Photos: Gina Fabish
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and mother-of-three Debbie Ngarewa-Packer sat down with the Weekly to share treasured memories and valuable life lessons from her mother Colleen Ngarewa, who has recently been diagnosed with stage four cancer.
With the future uncertain, it feels more important than ever to Debbie and her whānau to acknowledge her mother, and all she has overcome and achieved – and Debbie knows one thing for sure: with Colleen in your corner, anything is possible.
In her own words
It’s such an honour to talk about Mum. We’ve just very freshly learned she has stage four melanoma. It’s made us really talk about her background and who she was and is.
Her parents raised her with a really tight intergenerational Irish Catholic environment in Paeroa. But when her parents separated, she and her sisters moved to South Taranaki.
I think she deeply missed that intergenerational village, so she went looking in the next biggest village – Pātea – and found my father Hemi. They were only 16 when they met and 17 when she had me. She was extremely intelligent and really academic.
She married into Dad’s family – the first non-Māori to ever do so – and went about bringing out the best of us. People will say she colonised us, but I think she extended us.
And she didn’t just make herself part of a Māori village. She brought all her redheaded siblings who stood out like you wouldn’t believe, and she and my dad raised them.
Dad lost his mum when he was 15, so Mum stepped in and filled a matriarchal gap in a family that was driven by a strong patriarch, my koko [grandfather].
In reflection, I can’t imagine how that would have been. She, Dad and Koko quickly learned to put the wind beneath each other’s wings and as a family, we got the richness of that.
She went on to learn more reo than Dad, learned to garden by the maramataka [Māori lunar calendar] from Koko and eventually started the first bilingual school unit in Pātea. But she never compromised on who she was or where she was from. Mum had that Irish spirit, and always honoured her own family and history.
I have no idea where she got her resilience from, but she was and continues to be absolutely inspiring.
My siblings and I were creative, loud and unruly as teenagers, and we put her through the wringer, but she encouraged every one of us to be authentic. We all felt like her number one. She led by example and as we grew, she grew with us.
Mum was at home with us, then put herself through education. She went from being a school cleaner to a teacher, then eventually a principal.
And she always made sure everyone in our whānau, particularly her kids, knew that you never live to a stereotype and you never have to be what someone says you should be. She is truly magic and because she lived like this, we always believed we could too.
I made her a grandma really young when I had my daughter Jamie at 19.
Mum was shocked and not happy about it. Every single thing she did was intentional and me having a baby then was not.
It makes me laugh now though because the next minute, I was still unconscious from an emergency Caesarean section, and she had washed my baby and named her after my dad.
That first grandchild became almost like her child. She adopted a lot of ways from my koko, who raised me, and now you’d almost believe it was all planned.
Back in the ’80s, it was still extremely frowned upon to be a teen mother, but because Mum had put in some really strong values and beliefs, they never went away just cause I had a baby.
When you become a mum, you go back to your best example and role model, which for me was my mum. I unconsciously copied her as my closest living example and then actively followed her. Now I feel passionately honoured to even be a little bit like her.
When I was 28 and she was 46, she had an aneurysm. I had just moved to Auckland with her mokopuna [grandchild] and it was terrible.
She was in the prime of her career and just starting to have time to herself after we left. It was devastating for her on a personal level. She had spent so many years of her life balancing our life with hers.
To see her finally get a break and then be told she was going to live like a vegetable was devastating. She had paralysis down one side and lost fluent speech.
It was a long road to recovery. She wasn’t thriving in the hospital, so we took Mum home and my sister took a year off university to care for her.
We all rallied around and she gained back her speech, and continued to have her quality of life.
Mum and Dad were a lot better off than some but weren’t wealthy enough for private rehabilitation. Most rehab she did herself with the support of some really well-intending public health nurses and whānau.
It really brought home how fragile life is, and how important it is that we have empathy and support for those who through no fault of their own have to rely on the state.
Who would expect a 46-year-old principal with no health issues would end up needing state care?
At times, Mum did amazing things, and really showed us and continued to teach us the significance of not stereotyping our disability whānau.
Then a few years ago, doctors diagnosed her with heart issues. The last time I talked to the Weekly [in January last year], we were told she only had a couple of months to live.
Seriously, we were at Hail Marys, then next minute a specialist comes back into the country, and she’s eligible for a wonder drug and has a pacemaker.
Doctors also diagnosed her with melanoma. They thought they had it all, but at a routine check discovered it’s stage four and has metastasised.
It’s hard not be emotional. I am the tough big sister, but it’s frightening.
The minute anyone says cancer, I start to cry. She has endured so much, and now she’s 75 and contending with this.
I am fearful for her. She is our beautiful queen and we don’t want her to be in any pain. Thankfully, at the moment, she’s not.
And you never know with Mum – they keep giving us this doom and gloom prognosis, and she pulls through. We’ve learned to take everything in our stride, hope for the best, and enjoy every minute and opportunity with her.
I’ve been really open with Caucus about it and what it means for me. Hopefully being honest means people understand why I can’t be at a certain opening or something else.
Mum is extremely opinionated on everything I do in Parliament. She’s hilarious! She watches Parliament TV, sends me photos of her and Dad watching, and absolutely tells me what she thinks. I get a performance appraisal every time – I have a coach, judge and referee all in one woman.
I’ve had death threats and all sorts of things, but I don’t care because I know my mum is guiding me and is proud.
She’s starting treatment and I was meant to be in Australia, but I’m not going. This is my priority and in our whānau, when one of us gets treatment, we all do.
We all drive to wherever she needs to be and wrap around each other. That way, when Mum needs to talk about her fears or needs someone to keep Dad company, we’re there on hand.
When we were kids, Mum would have family talks with each child from the bath. Now she holds court in her room, sitting there with a glass of red wine.
Everywhere is special with her, but I love sitting at the beach together or when she’s at my house. We sit on the patio and watch the moko [grandkids] run around.
If we thought she loved us, we didn’t realise just how much she would love her grand- and great- grandchildren. To this day, they all go and have their own special time with her.
She continues to have the most amazing hope and optimism, but it’s bloody hard.
I know she knows people love her and we know what we can deal with.
If love gets us through, we’re going to be okay.”
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