For Mum. Life goes on, but is never the same.

When I was a child, Mum used to play Tammy Wynette whilst doing the housework. I hate Tammy Wynette. I blame this early conditioning for my minimal domestic skills. What’s particularly ironic about Mum’s taste for Tammy Wynette’s old fashioned whining about life and relationships, is Mum was really a radical in hiding. She also had a thing for Tom Jones and his hip wriggle in his tight, tight pants. I often wondered how different Mum’s life would have been had she been born a decade or 2 later, or even if she had been at university through the massive shake ups of the world post 1968.  I don’t think it was by chance that she raised 2 children whose lives have not exactly been conventional.

In the 1960s, Mum earned a scholarship to study nuclear physics. But the world being as it was back then, she wasn’t able to stay in Tasmania alone to study and moved back to Adelaide where she started teaching. I often laugh at how many career changes I’ve had in 30 years, but Mum out did me. In the space of 3 years, she’d gone from nuclear physics, to teaching to nursing, then somewhere in the midst of sneaking out of the nurse’s quarters to party, she met Dad and thus found herself mothering. Later in life she went on to study art and feminist theory.

I suspect nuclear physics would have been easier than raising me. Firstly I nearly kill us both being born. Then I scream non-stop for 3 years and the only way I would sleep was if they drove me around the block. I figure it was carbon monoxide poisoning. In desperation, they put me in care, but as soon as Mum had had a chance to sleep, she felt so guilty she brought me home again 2 days later. I have no idea why she had another child given what a nightmare her first one was.

I might I lulled her into a false sense of security for a few years in the middle, before the real monster in me reared its head again as a teenager. When my friends are struggling with nightmare teenagers, I reassure them that I was a shocker, and somehow come out of it a reasonable human being and incredibly close to my mother.

Mum and I could talk about anything. That’s a particularly good thing as I discovered at some point that she’d known every time I’d lied to her as a teenager. Mum described me as not just a daughter but a best friend. I could say we were lucky to have the relationship we did, but luck would not be giving Mum credit for the work involved in the formation of both me and our relationship.

In a world where women are under constant pressure about their appearance and behaviour, Mum brought me up to be confident and comfortable with myself, capable of doing whatever I decided to do and to throw social expectations and stereotypes to the wind. I don’t know how she managed to do that, but I’m eternally grateful. As I grew up to have a somewhat wild life and interests, Mum was always loving and supportive. Even proud of funny old me. Except when I shaved my head. Then she told me I looked like a concentration camp victim.

Just as I seemed to be becoming functional adult, I nearly died in a canyoning accident. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to get that phone call to say your daughter was in intensive care. I guess that was the start of Mum’s continued mothering of her adult daughter. I’m a prime example of how mothering never ends. Mum looked after me after my accident, after my shoulder surgeries, when my mental health was struggling. Whilst I was a miserable sod after one of the shoulder surgeries, Mum assured Douglas I had been a terrible sick person as a child, and nothing had changed. She had to cut up my food, put my hair up and tie up my shoe laces, and we laughed about how it was just like old times. 

Mum struggled with physical health issues all her life. I don’t know how she coped really. I fall to pieces the moment I’m unable to do all the things I want to. She always said her body had never been that reliable, but what would be intolerable to her was losing her cognitive capacity. Over the past few years, she’d stress that her memory wasn’t what it was, that she’d lose track of words, or where she’d put things, and I’d tease her that I must have been becoming demented all my life if this was a sign to worry about. 

She’d still beat me at Scrabble and get all the cryptic crossword clues. Douglas would joke that it was time to play Scrabble when Mum was tired, so at least we’d be in with a chance. Despite her own struggles, Mum was always there to do things for the people she loved, spending a lot of time supporting Nan over the past years as well as helping out people in the community. Whilst she was unable to work, she would still be out volunteering.

Mum hadn’t really cared about whether she became a grandmother or not. Which considering how Malcolm and I were looking, was probably a good thing. But in an unlikely turn of events, Malcolm provided the goods and Mum discovered that being Nanna was great, and Malcolm and Kristy raised Lola to be as into family as Mum was. Whilst she cried when they moved to the States, they remained in close contact over the years and Lola was a source of pride and pleasure for Mum.

We went through boxes of childhood remnants together over the past few months, and discovered terrible poetry I had written for her as a child. Mum’s poetry was much better than mine.

I wonder what I was thinking with some of those metaphors, but I get the chocolate ice cream. Everyone loves chocolate ice cream, and everyone loved Mum.

I always knew I’d come to care for Mum when she needed it. It didn’t make it any easier when it happened. For all the radical paths her life may have taken in other circumstances, Mum never regretted meeting Dad and having Malcolm and me. Well, I expect the thought crossed her mind a few times over the years, but overall … Whilst covid 19 restricted what she could do with her last months, having her family around her was important to her, and family flocked around her. And she still beat us at Scrabble.

Despite all the difficulties in her life, Mum requested we play What a Wonderful World at her funeral, because she did think life had been wonderful. I can’t imagine anybody won’t be in tears by the end of it.