The late Jane McGrath, and best friend Tracy Bevan
Interview by Tracey Spicer, One2OneConversations.
A conversation with Tracy Bevan about the late Jane McGrath.
Tracy Bevan is the wife of cricket legend Michael Bevan and an inspirational woman in her own right.
Last year Tracy lost her best friend Jane McGrath to breast cancer. Tracy now runs the McGrath Foundation, raising millions of dollars to fund specialist breast care nurses and increase awareness about the prevalence of the cancer in young women.
Tracy and Jane’s story is about love, friendship and a bond that will never be broken.
TRACEY SPICER: Tracy, thank you so much for talking to us today. Can you tell us when Jane discovered the first lump?
TRACY BEVAN: We were on an Ashes tour of 1997. 1997 started off as one of the most exciting years of my life because I was marrying the man I just loved more than anything on the 19th April.
Jane was at my wedding. It was the most beautiful day, I was so happy. The cricket team was there, and it couldn’t have gone any better. A few weeks later we left for an Ashes tour. Jane and I actually left earlier to go to England because we went back to see family, everything was just so perfect.
I found out I was pregnant in August 1997 and Jane was - apart from Michael - one of the first people that I told, even before family, because I just knew she would just be so excited. We both just burst into tears, and were laughing because I was going to be a mother… and then it all went wrong.
In September 1997 Jane knocked on my door. I can remember it so emotionally - we were in Canterbury, a boiling hot hotel, her room was next to mine.
Jane was wrapped in a towel and she said ‘Trace, Glenn’s asked me to get your opinion on something?’ and I said ‘come in, what’s the matter?’ Jane did this little ‘right, OK, it’s only you’ because she was shy, and she dropped the towel and she said to me, ‘does my breast look a funny shape to you?’
At the time I didn’t know anything about breast cancer, and I looked at her and I said ‘No, darl…’ and I felt good saying no because it was an honest opinion, because I could be honest with her.
Jane took my hand and placed it on her breast and I can feel it now…I just wanted to vomit because I could feel that lump in her breast. She looked into my eyes and both our eyes just started filling up with tears.
I didn’t say a word because I didn’t need to say anything to her. She just went ‘right, OK, OK’. That’s what she kept saying ‘OK’. Tears were flowing and then she said ‘I’d better go and get ready’ because we were going on a team dinner, of all things. She said ‘I don’t want anyone to know about this Trace, we’ve got a week left of the tour and as soon as we get back to Australia I’ll go straight to my doctor.’ So she thought she did the right thing, but…
TRACEY SPICER: And you both had to put on a brave face for the rest of the week.
TRACY BEVAN: Yeah, nobody knew. And I was pregnant, I felt terrible because I was so happy in my life yet all of a sudden I just didn’t want to be happy anymore, I didn’t want to be telling friends about, ‘oh, I’m pregnant’ because I thought, ‘that’s not important, my best friend’s found a blooming lump in her breast’.
Jane’s mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer so straight away Jane and I both knew in our hearts… but we also knew there was a possibility it might not be breast cancer. So we chose to look at it like that for the week.
I was staying on in England to break the news of my pregnancy to my family and Jane was going home to find if it was breast cancer. I’ll never forget that phone call from Jane. Princess Diana had died and the whole nation was in mourning and on that day Jane rang me from Australia to say ‘Tracy, it’s breast cancer’. To hear the horror in her voice and to know how scared she was and also the denial….
Jane at that stage wasn’t engaged to Glenn, and she was saying to Glenn, ‘you know look, this is not your problem, I’ll go back to England and deal with this’ and I was thinking ‘Oh my God’.
TRACEY SPICER: That’s so selfless.
TRACY BEVAN: That was Jane. And obviously Glenn was like ‘don’t be ridiculous, we’ll do this together’, and she went in and had her operation. Terrible.
TRACEY SPICER: It’s a beautiful story of a female friendship. I haven’t often heard a story of such a deep friendship. Do you think you were role models for each other and you mentored each other? The characteristics of your personalities seem to fit together well.
TRACY BEVAN: For eleven years Jane lived with cancer, I knew every single thing that Jane went through so I would never ever write Jane McGrath off, not even to the end.
At the time I didn’t know it was the last three weeks of her life. Jane’s mum had to return to the UK and Glenn was in India. Would Glenn have been in India playing cricket if he thought this was the end of his wife’s life? No… nobody saw this was coming.
Jane always seemed to bounce back, she would go down fast but then, just out of nowhere, you’d think, hold on a minute, is this the same person? We would have the worst news and a lot of people couldn’t even cope with what they had just heard, and then Jane would say ‘I’ve got my game plan’ and then she’d be back to Jane, she was just unbelievable.
Then all of a sudden she just seemed to go downhill really quickly. Glenn got back. In that week I got to say a lot of things that I thank God for because a lot of people don’t have that opportunity. We talked about the Foundation and things about our friendship and going forward as Godmother of their children, and I’m so thankful that I was able to talk and sit with her.
Probably a few days before she passed away, she did slip into a coma and Glenn had to have conversations with the children that you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Up until those last few days I never doubted her will to live because I’d seen her turn everything around many times.
TRACEY SPICER: It sounds like your innate positivity helped her through those eleven years. It sounds like she relied on you so much for your strength.
TRACY BEVAN: I don’t know, I think she had that anyway. She’s unbelievable and I’d know many times she’d say, ‘it’s not right, I’m a mother, I’m a wife!’ and then she’d say ‘but this is for a reason Trace, this is for a reason’ and she believed that what she was doing for the McGrath Foundation - that was her reason.
But since Jane’s passing I know that there was a bigger reason, I know it’s a bigger reason than just the McGrath Foundation, because I’m blown away by the effect Jane McGrath had on Australia as a nation.
I just know Jane would sit there saying ‘Oh, I’m so embarrassed, it’s just me’ and I’d say ‘I know you, so I can understand that’ but to see that the whole of Australia also got Jane McGrath without really knowing her - I just think that’s lovely for Jane, I think that’s lovely for her children.
TRACEY SPICER: Which was a lot of her attraction, her humility and her shyness. She would have been overwhelmed had she been looking down at that.
TRACY BEVAN: And she would have been. I know at her funeral she would have been standing there with us all and be wiping a tear because she would have been flattered, yet embarrassed by all the attention she was getting. In the eulogy I said that we’d cried together many times but for every tear we cried we’ve laughed tenfold more than that.
Jane never enjoyed any publicity that came from being the partner of Glenn McGrath. So when she was diagnosed with breast cancer that was really hard for her. But I know that she put herself out there because she thought ‘if I can help one person through the Foundation or through attending something or by speaking or just showing and talking about what I’ve been through then I have to do that’.
TRACEY SPICER: And speaking out about her condition has raised the awareness of breast cancer so much in this country, particularly amongst young women. How are you helping spread the message?
TRACY BEVAN: Glenn has asked me to be on the board of the McGrath Foundation. It is growing so quickly but we will always be in control of the Foundation and we’ll keep the Foundation as Jane would want it - always bringing the awareness to younger women, raising funds for breast care nurses, because we knew the difference it made to Jane’s life.
In 1997 we had no access to breast care nurses. In 2003 when Jane was re-diagnosed she did and the difference that I saw in my friend’s eyes and the life this breast care nurse brought to her life was amazing. Every woman deserves this.
TRACEY SPICER: She sounds like she was such a gentle soul, you must miss her terribly.
TRACY BEVAN: I miss her, I do, I do Tracey. It’s nearly a year to Jane’s passing but it feels like 10 years to me because she was part of my life every single day. She was part of my conversations - I’d text her, she text me - wherever she was. I was part of her everyday, so to not have her part of my day now is… it’s a big silence. It’s a big emptiness and I miss her every minute of the day.
The McGrath Foundation was co-founded by Jane McGrath and her cricketing husband Glenn after Jane’s diagnosis and initial recovery from breast cancer. Help the McGrath Foundation raise money to fund much-needed McGrath Breast Care Nurses throughout rural and regional Australia as well as educating young women to be ‘breast aware’. http://www.mcgrathfoundation.com.au/index.php
One 2 One Conversations
This is an abbreviated & edited version of the full conversation. To get the full conversation go to www.one2oneconversations.com
