Caring gives Margaret Berryman the strength of life

SOMETIMES, life comes down to the spin you put on it. Margaret Berryman’s life could be seen as traumatic: she’s nursed numerous family members and friends through cancer, strokes and heart attacks, helping them as they suffered.

SOMETIMES, life comes down to the spin you put on it.

Margaret Berryman’s life could be seen as traumatic: she’s nursed numerous family members and friends through cancer, strokes and heart attacks, helping them as they suffered.

But, the 65-year-old Renmark resident would never call her life traumatic.

“Life is what it is; life is important,” the grandmother of nine says.

“Every day, every moment, I find it’s important for me to help if I can.

“I’ve always strived to help others … I’ve never wanted people to thank me, I just want to feel good about doing something for somebody else.”

Her caring role began in the early 1970s living in England with husband Tony and their then two sons.

“We received a letter from Margaret’s brother and father saying her mother had suffered a severe heart attack and they couldn’t look after her,” Mr Berryman said.

“So we sold everything we had in England ... to come back to Australia.”

In the next 40 years, Mrs Berryman nursed her mother-in-law through bowel cancer, her father through bone cancer, her father-in-law through brain cancer and her daughter-in-law through breast cancer. All four passed away.

“She would come home and she’d nurse my mother all night until it was time to go back to work again,” Mr Berryman said of Margaret, who was working with Anglicare in the Northern suburbs.

“She’d come home, look after us, feed us and then she’d go back to work. She looked after us like that until my mother passed away.”

Mrs Berryman, a former nursing-home nurse and qualified St John’s trainer, now helps her widower son, Darren, and grandson, Connor, 9.

“My biggest thing now, is young Connor, because he doesn’t have his mum, so I’ve got to keep going and he’s got somebody to fall back on,” she said.

She continues to be the primary carer for her mother who has suffered several strokes.

Mr Berryman, 71, has nominated his wife for a Pride of Australia award in the Care and Compassion category, for her devotion to helping others.