From Strength to Strength

by Sara Henderson

  I had visited Mum as much as I could over the last eighteen months. On my way home from America for a short time, then in January 1987, and a few times during the year on business trips. She had moved out of the hospital and I had just spent a few weeks with her. We had some wonderful times, a lot of laughter, but there were also tears.

  She had great difficulty in trying to communicate. She could not write, and all her speech came out as gibberish. But one of the biggest problems was that she did not know her speech was gibberish and became more and more frustrated with our lack of comprehension.

  One day she was really throwing a tantrum. She wanted me to do something, that was clear, but I had no idea what. She could say a few words like yes, no, look, oh dear, and there, but that was about it. This particular day she was on the verge of despair.

  ‘Look,’ she said, and then launched into her own language, rounding it all off with, ’there.’

  I sat for a while and then said, ‘Now I’m supposed to do something?’

  ‘Yes.’ The tone was impatient.

  ‘It’s very clear in your mind what you want me to do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you see, I haven’t a clue what’s in your mind because when it comes out of your mouth, it’s gibberish.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding my head up and down.

  ‘Look,’ she said, and after that one clear word she lapsed back into her unintelligible jabber, although she enunciated each garbled word slowly as if I was a bit simple.

  ‘I should understand what you’ve just said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll try to repeat it back to you and then you think about it, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ She watched me closely.

  So, as best I could, I repeated the jabber. Her eyes widened as I mimicked her.

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head again. My sister walked into the room.

  ‘Sue, Mum doesn’t believe she sounds all garbled when she speaks. Doesn’t she sound like this . . . ?’ I mimicked her gobbledegook again.

  ‘Yes, Mum, that’s exactly how you sound.’

  At last it dawned on her. You could almost see her thought process—‘and all that time I thought the whole world had gone mad and no one could understand me!’

  Every night Sue, Ralph and I would all put her to bed. She really loved this little routine and would direct the whole procedure. The sliding door into the garden had to be open just so. Ralph would deliberately open it to the wrong position and he would be told in very definite gobbledegook that it was wrong.

  Then Ralph would say, ‘How about there?’

  After several of these exchanges, she would realise he was teasing her and with a smile and wave of her hand, look the other way and ignore him. He would then put the door in the right position.

  After the door, we would go through the same procedure with the blanket. The last was the positioning of her slippers and walker, so she could go to the bathroom. We would then kiss her goodnight and she would try to hold three hands and pat them all at once and tell us how lucky she was to have us. Her eyes said it all.

  Of course usually it was only Sue and Ralph there to say goodnight. Tod would also do night shifts, and Fran day shifts. Ralph slept in the guest room after the day help had left. He is a great reader and listens to the radio most of the night. He said he would be reading late at night and Mum would go past his room with her walker and wave to him as she passed.

  Ralph was wonderful to my mum during those eighteen months, as were Sue and Tod and Fran. It’s the constant day in and day out care that is the hardest. They made Mum’s last years on earth very happy and I will always be grateful to them for carrying my part of the load.

  The district nurse came every week to record Mum’s progress and to answer any questions the family had. I was there one day when she arrived. We chatted over a cup of tea.

  ‘Visiting your mum is the highlight of my week. She’s so happy and always so beautifully dressed.’ Sue made Mum lovely colourful caftans and put make-up on her every day. ‘It’s such a pleasure to see an old person in her own home, surrounded by her family and people she loves. If only all old people could have this, what a wonderful world it would be.’ She indicated the lovely view of the ocean across green lawns to a sandy beach. She patted Mum’s hand and said, ‘You’re very lucky, Ida.’ Mum smiled, and her eyes said, ‘Indeed I am, indeed I am.’

  ‘We’re here, kiddo.’ Ralph stopped the car. I took a deep breath and prepared myself. I met my sister in the hall. She said Mum did not know anyone and was in a semi-coma. I went into the room and saw her frail shape in the bed. I took her cold limp hand in mine, kissed her on the cheek and whispered in her ear, ‘I’m here, darling.’ Her eyes rolled back as if she was fighting to open them, but she couldn’t. The fingers came alive and I felt the pressure of her fingers on my hand, very slight, but it was there.

  Sue and I sat each side of the bed and talked to her about things we knew she would enjoy hearing. She quietly left us, holding our hands. She was with Dad again.

  Every night in the last twelve years, up to the first stroke, Mum said her prayers. When I visited her, I could clearly hear her from the guest room. It is very nice to hear your mother bless you in her prayers. She would say the Lord’s Prayer and a few other old favourites, and then she would bless the whole family. It would take about five minutes. She would work through us all in order of age, with husbands and wives and offspring, and would finally get to, ‘And Sara, Charles, Marlee, Bon and Danya.’ She would close with, ‘Good night Aubrey, be with you soon.’

  The closing lines of her prayers passed through my mind as I kissed her goodbye for the last time. I put my head on her shoulder and cried and cried. I felt as if part of my being had gone, she was such an important part of my life. I still cannot think of her without tears. I am crying as I write this. She was a mum who was always there for you, and the gap that she left is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.

  CHAPTER 22

  1987-1988

  I was back on the station for Christmas. Marlee and Charlie stayed for Christmas Day, and left for Queensland in the new year. We had a quiet Christmas at Bullo, the loss of Mum was still heavy in my heart. But I was certainly learning fast that no matter how sad you are, life just keeps moving along and if you don’t keep pace, you get steamrolled.

  We spent the wet season working on more fencing. All the fencing on the place was useless, only three wires. The cattle just stepped through it as if it didn’t exist. And the maintenance was endless. We pulled the fences down an area at a time and replaced them with good strong fences that the cattle stopped at, then walked along, not through. With half a million acres to do, it was going to take a few years.

  Fencing and machinery repairs took us into the new year of 1988. We were so tired on New Year’s Eve, we went to bed early, saying we would get up around eleven-thirty to celebrate the new year. We slept through it.

  We had one very exciting plan for January—a wedding. Marlee and Charlie, being very practical people, had decided they better get married while there was a lull.

  As Marlee put it, ‘We’ve been engaged since December 1984, and if we don’t marry this coming wet, I can’t see another chance for years.’

  So amidst cattle planning, yard planning, and money juggling, a section of January was shaded in and marked as ‘wedding time’.

  One of the hardest decisions was where. January ruled Bullo out—the station is completely cut off during the wet. Most of our friends who lived in Kununurra and around the station area came from Queensland and New South Wales and were usually on holidays in January. Charlie’s family came from near Cooktown, and most of our family and friends came from New South Wales and Victoria. So we decided to hold it in Brisbane, as this was the most central spot.

  Marlee and I went to Brisbane in early December to order and prin
t the invitations. We had already called most of our friends by phone from the station and told them about it, saying the invitations would be along later. I was sure it would take weeks to organise the invitations, but not so. The wedding industry really has its act together.

  Before we could print the invitations, we had to decide on where to have the reception. So the night of our arrival, we sat and pored through the part of the yellow pages marked ‘wedding receptions’ and I wrote down about fifteen likely places. The next morning, armed with our list, we went to see them. Some places I wouldn’t even get out of the cab, and Marlee said I was a snob.

  ‘Maybe so, but I would rather have no reception at all than have it there.’

  We were up to about number ten and I was starting to think maybe I was a bit too hard to please. We stopped in front of the next place and before we stepped out of the cab, I said, ‘This is it!’

  Marlee looked at me and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh Mummy, how do you know? We haven’t even been inside.’

  ‘This is it!’ And it was.

  It sat on a high hill overlooking Brisbane and was a beautifully restored old home. That’s what I liked about it—it looked like a home. It had charm and warmth, which is difficult to achieve when you have hundreds of people passing through every day. Of course they were booked out on Saturdays for fifteen months ahead, so that was how we ended up with Sunday, the 17th of January.

  We mentioned invitations and within the hour a man was showing us samples. We picked a style and told them to hold the printing until we gave them the church information and the next day the invitations were delivered to our hotel. We mentioned flowers, same thing. The florist met us the next day and the flowers were decided. Photographer, ditto. Talk about one-stop shopping!

  With all this attended to, we had to find the church. Charlie was Catholic but not a churchgoer, Marlee was Church of England or Episcopalian as it’s called in America and also not a churchgoer. So they were not really interested in a church wedding, but Marlee had carefully explained to Charlie that I was religious and they had to have a church wedding.

  So it was back to the yellow pages, this time under ‘churches’. I saw Church of England, Petrie. The wedding reception was at Petrie Mansions, so we assumed the church was close by. I called the church and spoke to a charming minister. I explained that we were from the Northern Territory and didn’t know Brisbane very well and were wondering if it was far from the church to the reception house, as we thought it would be nice for the guests to walk from the church.

  ‘It depends on how much you like walking,’ he replied. The suburb of Petrie was twenty kilometres from Petrie Mansions. ‘But a friend of mine has a lovely church in the street just behind the mansions. Give him a call.’

  We did and made an appointment for the next day. We stopped in front of the church and, like the reception house, I knew it was the one. It was a little old wooden church nestled in amongst tall trees. When we walked inside Marlee too fell under its spell. The whole church was polished wood—floor, walls, ceiling and altar. It was beautiful. Just sitting there made you feel happy and at peace.

  We went into the office to make the arrangements. When we said the seventeenth, the minister said the date was available, but he would be on holidays. This was a disappointment as we had both liked him immediately.

  ‘But don’t worry,’ he said, ‘my brother-in-law is a minister and he’s looking after my Sunday services while I’m away, so there should be no problem.’

  He said he would arrange the marriage certificate and all we had to do was call his brother-in-law the week we arrived. One meeting and a rehearsal on Saturday night before the wedding should be enough. I mentioned that I would like someone to sing and he said his wife had a friend who sang at weddings, so he could contact her as well.

  We had no time to have a wedding dress made but luck stayed with us and we found a beautiful dress, ready-made. It was lace, with a long plain bodice and a dull satin skirt forming a small train at the back. A headpiece of wispy flowers and a fluffy white veil, and Marlee looked gorgeous, even in the fitting room. I knew without a doubt that on her wedding day she would be breathtaking.

  After finding some lovely aqua dresses for the bridesmaids, Danielle and a cousin on Charlie’s side, we returned to the station. We worked until a week before the exciting day, then we once more departed for Brisbane, this time with Danielle and Charlie.

  I called the minister the day after we arrived and there was no answer in the office, but this didn’t worry me unduly as it was only Monday and we had until Sunday.

  What a week! On top of the thousand and one things that needed to be done, Marlee decided Charlie should have dancing lessons so he would look right dancing the bridal waltz. Friends and family arrived from all over and there were dinners, luncheons, afternoon teas and cocktails, an endless array of events.

  One very happy arrival was Peggy and Jack Cater. Jack was ‘giving’ Marlee away which was wonderful, as he had also given me away on my wedding day in Hong Kong twenty-eight years before. I know Charles would have thoroughly approved of Jack as his stand-in. Brigadier General John Keldie was to be master of ceremonies, and was handling all his duties as smoothly as a military operation. We had settled into the wedding mode.

  Around Wednesday when there was still no answer at the church office I started to feel a bit worried. Thursday morning we went to the church. The house and office were locked up as tight as the church. We wandered around and found a door open in the church hall, just behind the church.

  An art class was in progress. Most of the people were church members but the only information we could obtain was that the minister standing in—at least we knew he was a brother-in-law, they didn’t even know this—arrived on Sunday morning, unlocked the church, gave the sermon, then locked the church and departed until the following Sunday. We asked if there was somewhere we could contact him. There was a five-minute debate over his name.

  We went back to the apartments and I called the head office of the Church of England in Brisbane. The next day they called back to say sorry, they couldn’t help. At this point I spoke my mind, and it wasn’t pleasant. I explained, very firmly, that we had made a special trip to Brisbane from the Territory in December to arrange all the details, and now, when we arrive for the wedding, the church is locked until Sunday morning, we do not have the stand-in minister’s name and it appears that no one else, including the church, does either.

  ‘This is not acceptable, and I want answers within the hour.’ I gave the poor girl my number and told her to get busy. It was Friday night. Marlee, Charlie, Danielle and the rest of the bridal group all disappeared to dancing lessons and on to dinner, and I worried.

  I was called by some man in the Church of England offices who gave me the number of the head of the church committee for our little church. I thanked him curtly and called the number. This man was no help at all, he didn’t even know the minister’s name.

  ‘Are you telling me you have a minister preaching in your church and you don’t know his name?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not as it sounds. He only came to us last week and he was late. Seems a very busy man. He gave the service and we were all waiting to meet him over tea after the service, but he rushed away saying he was late for an appointment and would have time to talk this week. So you see, we’re still waiting.’

  ‘If by any chance you do see him before Sunday, could you please ask him to call me?’

  He said he would. One consolation was that the wedding was after the service, so we had a chance he might turn up.

  Saturday arrived and we still didn’t know if we had a minister. I thought we had better start a back-up plan. John Keldie said that if he didn’t arrive at the church for the rehearsal that night, he would make arrangements for an army minister to come from the headquarters in Brisbane. I relaxed slightly.

  Marlee, Charlie and the mob disappeared to dancing lessons again and I took an aspirin.

&nbs
p; Peg and Jack, bless them, wandered over to the church and found a lady there arranging flowers for the wedding. They called me and told me there was also a lady there who said she was singing at the wedding. I quickly called the dancing studio and told the wedding group to meet me at the church.

  Our holiday minister had arranged for the lady to meet us to discuss the flowers. Apparently she always decorated the church for the weddings. She had it all in hand. The next day the church looked beautiful.

  Next, the lady who always sang at weddings sang for us and she had a delightful voice. The organist had also turned up and she accompanied our singer. So it was almost perfect, except we still didn’t have a minister.

  We were still hopeful; everyone else had arrived, so surely he would. He did, and what a character! It was eight-thirty, he raced in, gave Marlee and Charlie a non-stop lecture on married life, duties to their children, and so on, all interspersed with directions on how to walk down the aisle, what he would say to them tomorrow, and directions to the organist and singer. He shook all our hands, said he would see us tomorrow and was gone.

  We wandered to our cars in a daze. I suppose we were so glad to have a minister, we really didn’t care if he was a bit eccentric. Saturday night we celebrated—we finally had a preacher.

  Sunday dawned dark and rainy. The photographer had wanted to take photos in the park so all morning there were phone calls back and forth.

  ‘It’s stopped raining. We can.’

  ‘It’s raining. We can’t.’

  I finally said ‘no’. I could just see Marlee tiptoeing through the mud in the park and being drowned by one of the sudden squalls that were racing over Brisbane at regular intervals. The sun came out and we had a peaceful photo session in the foyer and garden close by.