Eight: The Shift

Molly, 61

My mum is the only person close to me that I have lost. My dad is still alive and he’s 98 this year.

Mum died in November 2015 and she always said she was going to live to 105. But in the last couple of years she was well and truly ready to go.

Interestingly enough, I knew I had messages from her on my answering machine where she’d rung and didn’t know whether I was home or whether I’d answered the phone. She was just talking because she couldn’t hear enough to tell if she was talking to a person. I’ve not deleted them and the answering machine, when I came home the other day, was full. It can’t take any more messages. I thought, “I need to clean this up”.

The first messages I’ve got are from dad, dating from early 2015 and then there’s messages from mum. As the weeks have passed, you can really hear in her voice how depressed she was. She was losing her hearing and her sight was also going and she found it increasingly a huge effort just to find the will to stay alive.

[She couldn’t articulate what was the problem was.]

She was in a home at that stage. She was very pragmatic. She knew what she could cope with and what she couldn’t. Dad and her were still living at home and she wanted to go and had the opportunity to go. He wouldn’t go with her so she moved into the home and he stayed at home which caused a few problems.

In the end, by the time we got him in we literally had to shoe-horn him in. It was not a very nice thing to do but he just wouldn’t go and he also wasn’t coping at home.

It’s hard to talk about mum without talking about dad because they were together nearly 80 years. I think it was their 70th anniversary in the year that she died. Mum was 14 when they got together and she was 93 when she died.

She was very religious but very bright and very vivacious. She loved company and loved fun, loved to dance and play. Dad talks about her now as being this shining light which wasn’t necessarily like that with her when she was alive. Now that she’s gone, he really finds that difficult. He says she just lit up a room.

She was a bit nutty in lots of ways. Nutty in a religious way which I don’t think is good. We definitely didn’t have the same view of the world at all. I wouldn’t say that we were close at all. But we probably were closer in ways that we didn’t necessarily understand or even acknowledge. There was still a lot of caring and a lot of love there. She wasn’t somebody I would tell things to because she wasn’t a comfort Aunt.

I’ve got three sisters and a brother. Their relationships with my mother were the same but different if that makes sense. My older sister and the relationship between her and mum and dad was a quite fractious. My second sister was probably closer. I always thought she was the favourite because she just seemed to do the right things. Things that mum and dad approved of. My brother was the only boy in the middle of four sisters. He was very needy and dependent. She was still cooking meals for him right up until she went into the home. I think my younger sister, who ended up moving over there, out of all of us took mum passing away the hardest. She was really rocked.

My mum was grounded and practical in lots of ways so that’s definitely had an influence on me. She was smart but she wasn’t well educated, leaving school at 14. She was self-conscious of not having finished an education. She should have gone to University but dad would never have encouraged that.

We had a very bad car accident when I was 5 or 6. She was very seriously injured in that. We were in a car that was struck on the side, the car spun around and we were all thrown out. Mum was thrown into a tree, head first. I can remember dad being crouched over her and going over [towards them]. Thinking that mum had died or was dying, he sent me back to the car.

She was very unwell for a long time after that and had a nervous breakdown. She had post-traumatic stress which was difficult to live with. It was undiagnosed as they didn’t know what that was in those days.

Whether her personality changed through that experience is a question I have asked of my older siblings a lot. “What was she like before?” They’ve never been able to answer me. To me, I thought that she must have changed a lot. At the same time, within a couple of years she was in the CWA debating team and winning the finals, touring around. On the one hand, I think all of us thought that she was brain-injured in some way but at the same time she’s doing this.

She was very good at seeing other peoples needs but not necessarily seeing her family in front of her. That was really difficult. Which is why I say she wasn’t a confidant because she couldn’t see you, she could see the people standing behind you but not the people right in front of her. She would often talk about how she’d helped this family and that family and done their ironing. When it came to her own family, it all came with lots of obligations and conditions and all sorts of things.

She loved cooking and cooked a lot. We did cook together but that was her thing, it wasn’t my thing. I don’t actually particularly like cooking.

I think what I saw of myself in her is somebody who probably aspired to things. She did what she could but her confidence was very much undermined by not having had that education. Dad probably didn’t encourage it either.

She had the appetite to do it but dad wasn’t a facilitator. In lots of ways I did see a lot of myself in mum but also saw how her aspirations had been cramped. I kind of use that as what I’m not going to do. I left my marriage when I realised that I could raise my kids on my own just as well as I could with the partner that I had at the time.

I became very stubborn and dogmatic, choosing a very different path for myself but one that I think has served me well.

My dad wasn’t somebody who encouraged education in his daughters, even though he wanted us all to do degrees. I think he was threatened by intelligent women.

I didn’t study. He found me a job and I went and worked for an accounting firm when I was 16. Then when I was in my 30s, I put myself through uni when my children were young. After finishing uni I started working for a documentary producer, spending 20 years working there. I studied film and Aboriginal Studies and that’s kind of where my interests lay.

I think she was proud of my accomplishments. I don’t think she knew what I did. It’s really weird.

Dad was very proud. He loved seeing my name on the credits on the TV. He’d tell people to watch saying, “That’s my daughter.”

In fact, there’s a message on the answering machine with him watching the last series I worked on when it was broadcast. He rang and said, “It was very interesting.”

In a weird way he didn’t necessarily encourage it but he was proud when he realised it was something he could point to. It was  tangible.

I think my mum was somebody who was very community-minded, somebody who believed in being involved in the community. She was very involved with CWA, very involved with her church. They led prayer groups and all that kind of stuff. Although I didn’t embrace any of that, both her and dad have been very active in the community.

Dad worked with Legacy. It is a returned services organisation but one that is more support for family, different to the RSL. He was really involved with that but then ended up president of the RSL. He’s one of the few surviving Second World War veterans. His father served in the First World War and he in the Second World War. Both wars had a really big impact on him because his father committed suicide when he was 10. That is why he was so involved with Legacy, making sure that families, widows in particular, were supported. He spent 25-30 years doing pension claims for either veterans or veteran’s widows. He did that right up until he couldn’t do it any more.

From both of them I guess I got that it is really important to give back to your community. That if you have had education opportunities and all the rest of it, whatever you’ve got, you’ve got to pass it on. I absolutely respect them both for that.

They got married during the war. She proposed because he took too long and she made her dress. I think he came home on leave and she said, “Right… we’re getting married now.”

I think they might have had a pregnancy not that long after. I don’t know exactly when because I only learned after I had my first son that she’d actually had an abortion which was a very unusual thing to do in the 1940s. They decided that they weren’t set up financially, the way they needed to be, so she had an abortion. It must have been illegal. She never really talked about it. She only talked about it in the context of when I had my first child and I was really shocked. Not judgemental. My view is that it’s up to the individual. I couldn’t do it myself but I can understand. I think it’s better not to bring a child into the world if the circumstances aren’t right.

I can remember thinking as a young person that our family had had a lot of bad luck because dad and his three brothers and his parents were in a very bad car accident when dad was two. Dad had two broken legs.

His father committed suicide when he was 10. At that time, because it was suicide, the veteran’s affairs refused to acknowledge that his suicide was a consequence of his war experience even though he’d been injured in France three times. The third time had resulted in his leg being amputated.

He returned to Australia a complete mess. The impact of them refusing to acknowledge that meant that she didn’t get a pension. She had four young children that she was trying to support on her own and was taking on ironing. It was only with the lobbying of a member of parliament that in the end she got a pension so things became a little easier.

That is probably the most traumatic experience they could possibly have in their life but then when mum was pregnant with me, she was looking after my cousin who was three.

He was the same age as my brother and mum was looking after him while her sister was in hospital having surgery for something. Another Aunt and Uncle arrived and my brother and cousin were standing waiting for them. They had been playing and my cousin thought they were still playing. He basically ran onto the road, got struck by a car and was killed … in my mother’s care.

I’d always known about this boy and knew he’d been killed in tragic circumstances but didn’t really understand the context. It was still some years after that, when I did the math, that I realised that mum was pregnant with me. She never said that.

When I realised that, I just thought she had to go and see her sister and explain what had happened.

In those days, there was this idea that if you take away all the reminders that will help somebody recover. All the things that belonged to this little boy were removed from the house before my Aunt came home.

It’s really interesting because we, as a big family, would have regular slide nights. Whenever a photo would come up that had Tommy in it, there would be this whispering of his name and everybody would be silent. It would just hang in the room.

I was conscious of that but didn’t really understand it. It probably took about 10 years to work it out that mum was pregnant with me. How do you welcome a new baby into the world when you have cared for one that has been killed in those circumstances?

Surprisingly it didn’t have a big effect on my mum’s relationship with her sister. The police said to her that she have to go and see her. Mum said, “I can’t! She’ll never want to see me.” They convinced her that she had to. They went with her… I just can’t imagine how you tell your sister that this little three year old, blond, beautiful boy has been killed in such horrible circumstances.

My Aunt said, “It’s not your fault. It’s just not your fault.”

It didn’t impact on them. They had a lot to do with each other. It was that Aunt that mum sat with as she was dying. Mum learnt how she wanted to die. She said, “I want that death. That death was just the most uplifting and amazing experience of my life.” We talked about that a lot because I thought that was a truly extraordinary thing given that this terrible, terrible tragedy had happened that should have left them completely fractured but it didn’t.

In fact, as my Aunt lay dying, the whole family including my mum and dad stayed there for three days right through that process. They sang and they talked. At some point the doctors had come over to them and said, “Are you ready to let Betty go? It’s probably her time.” They kind of agreed that it was ok. They were ready to let her go. The doctor went over and said, “It’s ok. You go when you are ready.” Within half an hour she’d passed away.

Mum came home from that utterly elated beyond anything and we had fantastic conversations around that. How death is a sad event but it is also incredibly rewarding. It’s a gift if you can participate in that process which is what we did with mum.

She taught me how she wanted to go. She was really, abundantly clear, “I don’t want flowers!” She didn’t plan her funeral. She didn’t really care that much about her funeral. She just said, “Don’t bring flowers and wear lots of colour. I don’t want black.” She also told us, “I want my family around me. That’s how I want to go. I want you singing.”

So that’s what we did. We sang a lot. I didn’t know what else to do so we would sing silly songs like ‘Pack up your troubles’. I couldn’t think of anything else. I knew mum could hear us. She loved singing around the piano. She loved playing the piano. She loved singing and I knew that would warm her heart. So that’s what we did, both while she was dying and afterwards at her funeral.

She’d started preparing for her death about 3 or 4 years before it happened. Planning for a death is good. It’s not macabre. It is a gift and it makes it so much easier. We knew exactly what mum needed to respect her.

My brother-in-law died just a couple of months ago. By contrast, he said, “I don’t want a funeral.” He put down all these rules about what the family could or couldn’t do. I said, “It’s nothing to do with him.” Yes, you do want to honour him in some way and you can do that but a funeral is actually for the people who are left behind. It’s not for them. A death is completely different. My brother-in-law was not going to have anybody there when he died because he couldn’t cope, my sister thinks, with emotions.

[It’s a familiar story with a lot of men. They tend to want to hide in their little corners. Especially when they are not feeling well.]

Dad won’t talk about it at all. He’s not interested in having that conversation. After mum died I tried several times to have similar conversations and there was absolutely no way it was going to happen. That’s alright. If he doesn’t need it, he doesn’t need it. I also don’t go and see him as much as I was going over to see mum which I feel guilty about.

Although I’ve said that I didn’t feel that mum and I were that close, we probably were closer in ways that I don’t know how to acknowledge because I’m not quite sure what it is.

I did go over a lot. She and I definitely talked about a lot of that end of life stuff.

I remember – even if she didn’t necessarily realise or remember it herself when they were still on the farm – she said, “The garden’s so big.” I said, “You know you don’t have to stay there don’t you? You could sell the farm and move into town.”

A week later she said to dad, “We’re selling the farm and we’re moving into town. I don’t care whether you come with me or not. I’m going!” When she made decisions like that, she made the decision and dad would just have to follow. Of course, it was inconceivable to him that they wouldn’t be together. Since she wasn’t staying, he had too. So they bought a house within a few weeks.

It was a couple of years before they moved into it. They actually bought a house which was almost like they were living on the farm because it was at the end of a cul de sac. It looked out over the river and there were flats and sheep grazing and they could see the ducks and so on. It was a great place for them to spend their last years living independently.

I think there were things that mum and I did relate to. We both loved gardens. Other members of my family liked gardening as well but there was something a little bit special between mum and I around gardens.

There are lots of ways that she has taught me things that I really appreciate and definitely how to die is one of them.

We didn’t have a lot of time to arrange her funeral because the house had been sold and dad was in the home at that stage. We were all staying at the house which had been sold. We’d been there a month or so earlier basically clearing out stuff and selling off stuff and emptying it out. We were there just as it had been sold and settlement was on the Thursday I think.

She’d died on Sunday morning. We realised that we had to empty the house out while we were staying in it. We also had to somewhere fit in a funeral. We had to have the funeral on a Tuesday so that we could finish emptying out the house on the Wednesday and then handover on the Thursday. It was really intense.

We were all there. Her death was just amazing. She’d been declared palliative on the Thursday before. My nephew and his wife and little one had been visiting that morning. Something like three hours later they called my sister and dad in and basically said, “This is it. This is the end of the road. There’s no more treatment. She’s palliative and we’re withdrawing treatment.”

My nephew said, “That can’t be possible. We’ve just seen her and she looked fine.”

She was absolutely over the moon because it meant that she no longer had to go to the dining room and try and eat. She couldn’t swallow. She’d had a stroke a few years earlier and her swallow reflex had gone. Eating in the dining room was a real struggle for her. She just lit up and I’ve got photos I could show you. She was so excited about being declared palliative which is just bizarre!

That was on Thursday and I think I got a call in the afternoon. I caught the flight over early the next morning. We got there and she was semi-conscious but only just. She kind of acknowledged me.

My son had picked us up. He’d got married the month before. We must have done a whole lot of stuff when we were over for his wedding. They hadn’t come to the wedding so he showed her his wedding ring and she gave him a hug and a kiss. That was lovely.

That night we were all there and there were lots of siblings coming and going. I just said, “I staying here. I’ll stay with her tonight.”

We photographed all of it right the way through from before we got there and when we got there. We photographed a lot.

That night I think she probably had a little stroke. I don’t know. I remember getting her changed as she’d had a vomit. We got her ready for bed. Her last words were, “Don’t leave me” and that was the last time she spoke. I just said, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here with you.” We held hands. I’d made up the bed beside her and she had another vomit. We had to call the nurse in and change her again. I think, in retrospect, that she might have had a little stroke and that might have been part of the vomiting.

From that time on she physically changed quite a lot. Her skin had gone that waxy colour.

My sister had gone to Melbourne and lost a close friend of hers to cancer a week or so earlier. She’d been with mum when they said she was palliative but then she’d had to go to the funeral of her friend.

On the Saturday we knew that things were advancing. We just said, “Hang on mum, Tina’s coming. She’s on her way.” We were getting calls and saying to Tina, “Don’t linger because it could happen any time. We think she’s waiting for you.”

Unfortunately my son was up in Sydney and had exams. I said to him, “Don’t try and get here. Just do your exam. There’s no point.”

My niece was over in America. She wanted to come out and we said, “You won’t make it in time.” So there was tension between her and my sister because she thought my sister was saying don’t come but she was just saying don’t try and get here because you won’t make it in time. Especially from the states.

Tina arrived.

That evening we all decided to stay. It was my three sisters and my brother. The room mum was in was probably not as big as this kitchen. It was tiny. It had a little separate bathroom. We shifted her bed so we could setup a fold-down bed and mattresses on the floor. Five of us were packed into this room like sardines. One sister and myself were sleeping top-to-tail, another sister there, another sister there, my brother was in the chair and mum was in the bed. I’ve got a photo of that too [laughs].

The nursing staff came in at one stage [laughs] and said, “What?!” … “Yeah, we’re all here!”

[I’m quite surprised they’d let you do that.]

They were fine. They were great. They setup a little tea station outside the room because there was no room for one inside. They brought us plates of sandwiches and stuff. They looked after us that 48 hours really well.

We chatted and took our time getting ready to go to bed. Eventually at about 1.30am we turned the lights off and then at 1.50am my brother said, “I think she’s stopped breathing.”

I got up and went to her and she was definitely still warm under the ear … but she was gone. It was kind of like she waited for us all to settle down for the night.

[It sounds almost like going camping. It’s got something quite endearing and familiar about it.]

My brother went and got dad. He was over the other side. This is the funny thing. For some reason, dad didn’t like the room next to her so he was in another wing altogether. It was a better room in lots of ways because it was a better layout. Mum’s wing was bright and sunny and his was cold. He always used to come over and visit her. She refused to go and visit him [laughs]. “I’m not going to go sit in the cold place!”

He’d come over and visit her and they would sit on the sofa in the sunroom. She would be asleep on his chest.

We just left her there until the morning and in the morning the Funeral Directors collected her. Everybody left and I stayed with her right through. I don’t know why, I just didn’t want to leave her. I also said that I wanted to dress her as well. I was there when they picked her up and I didn’t want them to take her out in front of everybody. So I said bring the hearse around the back and we’ll take her out through her own door.

I asked my sister and son if she would help dress mum. The three of us dressed her. We must have done it the day before on Monday afternoon. We had a meeting Monday morning with the Minister. It was just a simple funeral.

I didn’t speak at the funeral. All the grandchildren did. That was good. They were all there except for my niece and my nephew. He’d just gone home. I think both of them had written something that someone else read out. It was good having the grandchildren do it because they have a very different experience and that was really good.

They didn’t have blinkers on but that could see the funny side of the things she would do. Mum was very funny in her way. She liked to make people laugh and she could say some outrageous things. She was really prim. She never swore and we would get into trouble if we even said, “Shut up”. If you said “bum” it was a big deal! All hell to pay! It was really interesting that as she got older, especially in that last year, she would come out with the most …. “Mum! I can’t believe you just said that!” [laughs].

We stood around and sang. We sang the same as we had by her bedside. Then we sang again when we got out to the cemetery as well.

I said to my sister, because I was with her when her husband died, “Was that a bit weird that singing that I kept doing?” She said, “No. It was just great. It was just the right thing to do.” I couldn’t stop. She said, “No. It was fine.” It got everyone else singing. It was a World War I song and that’s what mum liked. She liked singing those tunes.

[Songs are a critical part of rituals in general. It’s something people can relate to really easily. It’s not ‘high’.]

Especially not Pack up your troubles! [laughs]

Then there was another song, that had been my grandmother’s song, which we also sang a lot too.

It must have been the Monday after she died, we then sat down as a family in the lounge room and went through all the stuff that we were clearing out of the house. We worked out who wanted to take what and it was all written down. What could be taken that day and what couldn’t we made arrangements for. That included going through all the photographs. It was really good.

My family is not known for its cohesiveness or working together but on that occasion it did work really well. There was a little bit of friction between my younger sister and myself which I still don’t understand. I don’t know why she was particularly irritated with me but she was. She said a couple of things which I didn’t really respond to … that was a little bit strange.

My family is known for its occasional blues. They’re mainly spats not big things although my brother’s not talking to any of us. [laughs]

She was buried and I’ve visited the grave many times. Most times when I go there I’ll either go on my own or go and take dad out there. Dad likes to go and visit.

My sister’s best friend came to the house when we were all over there at one stage doing a big garden cleanup ahead of putting it on the market. This friend had visited and within six weeks she had died. She’s buried two doors up. So mum’s there, there’s a grave on the other side and then she’s there so they’re kind of neighbours.

I go and say hi to Trudy too. It’s funny.

I can remember years ago – and this is where mum was very pragmatic – she rang me up one day and said, “We’ve bought a block of land.” I said, “What do you mean you bought a block of land? Are you going to build a house. What are you talking about?” They’d bought a plot at the cemetery and dad will be buried on top of her. They’d bought it with the intention that they’d both be together.

I think I’m still processing her death. A bit like mum I wanted to talk about it quite a lot afterwards. I had to pick my audience because my husband’s definitely not interested in talking about it. My siblings a little bit. My sister in Queensland and I have talked quite a lot. My other siblings not at all. My brother a bit up until he stopped talking to us. Dad a little. He’d got a little bit of dementia so he kind of forgets.

She died on my niece’s birthday.

[That’s exactly what happened with my father and my niece.]

She kind of said, “That’s ok because I’ll always remember nan on my birthday.” So that was a good attitude.

New Year’s Eve was the last big event … it was the first year that I would see in without her being there. I have my moments.

We have this fairly significant collections of photos which I looked at a little bit in the weeks after. I put them away and haven’t looked at them. Interestingly, in the last couple of months I’ve actually gone back and looked at them a lot, looked at those throughout that process. I think things are incremental. Processing is not just a week or a month or a year.

Apart from what happened with my brother, I think I was relieved that there was no lasting problems. With my siblings, it hasn’t necessarily brought us closer together but it hasn’t fractured anything. I think it was good for us to be able to see that we could work together as a family, planning the funeral and organising all of that.

We all contributed equally to the emptying of the house. Probably my family tends to highlight the negative things rather than the positive things and I think we should look at that and say, “This could have been a really difficult stage.” There might have been a few moments but, by and large, we worked as a unit. We did the right thing by mum and dad.

A death makes you think about mortality more. I’m really conscious that I’m 61 and that my youthful good looks are definitely gone. [laughs] I just mean that I definitely don’t feel like a young person anymore. I think about mum and dad when they were my age now and what they were like. The things that they were doing.

They both really liked adventures and did lots of travelling in a limited kind of fashion. They weren’t interested in going to Europe and doing that kind of thing. Through their activities in the Church, they went to the Solomon Islands or Aboriginal Communities or Papua New Guinea. They did a lot of community work building facilities. They called them work groups and they did that a lot over about 25 years.

They went to Lord Howe Island and did lots of travels around Australia. They went to Darwin, the Bungle Bungles before the road went in and Beagle Bay. I actually have some distant Aboriginal relatives between Darwin and Broome who were at Beagle Bay Mission.

I remember as a young person moving to Melbourne and actually being really angry because I felt like I’d been brought up in a cocoon and I had no idea how the world worked … at all. They weren’t sophisticated in that way but, in their unsophisticated way, they at least got out and tried.

It certainly has made me think about what I want. I don’t know that it necessarily has made me not fearful. I don’t think I’m ready to think about that in those terms.

Maybe I just think I know I’m going to be here for a few years unless there’s an accident. It’s not like I don’t have any major health issues. Cancer is not in our family. My aunty did have cancer but I think hers was from a Melanoma. I don’t think cancer is a high risk in my family. I think it’s reasonably likely that I’ll be around until at least 90. It’s all very well but it’s only good if you’ve got good quality of life.

That’s what makes me sad for mum because I knew that she felt very isolated and was very sad. I listen to that phone message upstairs … “I’m so lonely” … she had no idea whether I was there. She was saying, “Are you there?” There’s no point in even ringing her back because she couldn’t hear. She just couldn’t hear. I don’t call dad anymore because he can’t hear either.

This is what’s really hard. I have a lot of guilt that I don’t get over and see dad as much as I did with mum. My father is harder to talk to.

[If you go over a couple of times a year, there’s this real significance placed on every visit.]

Which becomes awkward in itself. I’m really conscious that this might be the last time. I can remember leaving and mum would be crying, waving to me from the dining table. That would break my heart. It was like leaving your kids in school when the kids first start school.

[Every time has this weight attached to it. It becomes really exhausting and very difficult to get past.]

That was the thing with dad. A couple of years ago they declared him palliative so we all went over there. This was in May 2017. We’d been there for three days … [laughs] … what do we do now? After a few days, we all thought we’d better go home. Two years later and he’s still here.

In fact we had to say, “He’s not palliative, just delete that from your books.” He’d had a skin cancer that was creeping and they wouldn’t treat it because they said he was palliative. In the end I took him over to see the Oncologist and he said, “Why isn’t he being treated?” “Because they reckon he’s dying.” He said, “This is really easy to treat and if you don’t do it soon, it’s going to hit his eye and it will be untreatable. Let’s do something about it now.”

He said, “How did he get in here?” I said, “He walked from the car.” “Unaided?” “Yes.” “How far was the car?” I said, “Out there but up on the street not just in the car park just there.” He said, “If he can walk that far unaided, he can survive a general anaesthetic.” He had to have a skin graft too. The skin graft took really well but the donor site took a long time to heal, if its healed yet. I haven’t been over since October last year.

I came home with my mother’s nightie that she died in which I’d bought for her. I’ve got some of the last clothes my sister and I bought for her before she died, a few years before. I have a top that had been mine that I gave to her that she wore all the time. It really suited her. I’ve got scarves.

I’ve got a lot of her letters. A lot of her letters I didn’t read, never even open them because a lot of them were, “If only you’d become a Christian…” This is part of the difficulty as our relationship was always couched in those terms. That’s what pushed us away. I just kept them all together.

A lot of her stuff I haven’t packed away. Her scarf is just lying over the chair upstairs. It feels like she’s more here. There were two little glass wrens that I’d bought for them one year. They sat on her table for years and years and years. They were in her room and I bought those home and they are sitting on the window sill upstairs.

I’ve got a few things like that old, red Bakelite canister in the kitchen. Not just from her. Other things that belonged to my grandmother. That’s my dad’s very first slide projector. That’s got lots of family memories around that.

I just like knowing that they are there.

My grandmother had given my parents a lounge suite which had been made for them in Melbourne. Nobody wanted it. I always liked it and did want it but I didn’t want to push for it if somebody else wanted it. Nobody else wanted it so I said, “It’s coming to WA then.”

It was a bit of an effort to get it over here. Barry wasn’t particularly keen on getting it because, admittedly, it was upholstered in some really hideous peacock blue upholstery from the 1970s. We had it reupholstered. I’ve still got some of the original fabric that it was upholstered in from the 1940s. In fact, I was looking at it this week and I was thinking I’ll cut it up into four pieces and put it into a frame. Maybe with a photo or something else and give it to each member of the family.

I guess the lounge suite is a really significant thing and I love it because we use it all the time now. It’s really comfortable and now my husband likes it especially since it’s been reupholstered. It’s feather filled and it’s something special. It’s 70-years old. It’s only been reupholstered twice. It needed a little bit of repair. I think it’s nice to have things that are from your past.

I’ve got one thing that was my mother’s grandmother’s. It’s a little glass bottle. That’s probably the only thing that’s survived. That’s probably the oldest relic on my mother’s side of the family. Nobody wanted that either which surprises me.

I know my mother had some of my grandmother’s recipes. They weren’t things that I kept. I don’t know who ended up with them.

I have a cassette recording of my mother singing to my grandmother as she was dying. That was my grandmother’s favourite song. It think Andy Griffith sang it but the version my grandmother liked was slightly different. When we were talking about this when mum died, we realised that it was song that Andy Griffith had sung.

 

Return to Interviews

Return to start page