“Gardens are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade.”
“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”
- Rudyard Kipling
How do you even begin to tell the story of a parent at the end of her life? So much of their life is hidden from us and the whole parent-child relationship is rife with misunderstandings and complications, unfulfilled hopes and aspirations; hurts and healings.
After all, it all seems somewhat amusing and all that’s left is the love of a great mom - and stories. So many good times and stories!
My Mom was of the most steadfast and strong-willed people. Very determined. When she quit smoking, she just quit, poof!(no poof) She never dieted, but never overate. She didn’t really exercise, but was always active and fit until her first stroke. She remembered every bloody thing and if you forgot, you were a nincompoop and she let you know it. She loved babies, kids, animals (especially birds), gardens, board games and cards, crossword puzzles, tennis, history, biographies, a good adventure (of a quite civilized type, thank-you very much), was passionate about dancing and music, liked a good “cuppa”, “googie” eggs, rogues and order. She loved to a good laugh.
She hated pushy, manipulative, unmannered, unprincipled or inconsiderate people; neglect, being called "Ma", haughtiness (even tho she was sometimes a bit haughty herself!), unfairness of any kind, losing at games, fantasy and sci-fi, traveling after sunset, rainy days, and disliked anyone “mucking with me tea” (English style - no flavored or herbal varieties, please!).
She was a natty dresser (check out the pics), expected her children to be the same and was quick to let you know if your appearance was not up to her standards (mostly it was not). She was the type that would iron your underwear and always ask if it was clean before you left the house - so often that for years I got skid marks worrying about skid marks. No child of hers would be caught literally dead with soiled drawers. Where I was going, or what I was doing was secondary. I suppose I should interpret this that she trusted me - trusted that I was a decent kid, a decent person, so I guess she didn’t worry too much unless I came home after curfew. I certainly tested her faith, but she always stuck up for me.
Mom was a very proper post-Victorian colonial. Once, when I was in Australia, I was asked where my family was from by a somewhat ockerish Queenslander.* When I told him, “Melbourne”, he drawled gustily and good-naturedly, ”Oh, their a bunch o’ Pommies** down there”. It’s kinda true. Old school Aussies can tend to be an easygoing rough and ready sort. Mom was a bit of a blue blood. After all, Victoria ruled the colony when both her parents and grandparents were born. She made her appearance only 20 years after Federation. In 1921 Australia was still under the sway of the Crown appointed Governor General. Most of Australia’s roots involves crims*** and their overlords - the descendants of “transportation”, which was the sending abroad of hoards of the great unwashed, poverty stricken street urchins accused of petty larceny or political crimes - the Oliver Twists of England. It was deemed a humane alternative to hanging. Melbourne was settled by whalers, adventurers, wool traders, prospectors, and the store-keepers, and associated business folk and bureaucrats that followed the gold.
Mom’s family was also a part of the upper economic class. This, I think, conditioned her with somewhat undemocratic tendencies at times. Thankfully she grew steadily out of those as she got older. We kids - and Dad - didn’t really tolerate the blue blood stuff. She loved All in the Family for it’s social commentary, but I can’t help feel she sometimes felt sympatico with Archie. Still, underneath her frequent just so expectations, she was tender hearted, loved an underdog, and hated unfairness. She also had a soft spot for roguish renegades.
She was always very proud of her family growing up. They had the nicest house on the block, tennis courts, the best clothes, the first car. Even during the depression they had money. Her great grandmother were Averys of the rail scales. Her maternal grandfather was warden of Pentridge prison. She was definitely not of a daughter of the transportee class. Clearly, Mom and her siblings had a somewhat privileged and Idyllic childhood and she always looked back on it with great pride and great joy. She loved her parents dearly, especially her dad.
She talked about the great majority of her relatives with love and admiration. She loved her “little” brother Max dearly. Ralph, I think was her favorite - her big brother. She often lamented the small number of stolen moments alone with him she was alloted in later years. She always spoke of Keith with admiration and described as a bit of a rogue - with a gleam in her eye. She always looked up to Joyce and loved her with all her heart. When she talked of her it was always, “My beautiful sister, Joyce”. It broke her heart in two when they drifted apart. She had great stories about her aunties, uncles and cousins, the grandparents and all the characters now long gone.
She was proud of her blue blood heritage. Yet - and it seems contradictory to me - she was very proud of the fact that the famous bushranger outlaw/folk hero, Ned Kelly played a part in our family history (you’ll have to read her memoirs to get that story). She loved America, but hers is a soul truly of an Aussie, I reckon. Although I have my own soft spot for Ned, I once expressed the possibility that Ned’s homicidal activities often resulted in a number of innocent victims - her retort made me think I was going to be her next victim. Mom did not appreciate my teasings. I once suggested that there may be some hidden aboriginal bloodline in our family tree (this, I believe is possible, especially when I sometimes look at my siblings’ profiles! Am I the only one that thinks this would be cool?). Again, eyes full of daggers.
This may seem a bit of a cliche, but what changes she saw in her long life! When she was young, laundry was an all day affair that involved boiling clothes with lye and starching everything, even the sheets! “Refrigeration” was achieved by the utilization of a “Coolgardie Safe”, a kind of non electric passive swamp cooler that kept there food (somewhat) cool. Again, refer to her memoirs. Milk, bread, veggies, coal was delivery by horse cart through the suburban streets regularly. The milko (milkman) tended his cows, milked them and delivered fresh milk daily (I love this!).
Most people who knew Mom liked her a lot. I don’t think she really understood this. She loved and was interested in people, but she could be a bit unsocial at times - she was a shy and private person. She was easily slighted - underneath it all a sensitive soul with few chinks in her armor. She sometimes had difficulty seeing things from another’s perspective. But she was light hearted, warm, congenial, solid, intrepid, romantic, hardworking, a good listener - good company and incredibly generous (even tho, as an adult, she never had a lot). Conversations with Mom were seldom boring. She told great stories - especially of early days in Australia.
I’m the youngest of we 4 sibs, born four years after Gary, the next youngest. The three eldest entered the world all within a 28 month span - Mom and dad were busy in the early days!
The best memories I have of Mom concern travel. Before I started school, Mom worked nights in the admittance dept. at Elmhurst hospital. She was always a working mom - not that typical back then. My earliest memories are of when Mom and I would hop on the bus and head into Elmhurst to shop for the day - these were the days before malls. I have a lot of happy memories of this time. Mom was always a sharp dresser and, barring a lengthy trip to the city, Elmhurst had the best wares. So she’d shop for a dress or something for the house and always let me pick out a toy car - much to the chagrin of my dad when on a subsequent trip he left me balling on Soukup’s Hardware floor when my expectation for a shiny new ride was not fulfilled - spoiled brat.
Trips to the lake every summer - we always got neatly wrapped prizes for seeing cows, cars or what have you of a certain type. I rarely won due to being at least four years younger than the rest, but Mom made sure I got something. The big adventure: the great cruise to Oz when I was 13. Life changing! Mom showed us the Pacific, North and South. San Francisco, Marin County, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Suva, Fiji; Auckland, New Zealand; Sydney, Melbourne, the Dandenongs, my uncle’s sheep station, my grandfather’s “castle” (modest, but a castle) and sharks - flake to eat and great whites in the bay, outside the beach enclosures. I couldn't stand fish until I went to Melbourne and had "flake"****. This was the first of many South Pacific trips through the years, mostly financed by Mom.
She always said there would be nothing left to leave anybody after she was gone, so it was better to spend the little money should could scrape together seeing the world together. Absolutely! I often feel my penance is suffering the work-a-day world with a gypsy soul that my parents instilled in me - it often feels like a hair shirt. But all the green on God’s green earth could never replace all the wonderful memories of the places we explored together.
Mom was not religious. She believed that there is something beyond this earthly plain, a force for good, which I think she had some personal experience with. But she could never bring herself to have faith in “stories”. Towards the end, I think even those beliefs started to wane, which I found sad. She increasingly thought the odds of an after life slim. Most people get more religious as they near the end. Not Mom. Even the fear of death wouldn’t make her succumb to something she thought of as fantasy. She always said she was a “realist”.
At the end Mom’s iron will served her well. After her recent fall, she was done. It was her time. She was ready to go and she knew it. No nursing home for her. No prolonged illness. The sooner the better. She talked of overdose: sleeping pills, aspirin. She recalled her grandfather who went to bed, stopped eating and died. She asked my sisters to shoot her and laughed about it! She told me she wished that she’d just have a heart attack. At the end, her body literally rejected food, and then gradually, water. I swear it was her will! Like her grandfather Carr, who she always admired, my mom met death on her own terms. Mom and I did not always see eye to eye, but I’ve always been proud of her. Probably never as proud as now. Proud of her fearlessness, her strength, her will! She went peacefully, but with the quiet force of distant super nova that danced and swirled and jitterbugged out of this world into the next universe - - or maybe she was waltzing Matilda. G’bye Mom, fare well. I love you more than you could ever know and will miss you more than I yet know.
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children….to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
-Let there be no inscription upon my tomb; let no man write my epitaph;
no man can.
~ Robert Emmet
*Ocker - a salt-of-the-earth Australian. Queensland - a state of Oz.
**Pommie - pommegranate, a Brit. Pommegranates, like limes, were used by English ship captains to stave of scurvy.
***crim - Aussie slang for criminal.
**** Flake - shark filets, usually in fish and chips