On 27 December 2024, my mum would have been 98. She left her earthbound body in 1968 and now lives in my nine-year-old’s memories.
I remember brushing her dark wavy hair (I was hoping to be a hairdresser) and filing her long nails. Her sitting on the floor, me standing behind her, leaning onto her back.
Her laying on the couch (called a lounge chair in those days), cigarette in hand, the olive-green curtains she made, hanging behind her.
In the kitchen cooking a sweet treat. I loved her caramel fudge squares, little pockets of deliciousness popped into my mouth. Let me tell you though, the feeling of dipping my finger into newly poured toffee, is imbedded in my brain. My poor mum must have been horrified.
The day I inadvertently found out Santa was imaginary, packing my pink plastic suitcase and leaving home distraught, only to wake up from my hiding place (bushes between ours and our neighbour) and scurrying back home in the dull afternoon light.
Swimming in the pool of the Sundowner Motel where my mum worked as a room attendant. The motel is long gone, demolished in 2016. Still though, memories flood in every time I drive past the corner of River and Kerr Streets. Even after mum’s death, I swam there with friends, daughters of my mum’s friends who worked alongside her at Ballina’s first motel.
Sadly, I have many other not so pleasant memories.
She and I perched on the edge of the bed she shared with my dad, sitting in the dark waiting for the sound of the car turning into our street, wondering what mood he would be in.
Hiding behind the antignon-covered trellis until he was out of the car and heading into the house. Then, the two of us hightailing it (the longest three blocks in the world) to my Nana Pelly’s house (mum’s mum). Of course there would be the dreaded drive-by, my dad cruising slowly down the lane beside Nana’s home. Us huddled in the kitchen, breath held. Mum telling me to close my eyes so he couldn’t see them gleam in the car light.
Hiding at my mum’s friend’s home, dad insisting he was sorry and pleading for her to come home. Days would pass like this and then, we would return home.
Dinners, lovingly made and laid, being swept with one angry arm onto the floor.
And of course, the car crash that ended her life and that of my sister’s fiancée and irrevocably changed all my family’s lives.
I wish all I had were good memories but they are tainted with the viciousness of an alcoholic father. I wish my mum had lived her short life peacefully and feeling loved and cared for. I know she was my champion, the champion of my older brother and sister. The peace maker, the saviour of my brother and his wayward ways.
Her life was not an easy one. Her slight body was strong, she was strong, and beautiful. When I was younger, family and friends of my mum’s would tell me I looked like her. These words were a balm to the hole in my heart. A blessing that few would have realised.
Now, I’m many years past the age my mother died. With silvery grey hair and a thickening middle. A mother of two and grandmother of four. I wish with all my heart that she could have been here to share my life’s journey. My journey in the realm of the living continues, and so, I carry my mum with me, in my memories yes and always in my heart.
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