My bone china teacup has gone missing off my desk at work. It’s happened before, and usually turns up after a couple of days in the office dishwasher, but it’s been absent for three weeks and I fear it’s gone forever.
I’d been really careful with my cup – but not because of its monetary value. It’s special because of the reason it was given to me.
Four or five years ago, a package arrived at work at Newstalk ZB. Inside was my beautiful bone china cup, and an even more beautiful letter from a woman who had written to tell me her dad had died.
She said he’d always listened to talkback, and towards the end it gave him particular comfort to have the radio on at night. She and her sisters would come round and settle him for the evening, then just before eight, he’d tell them to go home.
He would say, “Kerre will keep me company.” He would make himself a cup of tea (always in a bone china cup), turn on the radio, and listen to the chat.
Apparently he never, ever called in, but his daughter wanted me to have a cup similar to his, to remind me of all the people who never call, but
draw great comfort from the companionship of the radio.
I cried when I read the letter and have treasured my cup over the years.
You get reminders that being on the radio is more than filling the gaps between ads, and they really touch your heart.
The first letter like that came from a young woman who’d been widowed and left with three young children. She and her husband were childhood sweethearts, she wrote, and she had no idea how she would go on without him.
The nights were the loneliest, she said, and that was when she discovered talkback. She said she had never rung, but if the pain ever got too bad and she felt like doing something silly, she knew she could always call me and I would help.
She wrote the letter just over a year after her husband died to tell me that she was fine now, but that the radio had got her through one of the darkest moments of her life.
The second truly powerful letter came with my cup and then, just in the last month, I received an email from a young woman who had left her abusive home as a teenager and ended up working, underage, in a brothel. She hated it, but felt she had nowhere else to go.
Another underage prostitute told her that when she couldn’t sleep, she’d listen to Geoff Sinclair on the radio and pretend he was her dad, and so my girl did the same with me. She would pretend I was her mum, and that I was too busy and famous to spend much time with her, but I was sending her messages through the radio.
Through the conversations she’d hear, she learnt that people could survive awful experiences.
She heard of places she dreamt she’d one day visit, and extended her vocabulary and general knowledge.
She sent a poem she’d written at the time, and is a truly gifted writer.
The thought of that poor little girl lying in that brothel, escaping her ghastly reality through the radio, broke my heart.
I bet many of you have lovely stories like mine – that make you appreciate the work you do. And for those who’ve said to themselves, “I must write a letter”, after a particularly meaningful encounter, do it. You will never know the power of your words.
You can tune in to Kerre’s talkback show on Newstalk ZB, Monday to Thursday, 8pm to midnight.
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