angels watchin’ over him

*

another death

Our friend Michael has left his body at last. He was eighty one years old, and the father of a thirteen year old daughter, A. 

I met A’s mum Z in a yoga class twelve and a half years ago. I don’t think either of us ever made it back to that yoga class, early motherhood being what it is. But we discovered, while assisting eachother in down dog, that  not only were we both ‘older mothers’ of new babies, we also lived in the same street.

We made immediate arrangements to have a cup of tea together that afternoon. We were both desperate for a laugh.

It’s a common and lovely story, the lasting bond between women who meet over playgroup play-dough, nappies, breast-feeding. Baby-vomit on your shirt, the feeling that your intellectual life has gone forever. The sleep-deprived generosity we are able to extend to eachother during that humbling, unglamorous “Do The Hokey-Pokey” era,  when our children are toddlers and every adult conversation is interrupted. Our children growing up together. 

I was a little surprised when I discovered Z’s husband, the retired psychiatrist, was so much older than her. She was already 43, like me,  but Michael was more than old enough to be A’s grandfather, and was sometimes mistaken for it.  Z and A were his third family. You sensed a hard-living past. He went to AA meetings every Friday night.

Michael and I did not get off to a great start. I thought he was grumpy and sexist and rude. He thought I was...well I don’t know exactly why he didn’t seem to like me. Stroppy feminist  perhaps.

The great thing is that we both got over all of it in the succeeding years, and came to be fond of eachother. We mellowed. Our two small  families, both  exiled from or without extended family nearby, grew close in a way that felt like family. We got to know and  love eachother’s kids.  And our two kids can’t remember a time when they didn’t know eachother. 

They’ve had their moments, the children, their squabbles, their rivalries. For a while it seemed like A was always lording it over F. Until he learnt to stand up for himself. We all agreed that it was good practise for them, to have to sort out their conflicts with eachother, in the absence of siblings. 

At times we all had our judgements about eachother, talked behind eachother’s backs, just like real family. A was sent to the uniforms-and-prizes mainstream grammar school; F to the rainbows-and-fairies Steiner school. But we all knew we were there for one another, in that solid, loving  way that matters. Michael taught F how to be teased, and that we only tease people we really love. He was like a robust,  affectionate grandad.

*

We all used to meet almost every Saturday at the market. Often with J and T, who are also beloved old playgroup pals, also single child/older mother.  We’d sit at the same table each week drinking coffee, ordering laksa. 

In the early days we’d take the three kids down to clamber on the choo-choo train in the playground. Later they roamed the market  with a mobile phone and money in their pockets, collecting free samples of popcorn and banana smoothies, buying bubble-gum, seeing school mates. For a while they earnt good money busking.

It was a sweet routine. Z and I shopped for fruit and veg at our regular organic stalls, bought bunches of flowers, chatted to various people. Michael would be hunched over The Sydney Morning Herald, getting  indignant about all the stupidity and greed in the world. He’d chat with D. Friends and acquaintances came past. We met eachother's relatives - Anyone visiting from interstate was brought to the market on Saturday morning. 

Michael and ‘the girls’ had moved to the hinterland by this time and often D, F, and I would go back to their place, which was nearby, after the market. We’d sit on their big verandah overlooking Cooroy Mountain, drinking coffee, sometimes staying for lunch. We’d watch king parrots and rainbow lorrikeets feeding in the grevillea, egrets down by the billabong. The kids often had a sleep over. 

Even after moving down here, we’ve kept up the Saturday market ritual whenever we are up on The Coast, which is at least every month or so.  

M has had quite a few health scares in recent years - a couple of strokes, cancer, emergencies with ambulances and hospital. Gruelling times for his wife and daughter. He’s fought his way back from death’s door on several occasions. 

We hoped he’d live to see A graduate, or turn 21 or something. But then again, looking after him was wearing Z out terribly. It’s been a hard time for all of them. Constrained. Often when we’ve been there the last year or two he’s been mostly dozing on a lounge on the verandah, or in the recliner. His glasses askew, the newspaper flopped in his lap. 

Then a week or so ago, another stroke, and  the definite sense that he was getting ready to go. I went to see him four days before he died. Z had a Siddha chant, Om Nama Shiviya playing quietly in the background, and vases of flowers in the house.

Michael had stopped eating and was an insubstantial blur under the doona. A faint remnant of the big hearted old patriarch, who’d always greet you with a  rib-crushing bear hug, holding you to his heart. He was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him, but Z nudged him gently awake and said ‘Jane’s here to see you’

The old voice boomed out from somewhere inside his shrunken body:  ‘Hello Jane, I love you’ . ‘I love you too Michael’ I said, then sat in silence by his bed for a little while, feeling strangely peaceful and complete, and remembering when he used to sing the deep bass part in Z’s gospel choir Angels watching over me

He died at home with his wife and daughter beside him. 

We were all in Samoa together in 2008

*portrait of Michael by his wife
portrait by Michael's daughter of her parents several years ago

an afternoon of rare spontaneity

A friend rang today and asked if I could babysit her nearly-three year old daughter. Miraculously I was free  this afternoon, so I said ‘Yes’, and little Ellie was delivered to my door shortly afterwards. I was flattered that she was happy to be left with me - It’s the first time, and she’s a girl who knows her own mind. 

We waved off her Mummy and went back inside. E scouted around for a good spot and settled on the loungeroom floor, then set to getting out the contents of her little pink backpack. I had decided I would hang out with her, not try to keep doing stuff in the office.

She pulled out  some coloured modelling wax - just like F used to play with - and together we made various things - a flower, a snake , an umbrella, in yellow, purple, orange wax. We stuck them on a little wooden house which E’s Mum, she told me, had got at ‘a elephant’. A white elephant.

We conjured up floods and boats and ducks and cups of tea - at that point Ellie leapt up and sang “I’m a little teapot” complete with actions. I joined in. Tip me over, pour me out

Later I dug out an old Ikea children’s tent of F’s, and put it up on the verandah. She sat in there giggling and zipping and unzipping the front door. I was asked in. 

Then it was time to go and collect F, do a bit of shopping in town, then head up to K’s, where we’d been invited to come and pick mulberries. 

Click-click, into the car seat, familiar from long ago. I felt like a grandma, what a nice feeling. A little sticky hand in mine. Bright, open eyes. 

We met up with E’s Mum, and she joined us on the mulberry foraging visit. ‘It’s primal isn’t it?’ she said, as we stuffed ourselves with sweet fruit straight off the tree, our lips and fingers stained dark wine colour. Everyone rummaging among the greenery. Late afternoon on  this suddenly hot summer day, sitting in the grass, lolling about till almost dinnertime. 

inclusivity, love, mortality

30/08/11: 

Mary died yesterday morning. She was over ninety, but l’m not sure of her exact age. She was the sort of person you felt it would be rude to ask. Mary was an old-fashioned woman, the soul of discretion and integrity. A lady in an almost Jane Austen sense: fair-minded,  quietly spoken, perceptive, and always impeccably groomed. I was surprised when I discovered that beneath the conservative exterior lay not only a sharp mind, but  also some very non-conservative political opinions. 

When I saw her in Melbourne a few weeks ago I knew it would be the last time. She was suddenly a frail, pale old woman in a hospital bed, fading away. Still trying to put everyone at ease. She reminded me of my own mother in her final weeks. 

I sat on the bed and held her hand, a level of intimacy we would never have shared normally. I longed to tell her how much I’ve enjoyed knowing her. To recall the conversation we had a few years back, about how we women need our own solitary activity - Mine, writing, hers painting. She did exquisitely detailed botanical water colours.  

But I didn’t want to embarrass her. And it seemed as if it would be very bad manners for anyone to mention Death, or  even Goodbye. I shed a few tears when I walked out of the hospital room.

As recently as last Christmas Day, Mary and her companion, Dick, my stepfather, were still looking well turned-out. Sipping champagne and wearing Christmas bonbon hats  and joining in the conversation. Dick carved the turkey, although his hands were a little shaky and his son was at his elbow. 

Mary is the third of three much-loved women who Dick has lost. The first was the mother of his children. She  died of some sort of awful arthritis, a few years before he met  his second love, my mother.  

Mum was a decade younger than him, younger than I am now, when they met. She was healthy and bright and still beautiful. No one could ever have imagined she’d be dead ten years later of  breast cancer. 

I think the years with him were the happiest years of my mother’s life, and a sort of healing. She’d had a tough time with my father, then a succession of dodgy blokes. We all rejoiced when Laurel and Dick got together. And wept when she died, nineteen years ago today, strangely enough.  

Dick grieved terribly for my mother. He and I spent a lot of time together that first year or so after she died. We had cared for her together in the final months. He has been a sort of second father to me, a kind and sensible man, so unlike my real Dad, who was cynical and moody and drank too much. 

For about two years Dick’s  sadness lingered. He was never falsely cheerful, nor maudlin, but just accepted his feelings. I think it was his ability to allow the grief to run its course that ultimately freed him to love again.

Mary had known my mother, and also D’s first wife. She was a widow who had brought up her niece and nephew after their mother died. 

I often marvelled at the inclusiveness of this clan that gathered around Dick and his kids. He kept in touch with old friends of my mothers - even some who’d been my long-dead father's  friends or relatives, who he’d met via Mum. The names of my mother, and of his first wife were often 

spoken.

Dick and his family were a blessing bequeathed to me after Mum died. His three kids and their partners all seemed so different from my own experience of family, which had been full of petty feuds and fallings out. 

When I first met them - I was only in my twenties - I thought there was something wrong with them, that they wanted to have Sunday dinners together, to share a few glasses of wine and have rowdy dinner table conversations about books and politics, then go for a walk on the beach together. Like, Get A Life. 

After a while I realised they genuinely enjoyed eachother's company. And I enjoyed theirs. Somehow I  too had become family, or almost family. None of this changed when Dick re-partnered with Mary. They were both in their late seventies by then, but amazingly youthful. They always welcomed me and my little family whenever we were in Melbourne. Never ever forgot F’s birthday, or Christmas. Always had some interesting opinions, or books to recommend.

A few months ago Dick told me  cheerfully ( on the phone - I call him every few weeks) that he didn’t think he’d be here next Christmas, and I said “Don’t you dare die!’ and he joked back   - I could imagine his twinkly eyes  “ Oh alright, just for you I’ll hang around”

He is ninety four now. Everything is suddenly failing - He can barely walk, he is going deaf, and getting a little confused too. He is no longer able to look after himself at home. And now his companion is gone. 

His kids have found him a good place where he is cared for and it’s not too institutional and he can eat dinner in his room. But he knows this will be his last place, the final chapter of a good life. I know I’ll have to let go of him soon.

Human mortality is so sad. Even when people have had long lives. Or so it feels to me today.