Days Passing

We are almost halfway through the year. The days seems to be peeling away at an astonishing rate of speed. I am loving the misty mornings and crispy air, and I guess I want to slow time down so that I don’t have to contemplate the horrors of a coming el nino summer and the fear of fires, and watching the large bodies of water around here grow smaller and smaller.

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I attended a 4 day carer’s retreat last week. From my luxuriously appointed cabin, I had views of mountain ranges, trees, kangaroos, various birds, and some lovely miniature cream coloured cows including one new calf named Marshmallow. I wrote some words for my book, watching little green parrots cavorting in the grass as though they were creatures made of grass. I read Ann Patchett’s new book, Whistler (more on that later), and I talked with the other parents of profoundly autistic kids, which is always a privilege. People can be so kind. The kindness of people when given a chance is always worth pondering. And cherishing.

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It was the 1 year anniversary of my mum’s death on Monday. But it was not just the anniversary of that day, but the days leading up to it. The four days of her dying, though we didn’t recognise them as such until the third day. Last year on the first day, she called herself an ambulance and went to hospital. I was on my way to Melbourne on the bus with my daughter, to have a shopping day for her upcoming birthday (Mum died on my daughter’s 11th birthday). I ended that day at the hospital. On the second day, when she was sent home, albeit under palliative care. My husband picked me up from the hospital an hour and a half away, and we went home. I was going to return on the Monday morning (this was Friday). Then, that night, my brother called me, shaken, as Mum had had a fall and an episode of passing out, blank-eyed. My husband and I talked. Our son was in respite care until morning; my husband had just played a gig at the local pub. We decided I needed to go to my mother that night. So he drove me (I have never driven) through the Strathbogies and the winter mist, and dropped me off out the front.

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I realise I don’t want to write a blow-by-blow account of those days. After Mum died, I felt compelled to write down every detail. I couldn’t rest until it was all on paper. Ten thousand words. I felt as though there was so much I had forgotten, so many blank spaces in my memories of the deaths of my father and my brother. Though of course, they were vastly different kinds of deaths. On Monday, it was my child’s 12th birthday, and I let them stay home, and we had made trifle to remember Mum, and I cooked orange and poppy seed cake, and lasagna, and hung out with my kid, and went through Mum’s photo albums and chatted to her friends, and cried a little and laughed a little.

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On the Friday before, on the anniversary of Mum’s first trip to hospital, the first day of her dying days, I went all out to remember, by experiencing my own trip in an ambulance after being thrown from a horse onto my head and back. So, there were two hospitals, an hour and a half ambulance ride in between, and six hours immobilised, in a neck brace until the results from my CT scan confirmed no spinal cord injury. Speaking of the capacity of kindness in others. And speaking of a few quiet tears slipping out, because there has never been a day since she left that I needed my mum more than I did that afternoon.

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I am more than fine. Still a little bit sore and bruised, but fine.

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The mishap occurred while on the carer’s retreat. Afterwards, my husband dropped me back there at around midnight, and I went into my cabin. A kind person had come in and put the heater on and left dinner and dessert in the fridge. I had a shower and then decided to read, though it was so late. I picked up Whistler again, and happened to be right at the part about the titular horse, Whistler. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say what the significance of the horse is in the book, though it’s a relatively small part of the story, but I will say that a woman gets thrown off the back of Whistler when he rears up, which is what happened to me. And then something happens that is so moving; I was sobbing, but in a good way. It was the best book medicine. Beautiful grace and tenderness, reminding me of the power of good books to truly help heal us in our griefs and our fears.

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I was looking on the National Library’s Trove website last week, and I looked up the name of my paternal great-grandmother, Eyleene, who died in childbirth in 1930, aged 36. I’ve never known much about Eyleene, except that she died two days before my grandmother’s 8th birthday, and was buried on her birthday, and that, years later, my grandmother had a baby girl who was damaged by forceps in a traumatic birth, and died on the same day of the year as Eyleene. When my grandmother died aged 91, it was only a day, mere hours from the same date. I found death notices for Eyleene, who was so young, leaving behind five young children. They lived in Springvale, which is where she is buried. I asked a volunteer for a photo of her grave (this is a thing you can do, if you didn’t know, in most cemeteries), and a few days later, I was sent a photo of her unmarked grave (many years later, her husband was buried there with her, but still no stone). There were also In Memorium notices from the newspapers on the first anniversary of Eyleene’s death, and this was where I learned that her primary family had called her ‘Eylee’, and I thought, what a tender little gift to receive that knowledge of a great grandmother, nearly a hundred years later. Have you ever tried looking up the names of people you know on Trove? You would be surprised what you might find. It really is a treasure of a resource, and we are so lucky to have it.

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I am working on my novel, though very slowly. I am continually reminding myself to just keep going, and to be kind to myself. I hope for the same for you.

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I am on the committee for Mansfield Readers and Writers, and we are currently running a writing competition with categories for memoir, poetry and short stories. The word limits are 2000 words for prose and 100 lines max for poetry, and the theme is ‘Wild’, interpreted as loosely or closely as you like. The details are here, and I’d so love to see writing in any of those categories by Substack people, since I read so much great stuff here. There are two weeks left to enter, but maybe you have a piece already written that you can adapt to the theme. The judges are Maggie MacKellar, Tim Loveday and Margaret Hickey.

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I’m off to fit in a half hour of writing on my novel. Happy writing, and/or reading to you, and thank you as always for including my Substack in your imbibed words x