A decade since

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life??

Today marks ten years since my mother left this place. The day marked the end of seven weeks from diagnosis to death. Her diagnosis was a couple of weeks after she’d come to mine on the first day of school for the year. This was our tradition since she’d retired from kinder teaching.

Photo by James Cousins on Unsplash

The summer day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

– Mary Oliver

Mum had lived down the road for me in my old house since 2002, two years after Dad died. She’d been depressed since he died and the old family home’s vast spaces held too much silence, too many memories. The move had allowed her to feel close to Dad. He was in the stud walls of my old place. When I bought that wreck of a house at twenty-one, my parents had helped me remove skip-loads of debris and create a floor and wall so I could make it somewhat liveable. They arrived most Saturday mornings, the trailer bumping along behind them, tools at the ready and clad in overalls. My ex would groan and disappear to who-knows-where to avoid them and the house (a sign I should have seen from early on). Mum and Dad, and many other kind friends, laboured with me on that place so they felt very much a part of it.

My old house was also in the inner city and backed onto a park so, she reasoned, she’d never feel alone there with the surrounding noises and me just up the road. Friends who had young kids said that it must be great having Mum down the road (Free babysitting! Lucky you!) but she wasn’t that kind of mum. She liked them to drop down and she’d make them chocolate pudding or whatever they felt like, and she liked to let herself into my place whenever she like (much to M’s annoyance) so that she could download about whatever, or get some help with something. She didn’t like babysitting my boys (I would if your dad was around still…).

On this first day of school in 2015 when Mum dropped in, I had the aircon people here. I’d decided that I couldn’t bear not having relief from the heat. She scoffed at it, she was an environmentalist from way back. We sat on the verandah with our cups of coffee and she said she was depressed, lonely. Together we explored ways she could increase her social activities, reach out to friends. After a time, she said that she was still in quite a bit of pain. She’d been complaining about pain since before Christmas and, even though she had gone to the GP, osteo and more, she hadn’t had any relief. I offered to come with her to the GP. She was of the generation who didn’t like to complain to the GP, or to ask too much. I was prepared to ask the hard questions that she wouldn’t.

I asked them to test for everything, we needed answers. A week later, I joined her for the appointment to get the results. Mum was a stoic, so when he told her that she had terminal cancer, that it was in her bones, lungs, liver, spine and blood, she nodded. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t want treatment. I’ve seen how that goes. [Dad died of cancer too] And since it’s terminal, all I want to know is if it’s something the kids need to know about.’

I drove her home. Not a tear. Nothing. ‘We better tell the others,’ she said. The others being my siblings. ‘And let everyone know that I’m dying and to come around to say goodbye. Tell them to bring a meal to have with me, but I may not eat it.’

I said that it was hard to hear, that I was in shock.

‘Oh, yes, I know dear. It’s hard for those left behind. But me? I’m happy. I know where I’m going and I’m happy with my life.’ She was taking the washing out to hang, a job she wouldn’t let me do (Doing helps!) when she told me to write about her dying. ‘To help others,’ she said, ‘and, you’re a writer. One photo and some words once a week.’¹

Mum on the day she was diagnosed

So began a short and intense seven weeks of Mum dying.

One day while there, I overhead her on the phone to a friend calling to cancel their visit. ‘Better not wait too long. I’m dying,’ she said. Subtle and tact were not her forte.

Those seven weeks were a party at Mum’s. The house breathed in and out her friends from all walks of life: church, childhood, kindergartens, youth groups, scouting groups. She had a wild and huge life and impacted many. It was a privilege to witness her approach to death and I often recalled our conversation on the verandah where she talked about her loneliness.

If only she knew how loved she was at that time.

I am fairly sure she knew by the time she died, but she would have been shocked to see how many came to her funeral. A packed church, hall and foyer. Over 400 people came to say their goodbyes to her, and Dad, and to thank them, and us, for the impact they had on their lives.

…
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

– Mary Oliver

After, we were left in the wake of the huge people our parents had been. We squabbled and cried, retreated to our corners, held our children as they mourned a Granny who had loved fiercely. The years ahead held things that she had worried about for the family, things she talked to me about on the only day I saw her teary in those seven weeks, yet we are all here living our wild and precious lives, with something special of her, and Dad, in us and for this, I am deeply thankful.

Til next time

x M

PS - if you want to join my Wednesday morning online writing group, Writing Momentum, it starts tomorrow. It’s recorded and live and I’d love to see you there.

1. You can read the short blog series I wrote about Mum dying here