Buckingham was honoured by the broader community. He was named as an ACT local hero in 2008 and became the ACT Senior Australian of the Year in 2010.
It is also worth reading and putting on the record some of the tributes that have flowed to Dr Buckingham from a number of quarters: patients, former colleagues and, indeed, family members. We heard Dr Gillespie, a colleague, say:
He was very popular with theatre staff, he took an interest not just in their professional development but he knew them as people and friends, he was interested in their families and how their personal lives were going and I’m sure he had many of them as patients.
Iain Dunlop from the Australian Medical Association said:
He’s left a lasting clinical legacy in the way that he treated his breast cancer patients with dignity and compassion and with the best of the scientific techniques.
Denise Kraus said—and I think these tributes were common:
Dr Buckingham had spent his last weeks peacefully and surrounded by loving friends and family. He was absolutely devoted to his family and children. He was basically a very humble man who believed in doing the right thing. Family, religion and work were his three pillars.
I was particularly touched by recalling the interview that Dr Buckingham gave to the Canberra Times last month, where Dr Buckingham said he had no regrets about his life and felt no anger about his diagnosis:
“You have to accept your diagnosis—my faith tells me I’ve got to accept it,” he said.
A lifelong Catholic, he said he strongly believed in an afterlife.
“There has to be something beyond the door—there has to be,” he said. “I’m Catholic, but I’m a great believer in the universality of religion, and one of the fundamental things I believe is that there’s life after death.”
For those of us who share that faith, we do certainly join with Dr Buckingham and we accept that. But what speaks to me about that is the quiet acceptance from Dr Buckingham of a life cut short. Dr Buckingham contributed so much in his time on earth, packed so much into what was a relatively short life and, whilst it is tragic that he was taken before his time, we can pay tribute to the amazing contribution he made and the amazing dignity and grace he has shown, even in his final days.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video