In the name of humanity
By Yvonne Francis
[This is the text of a letter sent to the judge who will hear the appeal of Green Left Weekly columnist Brandon Astor Jones against his sentence to execution.]
In June 1995 my brother, William George Francome, died of AIDS in St Petersburg, Florida. In the four months between the time I visited him and when he finally died, I was in a terrible agony, not knowing how best to help him.
He had been in a nursing home when I saw him, and I had helped him to be shifted out of that dreadful place to a hospice where the care seemed to be little short of divine. This was due to a network of volunteer gay men called buddies and the kindness of the staff and the numerous hospital volunteers, none of whom I knew but who facilitated my clumsy attempts and even conducted a funeral service for him.
I will never forget the sister who described to me on the phone how his wasted little body was carried from his bed on the final day. She said to me she how they had loved him and wrapped him in a blue bunny rug.
I am sure every death from AIDS is traumatic. Bill and I were particularly close emotionally although we were on opposite sides of the world. I visited him with our mother although Mum and I have not been close for 30 years and Dad died years ago.
Some friends said how good it was of me to attempt to achieve a family reconciliation, as our parents had been unable to accept his homosexuality. I don't know how highly that had motivated me; I just knew I had to go now the end was near.
His partner had warned me that Bill's mind was going: bells would not be ringing when he first saw me. They weren't. He said: "Huh, so you are doing the deed". But from our bedside talks I discovered so much. Bill had attempted suicide as a youth. Mum admitted she had encouraged Bill to flee from Australia to save his father's feelings.
Bill had been a delightfully witty, intelligent, handsome man of 45 years. Now he was dying, with a swollen skull, a sickening cough and a shrinking body.
Every day of those 11 in Florida was high drama. He made extreme demands of me one day and forgot them the next. He alternately sobbed in Mum's arms and insulted her for something as personal as body odour.
I am sure I do not have to describe the events in detail, but they varied from threatening to sue doctors and charging his estranged partner with stealing cheques he had set aside for his nephews to begging me to help him jump off a bridge to end it all.
On an impulse one night I stole him away. We shrieked with laughter at my bad driving and his inability to remember the way to his flat. He made me promise never to tell his partner that he had forgotten it.
I gave him a full body massage with herbal oils I had brought from a friend. He would not sleep and it took four hours to drag him into a bath. He wet the bed. Mum was terrified that now I was spreading AIDS. I could not cope and begged the home to take him back.
He yelled at a volunteer welfare worker who attended next morning that of course he could manage, did she not realise he played competition tennis? But his shoulder was virtually dislocated. He was cold but took 30 seconds to realise he could no longer work out how to plug a heater into the wall socket.
It was only when I broke down and admitted this was goodbye that he gave up and allowed himself to be readmitted. Refusing the wheelchair, he staggered out to a yellow Charger belonging to the buddy who would take him back to the home. The negotiations took three hours.
Bill's ex-partner was managing their business in Massachusetts. We talked for hours by phone. He had organised things for my trip and the nursing home, thinking it to be the best of all options for Bill. Now he admitted he could no longer face Bill's suffering.
He and I discussed asking the hospital to stop giving Bill appetite stimulants. I did that after long personal doubts, negotiations with the patient, ourselves, the buddies and the director of nursing. I told Bill I thought St Petersburg was a beautiful place to die in, and he tearfully agreed.
I learned a lot on that traumatic visit. Not just about my family but how much liberty means to me and what it is about America that my brother chose. Americans care and love, how much they give. How they prioritise as number one the personal autonomy of an individual man, no matter how irrational or unreasonable he may be.
And yet the imponderableness of their institutions, so dehumanising, the maids all black, the doctors so white and distant.
On my return I continued to work full time and took up studies — a graduate diploma of environmental law at the Australian National University. I thought it would occupy my mind, but I struggled, became unbelievably stressed and my health has never fully recovered. Bill begged me to send him a bunch of Indian feathers. His hair had fallen out and he wanted to decorate himself by dangling them from his skull, he said.
I wrote to every American I knew, a vet I met on a plane and swapped life stories with for hours, asking them please send my brother some American Indian feathers to help him die peacefully.
I must have mentioned my suffering to Brandon Astor Jones when I wrote to him after reading his article in a magazine. I never thought how stupid it was to ask a man on death row to get feathers from a bird.
Brandon organised a team of prisoners to crochet my brother a beautiful orange bed rug and the most delicate white cotton doilies for his bedside table. They unfortunately arrived at the hospice after Bill's death, were repacked and remailed many times and eventually reached me.
People in Canada and Australia heard about this, and individuals whom I have never met sent me things to ease my pain, — dried flowers, a green Irish stone to rub in the palm of your hand. I still find comfort in reading his articles in my busy life.
I want to speak up to you in the name of American humanity. I cannot understand why Brandon Astor Jones should not be offered the hope of parole after so many years served in prison. I guess we all believe in hope and the power of individuals to improve themselves and their society in a world that is constantly destroying itself. Please give Brandon a chance.