by Tony Kelly
In many ways Mum is the ideal patient. She agrees with everything I suggest. The tension comes from the fact that she does not actually do the things she agrees to. If left unchecked she will stay immobilised in her chair all day, drink nothing and eat her way through a bag of lollies. When this happens, she becomes withdrawn and belligerent. I try all my tricks to engage her.
‘Would you like to play a game of Upwords, Mum?’
‘No,’ she says.
‘How about cribbage, then?’
‘No.’
‘What about we do a crossword? Or I could read you an article from the paper?’
Mum shakes her head.
‘Are you okay, Mum?’ I ask.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Would you like to sit outside for a bit?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘Are you annoyed with me, Mum?’
‘I think I’ll go and lie down in my room,’ she says. With that, she gets up, goes to her room and shuts the door.
I don’t know what to do when she’s like this so I just let her be. On one level I think it’s important to try to buck Mum up and get her out of her slump, but on another level I wonder what the point is. I know Mum thinks similarly. She recently told me that some mornings she wakes up, opens one eye and says out loud, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
Even though this little anecdote made me laugh, I do wonder how keen Mum is on prolonging her life. And is her desire not to drink water all part of a larger plan to shut down? Is my desire to keep her healthy and engaged all about me? Am I the one who is too scared to let go?
A flutter of air outside causes a branch of frangipani to push up against the louvres. It’s covered in flowers, and the sweet heady scent makes me think of long, cool drinks in a tropical garden. I text Tony back:
I feel like sangria and tapas. How about we meet at the Spanish garden bar?
I smile to myself and press send. I stay at my desk and continue to look out the window. I love using this room as a study. I’ve always thought that it was the best room in the house. It has a view of the front garden, the street and the hill. It was another room that had been filled with junk for years.
Not long after we arrived, I said to Mum, ‘We’re going to clean the junk out of the front room so that I can have a study.’
‘Junk is a pejorative word to describe the contents of that room,’ she replied.
‘How would you describe it?’
‘A museum dedicated to uncatalogued and forgotten historical memorabilia.’
‘Which is,’ I said, ‘a euphemism for junk.’
But Mum was right. When I started to clean the room out, I did find a myriad of uncatalogued and forgotten historical memorabilia. At the back of one cupboard was a coconut. I was so surprised that I took a photo and sent it to David. Quick as a flash he messaged back:
I brought that coconut back from a holiday on Magnetic Island in 1967. I wondered where it was!
The cupboards, drawers and shelves were full of items that no one had looked at for years. I spent hours going through boxes of old sewing patterns and bags of fabric. Mum was an excellent dressmaker, and every pattern and remnant of fabric sparked a memory.
I found schoolbooks dating back to the 1950s, old clothes (including a couple of excellent 1970s body shirts that I added to my wardrobe), school uniforms that hadn’t seen the light of day for over forty years, the dress Mum made me when I was confirmed in 1974, wilted Christmas decorations, dusty wrapping paper, unopened gifts, board games with missing parts, and bags stuffed full of letters dating back fifty years.
It took me days to pull everything out, and even longer to look at it all. This drove Tony spare. He wanted to get the whole lot into the skip and off to the dump.
‘Every item in this room tells a story,’ I told him.
‘Well, hurry up and get to the end of the story!’ he said.
The letters were the most difficult. I didn’t have time to read them all, but I didn’t want to throw them out either. What if there was a gem in there, like a letter that held the key to the secret in our family, and I’d thrown it out? Or even a letter that was significant historically?
Years ago, Mum had told me about a letter she received from her great-uncle when she was at boarding school.
‘He told me about waving off Burke and Wills on their famous expedition,’ she said.
‘How old was he?’ I asked.
‘I think he was about six. It was in Melbourne in 1860. He told me about the camels, and how people lined the streets for miles to wave them off. He had a small flag.’
‘Was he the Mission to Seafarers uncle?’ I asked.
Mum thought about this. ‘No. The Mission to Seafarers man was his dad, the Reverend Kerr Johnston,’ she said.
Reverend Kerr Johnston was the family member who started the Victorian branch of the Mission to Seafarers. Years ago, Mum and I visited the building in Flinders Street and found a small plaque acknowledging Reverend Kerr Johnston’s contribution. The building has a wonderful domed room, and I’ve always thought it would be a great place to do a show. Maybe one day, I think, I will write about my family’s connection with this famous movement and building.
‘What happened to the letter?’ I asked Mum.
‘I had it for years and eventually threw it out.’
‘It must be the only thing you ever did throw away.’
Mum laughed, but it was also pretty close to the truth.
I didn’t find the letter from my great-uncle but I did find all the letters I wrote to my parents when I was an exchange student in 1980. I read a few and then stopped; the self-absorbed nature of my adolescent writing was too uncomfortable.
I found letters that I sent when I first started at university. In one letter I described going for an agency visit to the rape crisis centre in Brisbane, ‘Women’s House’.
‘The organisation is managed by a group of very butch looking ladies,’ I wrote at the time. I nearly passed out with both embarrassment and laughter when I read that. Little did I know that within a few years I would become a lifelong feminist, work at Women’s House, live as the ‘token hetero’ in a lesbian share house, and drop the phrase ‘ladies and gentlemen’ from my vocabulary for ever.
My favourite find was the hundreds of old bank statements dating back to the 1980s. These were stacked in piles based on date and year, and bound with either string or rubber bands. Mum’s attention to detail, amid what could honestly be described as chaos, was impressive.
‘Why have you kept all these?’ I asked her.
‘The Australia Taxation Office recommends that people hold on to their financial items for at least seven years after lodging a tax return.’
‘But you’re a pensioner – you haven’t needed to lodge a tax return for years.’
‘Well, the ATO might send me a letter requesting evidence of my financial situation.’
‘Mum, I suspect you are of less interest to the ATO than anyone else in the country!’
This became a running joke. If an unknown car pulled up in front of the house and Mum asked, ‘Who’s that?’, I would tell her it was the ATO. ‘They want to know if you really did donate $50 to the Guide Dog Association in 2001 or if it was actually $45.’
‘Oh, do shut up, Rebecca!’
The problem is, like Mum, I find it terribly hard to throw anything out. Instead of sorting through things, I spend whole afternoons photographing items and texting the family with evidence of their forgotten ‘treasures’. What starts out as a chore becomes an afternoon of deep connection.
I end up doing what I swore I wouldn’t: packing boxes and suitcases of ‘precious’ items and placing them under the house for later sorting and distribution. I know what I’m doing is crazy, and I’m reminded of something Dad used to say about leftovers after a meal: Sh
ould we throw these out tonight or put them in the fridge and throw them out next week?
The frangipani trees provide good cover so I can sit and watch the comings and goings of the street pretty much undetected.
Sometimes I feel like Dad. He liked to sit in the lounge chair closest to the front door so that he could have a ‘stickybeak’ on the action of the street. It feels like hours since I saw Shawn, the young man who lives across the road, come home on the community school bus. Most mornings and afternoons I either hear or see the old diesel Coaster cruise around the corner and pull up across the street.
Shawn is a charming young man who has grown up faster than most. At just sixteen years old, he lives with his partner, Cheyenne, their eight-month-old baby, Jaydon, and their dog, Maleka.
I have a love/hate relationship with Maleka. She’s a small, stocky black dog of ill-defined breed, and spends most of her time lying in the middle of the street. She barks at and chases kids going past on bikes, and growls and sneers at everyone else. Every day I watch terrified kids, runners, people with prams and the postie try to fend her off. She is pint-sized but looks like she’d serve up a distemper-laced bite. Shawn and Cheyenne stand on their verandah and, at the top of their voices, scream, ‘Shut up, Maleka!’ They never come down and pull her away.
I’m not a natural with dogs but I have started to take Maleka on. It’s almost like sport. When I see kids looking terrified on their bikes, I rush out and scream, ‘Shut up, Maleka!’ Then I tell the kids, ‘Don’t worry about her – her bark is worse than her bite. Just scream at her – everyone else does!’
When I come up the hill in my car and see Maleka lying in the middle of the street, I mutter under my breath, ‘Fucking Maleka!’ I drive as close as I can towards her before swerving. Maleka never moves, and we give each other steely glares. Some days I wonder what is happening to me. I have never harmed an animal, and this new desire to scare her is alarming.
Shawn told Tony that when he and Cheyenne first got together (he was thirteen and she was eighteen) he knew it was time to ‘step up’. When we were thirteen, Tony and I both agree, we were a long way from ‘stepping up’.
For months before we met Shawn and Cheyenne we thought they were engaged in some form of nefarious activity. People and cars would come and go from the house at all times of the day and night. Often a car would pull up and beep the horn, someone would saunter out from the house for a quick word through the window, then the car would screech off again.
We heard a variety of negative but unsubstantiated stories about the occupants. Though we both tried, neither Tony nor I could catch anyone’s eye from the house. But then one afternoon when I was gardening, Shawn walked past and I called out to him, ‘Hey!’
Shawn stopped and looked at me. ‘Hey,’ he replied.
‘My name’s Beck,’ I said. ‘My husband, Tony, and I live in this house now with my mum.’
Shawn wandered over to the fence. ‘I’m Shawn,’ he said, and we shook hands. ‘Yeah, I seen youse here doing the garden. It looks real good.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Lot of work.’
‘We’re gunna get some topsoil and do our place,’ he told me.
I looked across the road to their house and the dust bowl that was the front yard. It was going to need a bit more than some topsoil, I thought.
‘How’s the baby?’ I asked.
‘Jaydon,’ said Shawn. ‘He’s great – real cheeky little bubba but we love him.’
‘That’s so good,’ I said, smiling.
We’ve been mates ever since. We mainly talk at the fence but sometimes he and Cheyenne come in and bring Jaydon so Mum can see him. Although this young couple have lived opposite her house for a couple of years, Mum only met them after Tony and I moved in. Now she enquires regularly about them, as they do about her.
Lately things seem to have improved for Shawn and Cheyenne. The amount of drive-by traffic has fallen, and Shawn seems to make it onto the school bus every morning. He recently told me that Cheyenne is expecting another baby, and how happy he is.
From the shadows across the front lawn I guess that it’s probably about five o’clock. I should get up from my desk and go and check on Mum. Other than a short break at lunchtime I have been at my desk all day and have given her no attention. As far as I know, she hasn’t moved from her chair.
Today has been a home day, but Mum is often out and about. To keep on top of her various outings, we spend Sunday nights going through her week. I write appointments and activities on the wall calendar and into my diary.
‘Monday?’ I’ll ask.
‘I’m having coffee tomorrow with Beryl at ten am at the Buffs Club.’
‘Do you want me to drive you?’
‘No, Beryl will pick me up.’
Beryl is Mum’s good friend. She’s much younger and treats Mum with great respect. They met at Legacy. I often say to Beryl how lucky Mum is to have her as a friend, but she always says, ‘I’m the lucky one!’
‘And Tuesday?’ I ask.
‘I think we have an appointment with the cardiologist,’ says Mum. ‘Check the letter that I stuck on the calendar.’
I find the letter clasped onto the calendar with a peg. There are many bits of paper stuck to things with pegs in this house. Mum has one of those old-fashioned wall letter racks, but apart from a few lolly wrappers it remains empty. Mum likes peg filing.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Cardiologist at three pm on Tuesday.’
‘You’ll take me to that?’ asks Mum.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Wednesday: shopping,’ says Mum.
‘Is there a Legacy lunch this Wednesday?’ I ask.
‘No, that’ll be next week.’
‘Thursday: hairdresser,’ I say. This is a standing appointment: every Thursday Mum gets her hair set. ‘And Friday: the home?’
Mum nods. Every second Friday Mum goes with Marlene, another volunteer from her church, to give a service at the aged care facility.
‘Anything else?’ I ask. ‘Mothers’ Union meeting? Lunches, morning coffees?’
‘Church on Sunday,’ says Mum.
‘Yep, got that.’
Mum has a lot of medical appointments. She sees her GP, an ophthalmologist and a cardiologist. I go to all the appointments with her. Everyone is always running late so we spend a lot of time in waiting rooms. We do magazine puzzles, and if there’s no reading material we make up games.
I say to Mum, ‘C G E E R E M Y N.’
‘Say the letters again,’ she replies.
‘C G E E R E M Y N.’
‘Men,’ says Mum.
I nod.
‘Mere.’
I nod.
‘Mean.’
‘There’s no A,’ I say.
‘Germ,’ says Mum.
‘Good one!’
‘Say the letters again.’
‘C G E E R E M Y N,’ I repeat.
Mum writes the letters in the air with her finger as I say them. She thinks for a moment. ‘Emergency!’
‘Good one, Mum!’
Mum gives me the thumbs-up.
Mum is intelligent and capable, but when I’m in the consultation rooms with her I realise that she has lost her confidence.
The medical staff are gentle and thorough, but with each visit Mum leaves me to ask more of the questions. The doctors pick up on this and start to talk directly to me. I try to divert back to Mum.
‘How often does your mother feel dizzy?’ asks Mum’s cardiologist, Dr Mascot.
I turn to Mum and ask, ‘How often do you feel dizzy, Mum?’
Mum looks directly at me and starts to speak. I turn and look at Dr Mascot so that Mum will focus her answer on him too and not me. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
I wonder what would happen if I wasn’
t here.
Mum and I are driving down Camooweal Street. We’re heading home from the hospital and discussing Dr Mascot.
‘How old do you think he is?’ asks Mum.
‘Twelve,’ I reply.
Mum laughs. ‘I think he’s about twenty-eight.’
‘You think everyone is about twenty-eight, Mum.’
‘How old do you really think he is?’ she asks, laughing.
‘Thirty-five,’ I reply.
‘I like the little bow he gives when he meets us,’ says Mum.
‘And the hand behind the back when he does it,’ I say.
‘Like a waiter.’
We both smile.
‘Let’s take the script for the new medication to the chemist now,’ I say.
‘Okay,’ says Mum.
Dr Mascot has increased the dosage of Mum’s medicine: he feels her blood pressure is still too low. This is the second change since I’ve been here.
We park opposite the chemist and Mum opens her purse.
‘You’re right, Mum,’ I say. ‘I’ll get this.’
Mum hands me fifty dollars. ‘Okay, you get the medication, but I need a new pair of compression stockings.’
When I get back into the car with Mum’s medication and her new stockings, I hand her the change. It’s only a few coins.
As I’m putting on my seatbelt, Mum says, ‘I was thinking, when you were in the chemist, what will happen to me when you go back to Melbourne to live?’
I stop what I’m doing and sit back in my seat. ‘We’re not going back to Melbourne, Mum.’
‘But you said you would only stay for a year.’
‘No, we’ll stay until … you know.’
‘The end?’
‘Yeah, the end.’
‘When did you decide this?’ asks Mum.
‘On about day one! But we only agreed to it more formally over the last few months.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I think about this. ‘I thought it was obvious from our actions,’ I say.
Mum nods. ‘Yes, it has been, but it’s good to hear you say it.’
I nod.
Mum touches my hand and says, ‘Thank you.’ She looks at the change that I’ve given her and says, ‘Let’s go to McDonald’s for an ice cream.’
