saying goodbye to a good woman

If you don't like reading about death or dying don't read this post.  This post is a tribute to my mum who died a little over a month ago.  She died after lying in hospital unconscious for just over a week, after having a cerebral haemorrage.  Her life was hard, she was one of twelve children in a family that was far from comfortable, her mother died when she was 18, she helped look afer her younger sisters and brothers, she was attacked by a man with an axe on her 22nd birthday and sustained injuries so serious she had to learn to talk all over again.  But she went on to get married, and had me and my two older brothers, travelled overseas for the first time by herself in her 70s and generally had a full life full of love, joy and hardship until she died at 90 .

We  recently had a celebration of her life, where her remaining brothers and sisters gathered with our extended family of grandhcildren, great grandchildren and assorted family and friends to say goodbye.  We made speeches, drank champagne and danced the Pride of Erin.

Mum (wearing the hat) with some of her brothers and sisters

So as I was sitting in the hospital with Mum and watching every one of her grandchildren visit her and talk and share memories of her with each other and share memories of their times together, it made me think of the stuff that binds us together as family, as friends, as part of a community.

Mum with my grandchildren

And I thought that family is about those threads that connect us, that are made up of shared memories, of stories, of times of sadness and loss, times of frustration and sometimes anger, times of great joy and celebration.  I thought that the threads are created by love, by friendship,  by shared activites, by caring, or just by being a friendly face when you walk down the street.

Sometimes those threads hold us tightly and warmly, sometimes they feel like chains that we want to break free of, sometimes they fray a little bit and the connection is lost for a while, but what is important, is that the threads are always there, waiting for us to pick them up.  They are the memories that are woven into our lives. 

For me mum was the start of the thread, the one that gave me and Frank and Harold and Patrick life.  She was, for our family, for the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, the one that bound us together, that would wrap around us when we were sad or lost and that would be a bit looser when we needed to move out or on, that would wave up and down with us when we were celebrating and that would just lie quietly around when we were all okay.  

Mum's remaining brothers and sisters

The threads of Mum’s life brought people together to celebrate her life, whether that connection was as a sister, a brother, a daughter, a son, a grandchild or great grandchild, a niece or nephew or a friend or carer.  And those threads extended out to those who were not with us for the celebration – her grandchildren, Emily, Simone and Rhowena, to the lovely Michelle who should still be with us but who is maybe now sitting with Mum and Norm, my dad, with Christine, with Patrick the child they lost and all Mum’s brothers and sisters who have gone before, Lil, Glen, Stan and Bell.

Maybe it's worthwhile to stop and refelct about the threads in your life, to think about the ones that you want to hold tightly and remember the ones that you may have let go of for a while. I know that wherever we go and whatever we do, the threads that connect us to the people who are still here and the ones who have gone, continue to weave themselves through our lives so that no-one is ever truly not with us, they live on in what we do, in how we think, they live on in our hearts and our memories and they help make us who we are…..

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the bob that sailed away

I am not sure if it's appropriate at the moment to be writing a blog about something that's sailing away when we are in the middle of the horror of the Queensland floods where we hear reports of people in Brisbane watching fridges, pontoons, whole trees and in Grantham, houses, floating along the flood waters. It is a major tragedy which will take communities a long time to recover from.

However, I feel the need to tell you our bob story. Because we were planning to come down to the beach house, I thought it would be nice for Christmas to get Ari a blow up beach toy. Luckily I work with a woman whose husband has a Clark Rubber store, so I asked her to bring in a selection for me. And I chose Bob.. a very strange shaped toy - maybe resembling a sea horse, or a strange seal? But it was orange with pink spots so I thought Ari would like it. We brought it down to the beach house and then faced the problem of blowing it up! I tried with my air, but soon realised it might not get blown up until next Christmas. T tried too. Then we went down to the disposal store and bought a foot pump! T proved an expert at the foot pump and he blew it up quite quickly and it was BIG. Probably bigger than Ari!

So off we go to the beach, T A and me. T rode on it first,it was fine, good fun. Then it was A's turn. I went beside him and he managed fine, because of the shape it was a bit hard to balance, it was sort of seahorse shaped or strangely banana shaped, so he could sit on it quite easily,but the balance was a bit tricky. However, he managed and was floating along quite finely with me walking beside him when VOILA! (Harriet's influence here) he fell off. So of course, my focus was on saving him, which we did quite successfully, alas, while I was busily saving A, the bob decided to float out to the open sea (If you can call the bay open sea) anyway it headed off in the general direction of the city! So with T standing in the shallow water I grabbed A and headed off after the 'bob' as we decided to call it after watching it bob way from us. It was a windy day and the wind blew that bob -remember it was bigger than A, out to sea further and further away. T decided to follow us and pushed his way through chest high water until he came to the sandbank, where I realised the chase was futile. T was distressed! Go and get it Grandma he yelled as it bobbed away into the distance.

We stood and watched, while I gave a little and much unappreciated talk on the Buddhist concept of attachment and learning to let things go. As we walked back to shore we continued to watch the orange and pink bob growing smaller and smaller. Just as we arrived at the beach we saw a motorboat pull up next to our bob and pull it into their boat. Then they motored off in the direction of Sorrento - they did not think to come into shore to see who had lost a bob! They were bob stealers! So we had a discussion about what might happen to the bob, our favoured interpretation was that it would be given to a poor unfortunate child who did not get any Christmas presents. And on that thought and the promise to revisit the disposal store to replace bob with a more practical blow up toy, everyone was happy. I lay on the sand while the boys had a wonderful time on the rocks. The replacement ended up being a most peculiar looking cow which, most importantly, had handles which we could thread a rope through and which I found the next day, made a very comfortable back rest while the boys played, splashed and collected jellyfish.

The moral I think is, don't have floating beach toys that you can't attach a rope too, and, if you do, prepare children who may be involved with a talk on the Buddhist concept of attachment, or non attachment which is more appropriate, and make your first priority the child who falls off rather than the material thing, which can be replaced even if it is with a very strange looking cow.