you've just gotta luv her...... yes it's an old story, however, its always worth revisiting every time she opens her mouth.
Triggs's first marriage, to Melbourne senior counsel Prof Sandy Clark, ended in 1989. They had three children; James, who is 34 and working as a commercial lawyer in Paris, Alexandra, 32, who is an art/design teacher in Melbourne, and Victoria, who was born in 1984, profoundly disabled, with a rare chromosomal disorder known as Edwards Syndrome. "Victoria was as severely retarded as anyone who is still alive can be," Triggs says. "Her condition usually results in the death of the baby before or shortly after birth. In fact, the doctors kept saying, 'Just leave her in the corner and she'll die.' So, it sounds terrible, but I'd look at Victoria and think, 'Well, you're going to die, so I'm not going to invest too much in you.' But she didn't die. She had this inner rod of determination, and she simply refused to die."
At about six months of age, Triggs and Clark took Victoria home, and, with the help of the Uniting Church, found a family who took over her primary care. (Victoria died eight years ago, at the age of 21.) When I ask Triggs if this arrangement bothered her, she says: "Yes, because you have child and you expect to look after her. But in the end I simply made the judgement that I would rather put my time into my other children and family, because I also never believed she would live to that age."
