Sunday Blog 151 – 1 September 2024
Almost to the very end of her long life, my mother, Bet, remained who she was, of sound mind. Funny, spunky, unpredictable.
In the emergency department last week where she was being treated for her broken hip, she was next to a man who had imbibed a little too much alcohol. We were talking about him afterwards when we were (finally) up on the ward, and despite all the pain she was in, she still managed a quip. Never a potty mouth, she said from her prone position on the hospital bed, “He only had one word in his vocabulary. And it rhymed with ‘duck’”.
Between the hospital and coming back to the aged care facility, she wasn’t quite the Bet that we knew. It was so hard to see her, here but not here, and increasingly unsettled. So many times over the last few years, I have felt the truth of the Brene Brown quote above about caring for a loved one (from Episode 88 of We Can Do Hard Things.) Both are true. It is an honour. It is unbearable.
Thrown into this mix was my impending five week world-wide trip. London, Greece, New York, India. Writing and yoga retreats and workshops. Would I be the person who left, missed her mother’s death? Her mother’s funeral? I tried this idea on but it didn’t quite fit. There was nothing for it but to live with the agonising uncertainty and clusterfuck of guilt and confusion and sadness with a side-dish of selfish desire.
But just like Mum made the decision to move into aged care so we didn’t have to, made the decision to sell the house so we could get on with that mammoth task while she was still with us, she slipped away on Tuesday morning in the early hours. Considerate to the end, Bet made sure I’d be there when she died, and that I could be part of her funeral.
My grief and relief have been like a dog chasing its tail ever since her passing.
The day Bet died, the funeral home that attended to take her away presented me with a beautiful single protea. I followed Mum out of that aged care facility, protea clutched in my hand. I got to walk her out, just like I’d walked her in.
In the sifting and sorting of the last things, I found an incomplete diary of hers from the European family trip we took in 1979 when I was 14 and she was 54. It only covered the tortuously long flight over there and our first two days in London. We were away for four months in all and I longed to read her account of the whole trip, but alas, it was never written. Those few pages though took me right back to that life-changing time, when as a 14-year-old I knew my destiny and future would include travel. Much more travel.
So one week after the funeral, I’ll pack my suitcase and my journal. Head off on a valedictory tour for my beautiful, beautiful Mum. Finish all the diary entries, and the damn manuscript edits while I’m at it.