Peter Garrett on Grief and Honouring Lives

Peter Garrett on Australian Story.

 In an Australian Story special, former politician and Midnight Oil frontman, Peter Garrett, opens up to Leigh Sales about love, loss and living large.

Leigh Sales:

Very sadly you lost your Dad as a teenager when he died of an asthma attack, and then tragically your Mum perished in a house fire when you were in your early twenties and you were the only other person in the house and you tried to rescue her but it was impossible. I’m sorry that that happened to you…

Peter Garrett:

Well. Thank you for reflecting that back Leigh. I’ve got a fair distance between that event and today and the only abiding memory I have apart from the affection that you have for your Mum and the sense that there was something about that that was quite difficult is to know what she was like as a person and if I find bits and pieces of her in my life and others, then I can really celebrate it. So that’s really honouring the life that she lived…

So, I just try and honour her memory…

Leigh Sales:

Whatever do you think was the effect on you of losing both your parents quite early in your life?

Peter Garrett:

It probably made me a bit more independently-minded…

It taught me that life’s incredibly precious…. When suddenly they are gone it’s a very quick lesson in how precious life is. It’s a cliché but a deep truth, ‘Make the most of every day.’

Link: Peter Garrett with Leigh Sales, Australian Story, 18 March 2024. The full 30-minute interview has interesting thoughts on how Garrett suggests people can work through their grief.