More Than An All Black's Wife

Linda's Life Lesson

- Julie Jacobson

SHE WAS AN ALL BLACK ‘WAG’ BEFORE IT WAS COOL

When asked to describe herself in five words, Wellington writer Linda Burgess offers just three: “old, nearly died”.

The first is debatable, the second a matter of fact.

The 70-year-old contracted bacterial meningitis just over a month ago. Rushed to hospital by ambulance, she spent the first of eight days in the ward surrounded by medical staff in full protective gear. Daughter Gemma (42) was told to prepare for the worst, son Benedict (44) hastily flew down from Auckland.

“I don’t remember a lot,” she says.“ I do know I kept asking them if I was going to die... and the next thing I remember is waking up to see Benedict at the end of the bed beaming at me, looking kind of relieved.”

Her brush with death couldn’t have come at a less convenient time. The launch of her new book, Someone’s Wife, A Memoir of Sorts, was just weeks away, and a series of media engagements were scheduled.

Still, Linda – a prolific essayist, novelist, scriptwriter, reviewer, mother, and grandmother – is no stranger to the concept of a life interrupted.

The heartbreak of losing her perfect bright-eyed son Toby at three months to cot death; watching helplessly as her then-All Black husband Bob Burgess was stretchered unconscious off a rugby field; alerting an employer to a suicide... It’s all there in the new book, and wee Toby’s death is still raw decades later.