‘Hello, Mum. Hi.’
She turns to me. Her face lights instantly.
‘Oh, hello Mum,’ she replies with a smile ear to ear.
Today she does not know my name but she knows my face and she knows we love each other. What else matters? I ask myself as I remember how she used to say my name with love.
‘How are you today?’ I draw a chair near to her and rub the back of her hand softly.
‘My sister. Hello. Not, you know, slippers, want to, wasn’t it? I love you.’
‘Yes, I know my darling. I love you, too. Did you eat your breakfast?’
‘Did I? Must have. The woman, the woman, you know.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s good. You must eat. Did you have a good sleep?’
‘Yes, no. Something cold, wet, hasn’t it? Got to this place not when, you know? I love you so much.”
‘I love you, too, Mum. You know that.’
‘Oh, you poor little soul. How hard. How awful.’
‘It wasn’t too bad, Mum. We all have one another. We wouldn’t have the same precious family if I hadn’t married the man I did.’
‘Must tell you. When...you know him...you know.’
‘Probably, Mum. Most likely I’ve heard about it.’
We sit silently for a while. I hold her hand, the one I held on bitter winter mornings when we brought the cow through the frosty grass for milking, when we were both young.
She stirs, focuses her attention on me again.
‘You’re so good to me. I want to sit and look at you.’
‘That’s how you always were to me. I’m only returning your warmth and kindness. You always said, ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’ Remember? I’m trying to give you what you deserve.’
‘Had an easy ride, didn’t you? Through life. Easy?’ An anxious look flickers over her face. Even at this stage it is essential for her to know that I have arrived to where I am today in peace and plenty.
‘Very easy. Yes, Mum. Easy riding was done by me.’ I smile at her to reassure her, knowing she has totally forgotten the exact details of my life.
‘Good. Good. I tried to make it.’ She sighs with relief and I am content that she has reached a stage of hard-won peace of mind, as foggy as it may be.
‘You succeeded in that,’ I remind her, as that is what I want her to take with her into her last days.
She frowns, looks around. Eventually she says, ‘Dog,’ and shudders.
‘Don’t worry, darling. It’s gone for good,’ I am thankful to be able to tell her, as hard as it has been for me to win my case in favor of the dog being banished from the nursing home.
‘Got me up. Pull. Didn’t like it.’ A recent fall is so described, in which she had to be helped to her feet.
‘Yes, sweetheart. You’re okay now.’ Thank God she has good strong bones even in her eighties and after many falls she has never had a fracture.
The face is the one that waited for me outside the school, that bent over my grazed knee, thanked me for the flowers I picked through the fences for her on my way home from school, smiled at my babies, sang lullabies to them.
Those are the arms that held her infant when my father rejected us and all hope was abandoned.
Those arms sheltered me from taunts of ‘bastard’ by schoolyard bullies and from similar torments, bruising, beatings by the father of my children.
Those arms held her only child, grandchildren, then later her great-grandchildren, born over a period of forty-five years. She told me how much love she’d had in her life by giving birth to me through an act of violence. She, chosen by her parents to be nurse/housekeeper to them in their old age, would otherwise never have known the love of her own progeny.
In protest against the conventions that can and do cripple lives, she kept me, reared me, always stayed close and watched over me. Always grateful to her parents for giving us a home and succor, she cared for them until they passed away.
Those hands made my Sunday School dresses, bootees for her great-grandchildren, tended her grandfather, parents, child, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Those hands washed, ironed, cleaned and cooked for boarders while she reared me.
Her eyes smile into mine. Again she brushes and plaits my hair, makes me a costume for the school Fancy Dress Ball, makes cup cakes for my birthday parties. Standing in the doorway, she waves goodbye to me as I turn the corner to go to work, spreads my mauve tulle dress on the bed for me to wear to the ball that night. Waits for me to ring her from the Post Office each morning when I go to dispatch the mail from work.
Invites my boyfriend for Sunday night dinner even though she was not able to pay the electricity bill that week, nor buy a new winter cardigan. Smiles when I change from the company of a boy she loves like a son to one she fears is a bully. Warns me gently. I don’t listen. He’s not like that. I know best. I am seventeen and know how the world works.
Buys a pair of Onkaparinga blankets, best on the market for the bridal couple. Knits a white bunny rabbit and a matinee jacket for a grandchild.
She finishes her vitamized meal. She will not wear a bib at mealtimes like many of the residents do. Her grandson would not wear a bib, either, when he sat in his highchair and looked at his family seated around the table. They were not wearing bibs. Nor would he. Nor will she. I smile to myself as I resurrect the memories.
We have a little walk down the hallway towards the security door. I know the code to key in when I can stay no longer. ‘4,5,6,7,B’. B for Breakout.
She must stay.
‘It’s cold, but not much, but outside. Trees. Look. What’s chomping and the bird...floral thing...wind.’
‘Yes, very windy and cold out there. The leaves and flowers are all blowing off the trees. It’s autumn, Mum.’
‘Lonely. Always alone. Come here. Live. That room.’ She indicates a room to the left where an aged man lies dying, a woman by his side holding his hand.
‘Darling, I can’t live here but I come every day or ring when I can’t come, you know.’
We have had this conversation numerous times. Why, then, do I still feel overwhelming guilt when I have to refuse her wishes?
‘Yes, but God, paper, the soft thing. Blood, was it?’ She shows signs of distress but I don’t know the cause.
‘Probably. More than likely, Mum.’ Best to simply agree and hope that the turmoil she suffers momentarily passes.
‘Where are Mum and Dad? Nell? When will they come?’ She looks at me intently, sure that I know the answers to where her relatives have all gone.
‘They’re gone, sweetheart. There’s only you and me left now out of all the old family members and we’re growing old.’ We have discussed this many times and yet I still hate to see the fresh agony she displays on hearing of their disappearance.
‘Gone? Gone? No.’ This statement seems to distress her as though it’s the first time she’s learned of the loss of her beloved parents and sister decades ago.
‘You’re eighty-three, you know. I’m sixty-one.’ Do these figures mean anything to her?
‘No. Really? You couldn’t be. Not eighty-three? Dead?’ She regards me with amazement, the bearer of bad news who comes to tell her the same thing over and over.
‘You still have family who love you. We’re here for you.’ I try to reassure her with a smile and a squeeze of her hand but she will not take me at my word. She searches down the long corridor for them and will not settle.
‘Dead? But the thing? The basket in the ground, you know?’ she asks when we are finally sitting down again to settle her before I leave.
‘It’s all been over for a long time, some forty years since they died, pet. Don’t worry. Everything’s all right.’ Still puzzled by the latest news, she focuses on my face as though the answer is written there.
‘You love me, I know. Young ones, big ones, little.’ Ahh, so she remembers the young ones and the little ones. I am glad, for some unknown reason, that she does when she has forgotten so much else.
‘Do you? I hope so. I don’t have anything else,’ she says as she rubs the back of my hand with her own lovely soft hand. I recall the years when I was a little girl and she used a cream called Soft as Silk to keep her hands, of which she was very proud, soft and supple.
‘I know, darling. But I have to go now.’ Reluctantly, I stand to go. This is always the hardest part of the visit.
‘Go? Leave me?’ The same shock as she gets every day and the same pain in my heart.
‘Yes. For today. I’ll be back tomorrow.’ I smile at her and pat her hand, gently removing my hand from her grip, sadly, as though it would be our last conversation.
‘Yes. Please come. Come all the time,’ she says, a tremor in her voice.
‘You’d better believe it,’ I tell her and give her one last farewell kiss and hug.
She’s walking down the road to meet me, the Pomeranian dog, Toodles, at her side. It’s her twenty-eighth birthday and I’ve not long turned six. She’s beautiful to my eyes with her thick brown hair and her warm, enveloping smile. She holds out her arms and I run to her, schoolbag flapping against my back. She holds me, hugs me. She kisses me soundly on each cheek and asks about my day.
We set out for home with Toodles trying to get between my mother and me. Part of the family before I was born, Toodles sees herself as sole possessor of my mother just as I know myself to be by birthright.
She’s driving away in her Volkswagen, my children in the back seat as she takes them to safety while I make the final farewell to a brutal husband and father.
She’s coming home from her nursing shift to cook dinner for us while I recover from major surgery. She’s driving me to the doctor when I’m ill. Potting a plant for a newly-married granddaughter. Buying a carton of Coca Cola for her grandson so he will have a can in his lunchbox every day, similar to the way I had two squares of chocolate in my lunchbox each day at school.
She’s seventy-two. Again I’ve had surgery. She comes to my bedroom and brings me a meal on a tray. Four violets in a tiny vase accompany the bowl of stone-cold tomato soup and rock-hard poached eggs, burnt toast and a tepid cup of tea.
Still she tries and I am grateful for the simple fact that her world revolves around me and mine.
She’s peeling the vegetables when I return from work. She slices a tomato and also the bench top. I pass her the chopping board and tell her about its usage, knowing she will forget immediately. She must add her contribution to the housework so that I will have an easier life than she did.
I wanted to look after her until the end the way she looked after me from the beginning. I had to hand her over into someone else’s keeping but she remained the heart of my heart, the very core of my being until the end.
One day in the nursing home when she was a little more lucid than usual she asked me not to let her down. As if I could.
Her final words to me before she lost the power of speech were, ‘I adore you.’
Never goodbye, Mum, never goodbye.
Every day I recall her promise that she would always be beside me even after she had passed away. I am led to believe that the dead are only in another room, waiting for us, loving us still with the same fidelity and strength.
It seems certain to me that some impression of those who have gone before us must always be felt in familiar earthly surroundings. They must have left some enduring trace of themselves even though it is invisible to mortal eyes.
The imprint of those loving hands must forever remain on the shoulder or arms of those they have loved and to whom they have given their blessings. I know the truth of this although science cannot prove it. Nor can science disprove it.
She’s been gone from this world for a decade yet I still miss her and feel the shape of her head as I used to brush her hair and stroke it into place as plainly as though she were here. I want to rush to tell her any news even if she does not understand what I mean or reply coherently to me. I long for her presence in my life. Her photograph still has the power to bring me to tears. My touchstone. My mother.
Life’s greatest treasures are our loving memories.
Acknowledgements
I have to acknowledge the friend I used to work with years ago, Julie Nielsen, who encouraged me in those early days when the drive came upon me to write after a particularly nasty incident in my life that forced me to clear away the cobwebs in my soul.
My friends Jan Mumford and Shirley Jones have always been there for me, and have encouraged me to take up my very limited typing skills again, being interested in what I had to write about. My friends Coral, Grace and Malcolm have been true friends to me in my endeavors and my husband Brian is my moral support through all the hiccups I tell him about.
In this latter period of my life, Julie Harris has been my guardian angel and taken me every inch of the way, never failing to step up to the plate when I get myself into a bind. She flies in, Saint Julie of the West, pokes a key or two and I am underway again.
All lovely people with beautiful smiles who have believed in me.
Other books by Margaret Weise
One Link in the Chain
More Links in the Chain
The Romeo Experience
Mio Tesoro
Wintergreen
About the Author
Margaret Weise lives in retirement in a country town in Queensland, Australia with her husband, Brian. She experienced life as a single parent and shared a home with her mother and children. Finally, her mother had to enter a nursing home and passed away just four months before ‘One Link in the Chain,’ which was largely her story, was first published.
Margaret nurtured a strong wish to write a book all her adult life, thus her deepest desire has been realized with the advent of the electronic age.
This is her sixth book.
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