My brothers still carried on but mummy had me to smooth the path for her now so she didn’t trip over obstacles put there by caring but unthinking people who were clinging to her like an oyster to a rock and slowing her down.
And then a few weeks later I felt a presence in the room and it wasn’t like those ones that are passing through or just want to hang around for a bit and say hello. This one felt very familiar and when I asked mummy if she knew who it was she said it was Daddy Casmir, her darling husband was waiting for her. I knew then that she didn’t have long to go.
I can’t speak for my brothers but the last week of my mother’s life was an amazing time of love and learning. When I asked her what her favourite memories were, she said she’d let her memories go because they were too heavy to carry around. She didn’t need them and she’d let them blow away. When I asked her if she had any regrets she said there were no words in any of our family languages for regret. To regret something was a waste of time so why make a word for something that you didn’t need. And when I asked her about love she said that love is with us from the moment we are born. We are never without love. Even in times of despair when we think there is nothing left and no one is walking beside us, we are wrong. We are never without love. Ever.
A few days later when everyone was off hunting and we were alone mummy asked me if I remembered the story about Amah. ‘How could I forget it?’ I said. ‘Why?’ And then she looked at me and I knew that it was my turn now. That I had to get up and walk away and give her the gift of those last moments alone.
‘Is daddy here?’ I asked.
‘He’s waiting by the door,’ she said. So we held each other and it was magic, and I smelt her hair and felt her incredibly soft skin, just like she must have done with me on the banks of the Mainoru River all those years before, when I was born. I stopped at the doorway and looked back, she was smiling and her eyes were shining and I smiled back at her with all the love in my heart because she looked so happy, and then I turned and walked away.
I caught the lunch-time plane to Darwin. I knew that if I stayed I might crumble and she wouldn’t have been able to leave then like she wanted to. I’m so glad I had the courage to respect her wish to be alone.
Mummy had always told me that people’s spirits leave their bodies when the tide goes out and she was right of course. She left with the afternoon tide as it flowed out of Apsley Strait and past the places where she used to hunt with my aunties and past the beach at Garden Point Mission where I had stood as a little girl watching the moon.
Mario was the one who found mummy, who was well and truly on her way by then. Louis rang me to let me know the news. I didn’t tell him that I already knew.
I wanted to wash the body she left behind. I wanted to get the ash of the black wattle and wash each part of her like I had been washed when I was born but my Aunty Cassie Palipuaminni said that it was her job to do that and it would be an honour. So I sat up all night waiting for the dawn and the first day of my life without my mum. And what a beautiful dawn it was too with a sunrise streaked with pastel pinks and purple and a hint of peach. It was my mum’s gift to me to let me know that life continues on.
I hadn’t paid any mind to arranging a flight back to Nguiu so when I arrived at Wimray, the airline service, I had no idea if I could get a seat. But Ray Allwright, the owner of Wimray, who was one of the crankiest people I knew, had a seat waiting for me, bless him. Somewhere inside that grumpy exterior lay a heart of gold and I’ll always be grateful to him for his kindness.
When I arrived mummy had already been washed and wrapped in a shroud. Although her room where she lay on her wire-framed bed was full of people, it felt so empty now. I know some like to hang around for a bit when they die but she was well and truly gone. At about ten o’clock a truck arrived with mummy’s kinship fathers and they lifted her on her bed onto the back of the truck. They were all painted up and wearing their parmagini and nargas, some were crying and it was so heartbreaking to watch them in their grief. I sat on the bed with mummy and we headed off to the mango trees. With the life force gone she was just a tiny little bundle wrapped in a white sheet.
Someone had placed two chairs for Louis and me at the front next to mummy and during the ceremony people filed past shaking our hands. It was a massive funeral and so many people had a story about my mum that they wanted to share. I was surprised to see how many had loved her, both young and old. At the end the Tiwi Women’s Choir sang ‘Silent Night’ – I still get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I hear that song. Then Anthony, one of mummy’s kinship fathers, asked me if they could take her but I couldn’t let her go right then because I could hear so many birds singing and I wanted them to have their last words as well. So everyone waited patiently until I was ready and then I gave her a hug and a kiss and told her to make sure she came and visited me sometimes. Then Anthony and Austen picked her up so gently and put her in her coffin like she was a precious and beautiful thing, which she was, and I felt my heart just cracking and splintering to pieces at the tenderness of those two men.
A grave had been dug for her right next to Casmir. I threw in the first handful of dirt, Louis was next and then Mario and then everyone else. When it had been filled I had to walk over it and not look back but just as I reached the top of the mound, the storm that had been hanging around all day fell out of the sky. A surprisingly cold burst of wind descended on us while a flock of white cockatoos flew into the face of the storm singing out to each other and twisting and cavorting in the updrafts. It was magnificent and it was mummy saying goodbye. And what a fitting end it was too, I was born in a storm and mummy left in one, it couldn’t have been more perfect.
When I reached the first tree I couldn’t help myself and looked back and there she was. Not at the grave but on the other side, at the trees where the path went down to the mangroves. The path that she had taken me down to learn to hunt for mud crabs and where she collected her pandanus and medicine plants from the bush. We looked at each other for one last second, my beautiful mum and me, and then she was gone.
My mum was right about how the beginning shows you the track that your life will follow. I was born in a rush and I’ve never sat still, just like she knew would happen. I’ve followed my own path and this path has always been stormy and full of exciting adventures, both good and bad. And the river of my birth where I was rubbed with the ashes of the black wattle to keep my spirit tied to that place will be where my children scatter my ashes when I die. So that’s how it began for me and that’s how it will end. Ashes and a river and a river and my ashes.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my children David, Tim, Nyssa, Amber and Kinji; my sisters and brothers Julie, Lorraine, Keith, Aubrey, Louis, Mario and JJ; my family in Arnhem Land, the Tiwi Islands and overseas; and my little furry ones Pootsie, Jonty, Cheekychops and Tiger Lilly (and of course the ones who have passed who will never be forgotten). May your lives be filled with love and light and may you be blessed for having known me and cherished me for who I am.
Also by Marie Munkara
Every Secret Thing
A Most Peculiar Act
Children’s
Rusty and Jojo
Rusty Brown
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Version 1.0
Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea
9780857987280
First published by Vintage in 2016
Copyright © Marie Munkara, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Munkara, Marie, 1960- author
Of ashes and rivers that run to the sea/Marie Munkara
ISBN 978 0 85798 728 0 (ebook)
Munkara, Marie, 1960–
Women, Aboriginal Australian – Biography
Aboriginal Australians – Social life and customs
Adopted children – Australia – Biography
Children, Aboriginal Australian – Biography
305.89915
Cover image © Trevillion
Cover design by Christabella Designs
Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea Page 18
