Press / Award: NZ Herald

Jemima - NZ Herald Hero 2021

Written by Sophie Trigger for NZ Herald and published Saturday 11 December 2021.

"You can't have a heroine without a tragedy," says Ray Gazley, seven weeks after the death of her daughter Jemima. "And without this disease we never would have met this person."

Wellington teenager Jemima Gazley is the New Zealand Herald's 2021 Our Heroes award winner for her selfless campaign for research and funding into brain cancer, in the final weeks she was succumbing to the disease.

Raising more than successive New Zealand governments have invested in brain cancer across her lifetime, she also donated her own brain tumours to researchers in the hope of carving an easier path for the next child given the death sentence of DIPG.

Herald editors unanimously picked her from a strong line-up of candidates, featured below.

But Jemima Gazley herself would find the award "very curious" - especially as she began the year as a regular, healthy teenage girl.

In her family Jemima brought the laughs and "lifted everyone's game". But a shock diagnosis of terminal cancer at 14 was the spark that ignited Jemima's full enlightenment.

She was not defined by cancer. But her response to it was "mind-blowing".

"It was this enlightenment that all of a sudden came on ... she just evolved," said her dad Oliver. "She just handled it so well. To be able to do that with that diagnosis … it was fierce."

Ray likes to think the diagnosis catapulted Jemima and the Gazleys out of the matrix, freed from the shackles of trivial stresses and the judgments of others.

"I think it is a gift of the brain that happens when you get told you're terminally ill, you go 'Oh none of that matters, I don't have to pedal to get the thing, to do the thing, to be the thing.'

"I'm very aware that the person I met was the fully evolved version of Jemima … and what a privilege it was to meet her."

In the eight months before her death on October 12, Jemima taught her family how to live.

From reaching her goal of skiing one final time, to boldly confronting anti-abortionists outside the hospital after cancer treatment, Jemima carried her terminal burden lightly while living fiercely.

"She would always use humour to knock people back from worrying about the small things in life," said Oliver.

"'Get over it, I'm the one that's got a hitchhiker in my head' - that was her humour that she brought to the table."

"As time went on you realise that she was accepting of her fate, and that was bravery to me. At times it was like 'how does she get out of bed in the morning?'"

It was Jem's decision to have a celebration of life party - with a place for guests to cry in the corner - in the weeks before her death.

She described herself as "healthy as a horse" to the Herald five days before she died. Later that week she dyed her hair pink and dragged her family out for her favourite dinner, even though she was paralysed and in a wheelchair. When the food made her immediately sick, she remarked that it was "just like the bathroom scene in Bridesmaids".

Jem's humour and grace in the face of "kaput" - as she would call it – was already heroic. But an offhand decision to go public with their story propelled the teenager into the national spotlight, and gave her the recognition she deserved as her life came to its end.

When friends and family asked how they could help, Jemima suggested a Givealittle page, with proceeds going to Australian researcher Matt Dun, who has been fighting for a cure for DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma) since his own daughter died of the disease in 2018.

The page quickly snowballed, raising $200,000 within the first four days.

While it was no surprise the warm, funny Jem could make 7,000 friends in a week, after keeping the diagnosis mostly quiet, the fundraising had made her feel visible, knowing she would not simply slip out of existence, as so many cancer sufferers do.

The support and kind words provided a parallel narrative that tempered some of the pain of Jem's final days.

Perhaps a more remarkable and deliberate act of heroism was Jemima's donation of her brain tumours, about which the 15-year-old calmly texted Dr Matt Dun in Newcastle.

"She said early, early on 'if they can't take it out when I'm alive, they can take it out when I'm dead," said Ray.

"To make a posthumous plan for your brain to live forever in a lab in an immortalised cell line - I think that's quite challenging."

While the Auckland brain bank was in lockdown, 800 emails were sent in three days communicating on processes that had never been done in Wellington, to ensure Jemima's final wish was granted.

Last month the final total of $696,420 arrived in Newcastle – helped with private donations, and auctions from football team Wellington Phoenix and Wellington Paranormal.

It will be used to create a "Wish Laboratory" to house equipment that will increase the throughput of drug screening by 30 times.

Dun said Jemima's contribution would make a real difference to kids diagnosed with DIPG.

"It's so disappointing to miss out on what she would have provided the world, but in the absence of a life long-lived, in a short time she's changing the face of treatment for kids diagnosed with brain cancer."

"The long-lasting reward for her and her family is knowing one day she will provide part of the clues that will unlock this disease and lead to kids living long and healthy lives."

Ray and Oliver now continue the work Jemima started, with ongoing awareness and fundraising efforts through Jemima's Wish an incorporated charitable trust, which launched yesterday. They continue to back Dun.

"This is one of the big unknown paediatric cancers. They're hoping if they can crack this one it will have a trickle down to a lot of others," said Ray.

"I would love to see it in my lifetime."

Jem's request was to be remembered as "cured and free", but her parents remember their daughter as many things: A netballer, a skiier, a comedian, an aspiring Parisienne baker, a thrift shopper. A champion of the unseen and the marginalised. A warrior who greeted death with the remark that she was "off to meet the final boss". Mostly, they remember her as their best friend.

Today, in New Zealand, Jemima Gazley is remembered as a hero.

Video credit: Content created by NZ Herald video team to accompany the digital edition of the 2021 NZ Herald Hero story - images supplied by family.