Light in the darkness - Rosie Hoban

Caroline Jones is a storyteller and most Australians aged between nine and ninety have probably heard her tell a yarn or two. The stories she tells are about other people. She listens intently to people, distils their story and helps relay it to a wider audience.

Caroline finds people interesting and is keen to tease out the details of their lives, explore their significant moments, make sense of their challenging times and help give meaning to their sorrow. Her silence and listening give people the time and space to talk and as they tell their story, she waits for the right moment to speak. Waiting is something Caroline Jones does with grace.

Caroline has now told some more of her own story in the recently-published book, Through A Glass Darkly: A Journey of Love and Grief With My Father. In the book Caroline shares with readers the experience of watching her beloved father, Brian, die, and her own difficult journey through grief in the seven years that followed his death. She writes of her love and sorrow and how after a long time it gave her a new understanding and appreciation for the great gift of life and the suffering of others.

Now, after the deaths of both her parents, she finally has a strong sense of their spiritual presence. ‘Sometimes when I am trying to balance figures and I suddenly get them to balance, I say Thanks Dad’, she said. She believes grief is something we must carry with us always, for there is no cure.

Certainly in her many years as a current affairs reporter, broadcaster and writer, Caroline has heard and reported stories that have made listeners weep with sorrow. She has witnessed grief so intense that it is palpable to viewers of the ABC’s Australian Story, the program she has contributed to and presented since it began in 1996. It is the keepers of these stories who inspire her and who help nurture her faith.

‘Hearing people’s stories has enriched my life and given me the courage to try to cope with setbacks in my own life. I hold on to the stories of these hundreds of men and women who have come through so much suffering’, Caroline says.

‘I think we do carry with us the stories of sorrow and tragedy that we hear. But I also carry with me the extraordinary spirit of these people that allows them to overcome adversity and deal with their sorrow.’

In her latest book she draws on her own experience to examine how we can endure and survive grief. Caroline hopes her story may provide companionship for others in their dark moments.

Caroline has worked with the ABC for more than forty years. She was the first female reporter on ABC TV current affairs programs, starting with This Day Tonight in 1963. She then worked on Four Corners, Sydney morning radio and the ABC’s Radio National where she presented The Search For Meaning programs for eight years. Her work on this program produced several very popular books, which have been used as secondary and tertiary education resources.

She has, by her own admission, had an ‘extraordinarily blessed life’. It’s been accidental more than planned, but she has made the most of every opportunity that came her way.

‘I have never set goals for my career, but I have tried to respond with as much energy and gratitude as I could to the opportunities that I have been given. I have certainly come to understand the power of the story and how one person’s story can help to illuminate bigger issues,’ she says. Caroline recalls the Australian Story interview with Hazel Hawke, first wife of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke. The episode dealt with Mrs Hawke’s deteriorating health after the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. It was a stunningly moving story.

‘Through her generous telling of the story we gained a great insight into this issue of public importance.’

Caroline has often pondered the question of opportunity. Why is her life so blessed, when others around the world struggle to take a breath and survive the day in countries wracked by poverty and war? While this question remains one of the unfathomables in her life, she tries to respond to the reality by supporting people who are making a positive difference to the world.

For many years she has been a friend and supporter of Mahboba Rawi, who, since she migrated to Australia, has raised money to support widows and orphans left homeless by war and famine in her homeland, Afghanistan. Caroline lends her name and energy to Mahboba's Promise, an Australian non-profit organisation dedicated the health, welfare and education of women and children in Afghanistan.

Much of Caroline’s broadcasting and writing focuses on the search for spiritual meaning in life. Like many people of faith, she has gone through the ‘dark night of the soul’ and stumbled on the way. It’s at these times she waits with doubt and hope, until the dark night ends.

‘At times when I have stumbled through my faith I feel the encouragement of others who have prayed for me when I felt I could not pray’, she says. Caroline is part of a small Christian Life Community group (an initiative based on Ignatian spirituality) that formed almost thirty years ago. Members gather regularly to pray and support each other in their faith and everyday life.
While the stories and prayers of others do strengthen her, it is the memory of the ‘everlasting arms of God’ that sustains her in difficult times, such as the hard days and months that followed her father’s death.

‘I try to focus on to the blessings I have and wait with a sense of hope. I know that not all things can be resolved and that is where my faith comes in. Accepting that I cannot know, but still to travel onwards. I know that my understanding is human and limited.’

Brian James, Caroline’s father, has, through his death, bestowed more great blessings on his daughter, including a ‘deep gratitude for every breath I take’. She has also tried to heed the sage advice he offered her throughout her life—to enjoy every day. As well, his death has sharpened Caroline’s sense of her own mortality.

‘I did not ever really think about my own death, but now I feel an intensification of the joy and beauty of life and a sense of how much there is to be done. Time is speeding up,’ she said.

Australian readers now have the chance to learn a lot more about Brian James, the man who so loved this well-known Australian woman called Caroline Jones. But when she too is called by God, what words would she like uttered or written about her.

‘She was a kind person’. Yes, that’s what she would like as her epitaph. Those hundreds of men and women whose stories she has so carefully and compassionately told over the years would no doubt agree. But Caroline Jones is content to wait for that story to be told.

‘I try to focus on to the blessings I have and wait with a sense of hope. I know that not all things can be resolved and that is where my faith comes in.’