COROMIND ISSUE 18 JUN24 ONLINEVERSION - Flipbook - Page 21
Circles.
A
Circle
Moments wi琀栀 Mum
Her eyes light up as I walk in: I’ve always loved her eyes, an
unusual uniform colour like a warm brown; circular pools of
melted chocolate. Today, she’s alert and animated. “Stella! It’s
so good to see you.” Mum always speaks with emphasis. With
meaning.
We live too far away. I call her most days, but technology is
such a poor substitute for a real hug, a real conversation.
I hold her hand in my hand. Those hands, once strong, raised
eight kids, cooked, cleaned, typed, painted, wrote. Now they
are their own alien landscape: deep blue valleys, soaring
white mountain ranges where the skin stretches over her
frail bones, angry red bruising spots. The result of blood
thinners, I imagine. Her skin is soft now, but wispy thin. Her
hands shake, a little, not much. Parkinsons. The drugs she is
on control the shaking, but the underlying tremor is always
there. The ever-present reminder of frailty.
Her nails are beautiful. That’s some sort of blessing, because
she never really had nice nails. Aging must have some bene昀椀ts.
Pyrrhic victory.
I take a photo of us on my phone. ‘Make a photo’ is the phrase
that mum uses. Her Dutch accent still there, after 70 years of
living in New Zealand. I don’t really notice it. I never have,
really.
We look at the photo. Mum’s melted chocolate circles burn
brightly still. I wonder where I got my eye colour from. Dad
had bright ocean blue eyes. My two daughters have blue eyes,
my two-year-old grandson has mum’s melted chocolate and
his baby sister has dad’s ocean blue. Mine are just plain grey.
I help her onto her bed and give her a back rub. I’ve brought
some anti-昀氀amme lotion with me. I gently massage her
shoulders, then her lower back, tracing the outline of her
spine, 昀椀nding the muscles, careful not to press too hard. She
sighs. Such relief, she says. I move to her legs and massage her
calf muscles and her feet. She falls asleep.
I think of a life well lived. Well loved. I think of the 昀氀eetingness
of it all. How life seems to inch along imperceptibly day-to-day,
but looking back, it races away, spiralling into an unreachable
abyss as it passes. I wonder how I got to be my age so quickly –
wasn’t it just yesterday that I was a gawky teenager? A messed
up thirty-year-old, trying to make sense of it all? A mother
myself, trying to 昀椀gure out how to do that crazy gig?
Did my own mother think like that? It seems like she is
forever. That time started with her, and that she was always
wise. And strong. And dependable. And there.
And I realise, she’s right. Again. That when the time comes, I
will be okay. I will grieve, and I will remember, and then I will
realise that there’s no stopping that unrelenting tide of life.
And I realise that mum’s gift is the one that keeps on giving.
I’ll carry her. In my genes, in my mixed-up paint pot of eye
colour, in the way I mother my own children, and the way they
mother theirs. And I realise that her waning is as necessary a
part of the cycle that my 8-week-old grandson’s blooming is.
And I will carry that as I, too, walk that circle.
Words by
Stella Pennell
“Hah,” I tell mum. “Look at that! I missed the eye-colour
lottery, I got the dud colour.”
She smiles and tells me that, actually, I got all the colours, just
mixed together. Typical mum, usually forthright and direct,
surprises me at the most unusual times; today, diplomatic,
gentle. We both smile, thinking of the genetic threads that
stitch us together, drifting between people past, people
present and imagined futures.
She’s lost so much weight, like a frail little bird. Looking at
the photo I realise how faded she has become. I see it, and
I don’t see it. She’s the same as she always was in so many
ways, but lately these are just glimpses, passing shadows in
a re昀氀ected mirror. Mostly, now, I’m struck with how frail she
has become, unable to stand without help, unable to walk
more than a few metres.
I bite back the tears that well up from a place I didn’t know
existed.
She’s tired, she tells me, and everything hurts. Nothing
speci昀椀c, just all-over-ache. She mainly sleeps, she says. Except
for at night, when she can’t. Then, her imagination runs wild.
Her little sister who died when she was ten comes to visit. Dad
calls out to her, asking her to follow him. I ask her, does she
want to go? “No,” she tells me. “Not yet. I’m not ready yet.”
“Well, that’s a relief! I’m not ready to be an orphan.”
We laugh, a little, not much. Then silence, both contemplating
the unthinkable.
“It will happen,” she tells me, “you’ll be okay.”
I won’t.
Coromind | 20