I haven’t talked with Mum in nearly a year now. I would like to. I’d like to hear what she’d say about my beard. I think it’d be funny.
There was a time, at our old house, in the summer, around 4:50pm, when sunlight would stream through my parent’s window and splash comfortably on the purple duvet. When, by chance, never deliberately, my four-year-old self would sight this I would yell with clarion high-pitched four-year-old authority “It’s Reading Time!” and leap onto the bed. Moments later, Mum would arrive, smiling, our current book under her elbow. We would lie there, toes warmed by the sun, me in the crook of her arm while she read aloud from Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree or Robin Hood.
In our new house, for a while James and I shared a room. We had our two twin beds pushed together. In the middle was The Gap. It was possible for a brother to be pushed down The Gap. Before bed, we would eliminate The Gap as much as possible and Mum would lie in the middle of the two beds to read. If ever, during the Paddington Bear Omnibus, Paddington was too naughty or defiant, Mum would hastily improvise an ending extolling the virtues of being well-behaved. I would read over her shoulder as she spoke to get the raw, uncensored, sexed-up Paddington as it was really written. Sometimes Dad would come in and listen, or lie across the bottom of the beds and fall asleep. There was a scene where Paddington’s attempt at a magic trick went so wrong, that Mum could barely get the words out she was laughing so hard. Tears rolling down our faces as we laughed together, she had to get them out in short bursts as she drew breath.
Reading is one of the greatest gifts Mum gave me. I have a golden peacock bookmark that Mum gave me when she came back from Qigong healing in China. I lost it last year when it fell out of my backpack on the way back from the gym. I bet my claim to an absolute denial of God in exchange for finding it. It was a meter from my front gate. I knelt on the pavement.
When I was twelve, I found Mum and Dad in the kitchen, hastily withdrawing from a hug, Mum with tears in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked. Mum tried to play it off, pretend that nothing was wrong, but James and I had caught the scent. Mum, it turned out, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Mum might be going away. We held each other, as a family, again on the beds, over The Gap, together.
Lasagne. Our fridge was stacked full of it. Ding-dong, as doorbells do, and there would be another resolutely smiling mother from James’ year level, holding a tray full of pasta and well-wishes. Mum started chemo. James and I continued school. Mum lost her hair. We went on holidays. Mum had to wear a skin-coloured compression sleeve, due to her lymph nodes not working. This meant Mum wasn’t allowed to mow the lawns, or lift heavy things, or get bitten by mosquitos. She’d ask James or I to do the lawn-mowing. Sometimes we did, but sometimes we were so lazy she did it herself.
Mum set up an automatic watering system for our garden. Not a good one, but a series of hoses with holes poked in them, that snaked through the garden beds, attached to a timer system at the tap. One night, the timer system failed, and needed to be manually turned off. Mum was trapped inside by the threat of mosquitos. Frenetic, she asked me to go out into the garden and turn the water off at the tap.
“Sure,” I said, “but will you promise to help me adjust the timer, so this situation doesn’t happen again?”
“Just go and turn the tap off Samuel! The plants are being over-watered!” she said.
“Right, but you see why I’m asking. I’m trying to fix the problem long term.” I explained.
“Samuel! I can’t because of the mosquitos! Go and turn the tap off! Now!”
“Go and turn the bloody tap off, Samuel,” muttered Grandma, who normally never intervened.
I refused. Not until I received commitment to a long-term solution. I don’t remember everything Mum yelled at me, but I think “insolent” was one of them. I genuinely believed I was doing the right thing. Later, Mum apologised. She said she was wrong. We laughed about the whole thing at 1:00am later that night when she came in to shush me for making too much noise.
The meanest thing I ever said to Mum was when she was about to organise something for me that I hadn’t asked for. I told her to “Stop interfering with my life just because you have no projects of your own.” It felt horribly good to say, then.
Mum’s number one rule was “Be kind”.
Mum’s cancer was declared in remission. We danced. She still had to wear the sleeve. Her hair grew back curlier.
Any time I used to be pulled out of junior school for the dentist, afterwards, before going back, Mum and I would go to this little café that used to be in Sandringham, and have raisin scones with raspberry jam and cream, and spiders served in mason jars.
Mum avoided going to her tests. She didn’t want to know. One day, she went. The cancer was back, in her chest, lungs and bones.
While I was in my room, I could hear Mum singing in the shower. “Yes I’m wise / But it’s wisdom born of pain / Yes I’ve payed the price / But look how much I’ve gained / If I had to I could do anything / I am strong / STRONG / I am invincible / INVINCIBLE / (she would change the last line to her name) I am JOANNE!”
We visited Mum in the hospital. My girlfriend at the time, Mum, Mum’s sister and I played Exploding Kittens on one of those wheelie hospital tables. We laughed so loud a nurse came and pointedly told us we were past visiting hours.
Mum got very into Qigong. It gave her hope. I’d find her at 10:30pm following the yoga-like movements of a monk on the TV, and I’d half-jokingly join in and she’d laugh and compliment my form and encourage me to join in for real.
Relatives were flown in from New Zealand. James, Dad and I slept in my room. In James’s room we had my cousin, Mum’s sister and her husband, in another room another three… etc. Nineteen troops all up. I was reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. I got very good at slicing oranges, laying out the pieces efficiently like a sashimi chef. They soothed Mum’s mouth, dry due to her medication. Dad demonstrated shining, indomitable, Atlas-like strength, upholding the entire weight of the operation. Managing medication, people, food, doctors, nurses. There was a moment his name was mentioned in passing in the hallway, and he burst from my brother’s room where he had been catching an hour of sleep, bleary eyed, ready to respond, saying “What? What? Did someone call me? Is everything good?”
Uncle Tony, a doctor, convinced Mum that a palliative-care bed would increase her likelihood of getting better, despite her misgivings. Mum never wanted to hear bad news. She was wont to ask, “Is this a happy story?” as one started telling one.
Once it was just Mum, on her palliative care bed, and I, in the room.
“It’s very scary,” she said to me in a small voice.
I, trying to comfort her, replied, “No… it’s not scary, little Mum”
“Why isn’t it scary?” she asked, voice catching, tears in her eyes. “Why isn’t it scary that I might die?”
“Of course it is,” I said. “But it’s pointless, we might as well devote one-hundred percent of our efforts to getting you better, and only if that doesn’t work, then I’ll be sad.”
We sang to her as she struggled to breathe. James, Dad and I, arms around Mum, sung the nursery song that she used to sing to us whenever we got hurt. Mum couldn’t talk by then, but she started trying to when we sang. James and I took turns holding her hands. It sounded as though Mum was slowly drowning in her own chest. With each gurgle, I felt myself tensing, holding my own breath, willing her to breathe. “Please don’t go,” James sobbed into the pillow next to her, “I’m not ready.” Dad too, only now, tears materialising. I thanked Mum for everything, and promised to take care of James and Dad. At a time around 4:50am, on the 7th August, Mum didn’t take another breath.
On the 21st of July, I had visited Mum in the hospital. Dad had dropped me off. Mum was very pleased to see me. She said it was totally okay if I had somewhere I needed to go, though sighed contentedly when I said I had nothing on for the rest of the day, and could stay for as long as we liked. The sunlight streamed through the window, and on to a row of flower arrangements. Mum offered me the best of her hospital food. We talked, and I recorded the conversation. When it was time to leave, I gave her a kiss goodbye, then ducked back in to give her second one. Just before I got in the elevator, I ran back, down the hospital hallways, backpack bouncing, to give her one more. Mum smiled.