GIFT

Queen for the day

Hail, Mary, you were so graceful, is the Lord with thee?
Are thou a blessed woman?  And what of the fruit of thy womb, William?

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for my mother and me,
Were you there at the hour of her death?  Amen

                                         (Adapted from the ‘Hail Mary’ Prayer)

The woman clamoured over the rocks like an excited child.  The wind whipped her face and tossed her hair in all directions.  She ignored the chill that blew through her clothing, smacked the salt off her lips and took in deep breaths of sea air.  The cloudless, blue sky merged with the still, green waters of Botany Bay.  Seagulls hovered overhead.  She gently teased the boy for not keeping up.

Her mind flew back 30 years to teasing another young man at another point on Sydney’s coast.  He was dressed in a soldier’s uniform and there was a sexual content to the teasing.  They kissed.  She felt a tinge of sadness, of sweet regret.

She went even further back in her memory to a family day at the beach.  The boy’s mother had not even been born.  Mary’s parents and sisters climbed over the sand hills towards the beach.  Feet sank into hot sand as they carried their loads to an assigned spot.  Her brothers went on different days because they could not all fit into the car, a new Buick.  The girls squealed and ran down towards the sea.  The parents set up base as the girls jumped into the water.  Father spread out an old blanket keeping it in place with the wicker basket full of goodies and cushions.  He held the hand of his pregnant wife as she positioned herself.

Life was full of promise.  Though the ragged rocks of Botany Bay dug into the soles of her feet Mary felt instead the soft sand and blood warm waters from that other day at the beach long ago. 

He pinpointed the moment she finally gave up.  She struggled to make herself understood.  He put his ear close to her mouth but even then had difficulty in distinguishing the guttural sounds she put such effort into making.  Her eyes had no focus but still moved about suspiciously as if looking for someone in the shadows trying to overhear.  She could not even see the television he had bought.  It stayed permanently off at the end of the bed.

Her thin body lay on its back, in the same position each day.  She lacked the capacity to move independently.  The newly acquired ripple bed worked on the pressure sores acquired after a few weeks in hospital.  She tried to convey that a male nurse had sexually violated her.  This carer had done the bathing.  The difficulty in speaking combined with her discomfort of describing an intimate subject to her son.  He was her only visitor. 

She had come from a large family.  There were always people around.  The farm was its own community and everyone had a job to do.  Visitors frequently called, both for business and pleasure.  When she died they were all gone or they were too old to visit or attend her funeral.  Or maybe they felt no longer wanted or needed.  Her son did nothing to encourage contact.  This was his burden.  He did not want or know how to share it.  Just do what is needed and don’t ask for help. This should be kept secret.  A quarter of the small congregation was from the nursing home and had to leave early.

Her son did everything he could to avoid the implications.  Maybe he was trying to protect his own sanity.  He questioned her repeatedly whether she was complaining because he was a male nurse or if he had done something more.  What could he do?  The nurses were not friendly and did not invite criticism.  She gave up.  He did nothing.  After that there was not much communication.

He got so used to her lying impassive that when she died he did not know.  She had been moved into a small, windowless room to die by herself.  He held her hand and talked away for a good half hour.  Her skin was cold as always and there was the same blank stare.  A nurse had to come in to say she had been dead for a couple of hours.  She was 65.

Before she gave up trying to communicate she expressed the fear of going to the Goodna Lunatic Asylum.

Life began in 1916, smack in the middle of the Great War.  An uncle died in that war, her mother’s youngest brother.  She never knew Uncle Roy but had lots of stories told by his proud sister, especially about how he had fought and died on the Western Front and the futility of it all.

Roy fought in many battles and deserved his leave.  He looked forward to again visiting the English side of his family.  He had made it well behind the front line before realizing part of his kit was missing.  He was on his way to retrieve it when the exploding shell knocked him into the mud where he drowned.  Mary did not know it but the fickleness of life that destroyed Roy was to dog her every time she appeared to be getting ahead. 

1939 and most of her brothers went to war, caught up in the initial excitement of the times and the prospect of a job more interesting than cane cutting.  Mary married a soldier at the Wayside Chapel, right in the centre of Sydney.  She was 23.  Just over two years later her daughter was born.  By this time her dashing soldier husband was stationed on the other side of the country and the marriage was over.  Her older brother, closest to her in age, was taken prisoner in Singapore.  Mary had grown up knowing him as a strong man on whom she could lean.  When the soldier prisoner was liberated and returned home Mary met a thin shell of a man who could not even support himself.

Today, her views would probably be regarded as racist.  She was intelligent enough to modify what she believed or said with the changing times, especially as the world became more global.  However, she could never forgive the Japanese.   

The Vietnam War brought more changes.  She was forced to review political allegiances.  The old father figure, Sir Robert Menzies could no longer be trusted.  For all their voting life, he had convinced Mary and a large number of her generation to believe in his ability to make everything right.  She had never before voted Labor.  The change of heart was the thought of her only son being conscripted and going to war.

Childhood had been a series of thwarted promises.  As a child, they crowned her Queen of the Festival.  This was a grand title for the yearly spring festivities that occurred in the small rural community that was home.  However it meant everything to Mary.  For her coronation, she sat in an old wooden armchair in front of a white picket fence with the Australian flag draped over it.  They placed a crown on her head and draped a cape round her.  In her hand they put a sceptre, a stick with a star at the end.  She cherished that photograph.  She felt destined for great things. 

Mary’s mother died young after complications associated with the birth of the last child.  She was only 39.  Married at 17 she was worn out by farm life and bearing eleven children.  Mary was 11.

Mary loved school.  The anticipation was intense as she and her brother rode the huge, old grey into the holding yard behind the raised, weatherboard building.  She also loved her teacher, a middle-aged man full of knowledge of times past and places distant.  She excelled through Year 8 and obtained a scholarship, an encouragement for the very brightest of children to proceed to higher education.  Only three other children had achieved such a level of recognition from that place.  The scholarship would have paid all the costs of a continuing education with the promise of a teaching profession at the end.  This was a dream come true.  It would mean leaving home but she had a way forward, a vision of her future.  However, father would not give his approval.  The teacher argued vainly.  Father was resolute.  None of the boys had gone to higher education so why should this girl?  There were jobs that needed doing at home, younger children to be cared for and he no longer had a wife.  A lot changed after her mother died. 

Her son once asked when she first needed false teeth.  She said her father took her to the dentist with a toothache when she was 16 years.  He did not want the expense of having the teeth treated so had the dentist remove them all.  Her mouth caved in with the badly fitting false teeth, a flaw in an otherwise classically beautiful face.  

Shortly after the trip to the dentist father went on a cruise to England and came back with a new wife.  The new woman moved in and took over her mother’s possessions, regarding Mary as a servant.  Father died in 1935.  Mary moved out and onto a new life.  She was 19.  She had no skills apart from those learnt being a female worker on a farm, mainly matters to do with running the house, a maid.   

Mary was an attractive young woman and she knew it.  She had wanted to be a teacher; instead she was a maid or with luck, a shop assistant.  On the other hand, life was exciting for a young, single woman with no ties in Sydney.  She loved everything about that city.  She loved the harbour, Taronga Park Zoo and the Manly Ferry she took as regularly as she could to the heart of the city.  She loved dressing up in the most fashionable clothes she could afford and being seen.  Images of these times formed a large part of her small photo album.  A slender woman in tight dresses, smart hats and a confident smile strides towards the photographer.  Sometimes her arms are locked with equally elegant and smiling friends.   

Inevitably she fell in love.  Romance blossomed quickly and passionately, mirroring the movies of the time.  He was a dashing young soldier.  The war brought them together and then separated them.  Young people of fighting age lived for today and gave everything to whoever they were with because there was no certainty about tomorrow.  He abandoned her and a baby daughter.

Unfortunately as the child grew she developed severe epilepsy and distress at her own misfortunes.  Mary consoled her patiently. 

Even twenty years after committing to a new marriage Mary kept his love letters, until she had a nervous breakdown.  After she returned from hospital she took the letters from their secret place and burnt them in the backyard incinerator.  She regretted holding onto the past for so long but kept the divorce papers until her death. 

The formal divorce happened in 1948, it cost her sixty pounds.  She was only single for sixteen days before she remarried.  She needed a husband and a new life.  Mary made it happen.  This man was not her dashing soldier but someone she could manage, at least romantically and sexually.  Her son was born six months later.  She waited til he was 12 years old before tell him of her first marriage.  She kept secrets.  Hers was a generation of secrets.

She followed her new husband for nine years and assisted him with the management of hotels in western Queensland.  She did not like the life as a publican’s wife in a small country town although she performed it well.  Some patrons complained that her manner was distant and superior but most of the unsophisticated men who frequented the hotel defended her, calling her a real lady.  The children were by now going to school on the coast, an overnight train journey away.  One was looking to find work there.  She finally moved to the coast and her husband reluctantly followed.

Later she again joined her husband in managing another hotel.  This time the town was bigger and not so far from the coast.  History repeated itself.  She left to get her own house again in another city and support children who had again moved away.  She said having her own house was her reward for hated years spent working in hotels. 

Once she gave up on her opportunity for a career and the chance of romance deserted her, Mary fell back on the only other model of living she knew, motherhood.  She wanted her own house where she was queen and to have a lot of children, sons.  She imagined each one would have a different trade, one would be a plumber, another an electrician, another a mechanic.  Her only son was no good at any of these.  They did enjoy long conversations together where she would reminisce about the past, discuss current day affairs and fantasise about the future.  He would become a wealthy professional in London and she would be his secretary.  At other times, they bet against each other on the horse racing they heard on the radio beside the bed as they lay about on lazy Saturday afternoons.

Her body was not meant for having children.  Having the boy child was a big risk.  Doctors were unsympathetic.  A young male doctor told her she was too old to consider herself a sexual person and prescribed abstinence.

Mary enjoyed providing for her children.  Even towards the end she made herself available to them.  She made up platters of food, with the assistance of her carer, for her son’s parties.  The carer admonished him that he never left any behind for her.  When he was younger at university he worked night shift to earn some extra money.  She always had a meal and company waiting when he returned home in the early hours of the morning.  

Despite her misgivings about being a publican’s wife and resentment against the isolation of country living, she did a lot for the children in the outback towns where she lived.  She dominated the local school committee.  She organised a great fir tree be erected in the main street each Christmas.  Santa came in the town’s only fire truck.  All children were given a gift after minimal contribution from their parents.

Mary gave up driving too early.  Her son had no faith in her capabilities and said so.  A taxi stopped at a pedestrian crossing for a little schoolgirl to pass.  Mary drove straight through.  She did not kill the child but could have.  The taxi driver was abusive.  She never drove again. 

The end took a long time in coming, about 15 years.  Her illness grew gradually worse, one small step at a time.  She would adjust to one handicap and a new one would emerge.  No hope of a cure was offered, only dreadful tests.  A lesion was identified near the base of her neck.  The doctors only said this could be the cause of the increasing loss of body control and function.  They called it a parkinsonian-like illness.

She visited family in Sydney and they walked along the beach to the rocky spot where the crew of James Cook’s Endeavour first encountered the Aboriginal people of Australia in 1770.  She climbed around the rocks with her nephew, in her mind reliving earlier days.  Something magical happened when she was in Sydney.  She conveyed that excitement to her son whenever they visited together.   

She fell backwards, banging her head against the rocks.  Increasing problems with balance dated from this time.  A cruise to Europe and tour, was marred by falls.  In the end she could not move.

Mary could do nothing to support her husband in his death throes.  They slept in separate rooms.  She kept calling out to be told what was happening.  He fumbled about trying to contact the doctor and clutching at his heart to push back the pain.  She was too disabled to do anything more.  In the end he told her very definitely, almost abusively, to be quiet.  An hour later he was dead.

After her husband died, there were too many barriers to overcome.  The people who should have been helpful weren’t.  Her children used her money to pay a woman to live with her and another to come during the day.  It worked for a while, for at least six months, then the arrangements broke down.  Her son had enough and she went into hospital, whilst waiting for a nursing home bed.

The woman at the nursing home advised against taking her home.  The matron dictated what was best.  Her patients should adapt to their new home, a nursing home ward with four hospital beds, no different to the hospital ward where Mary had waited whilst a bed became vacant.  Her son took her back home once and she settled back contentedly into old familiar furniture.  This was one of the few times in his life he saw her cry bitterly.  She begged to stay longer.  She was so light to carry to the car.  On the advice of the nursing home they kept the visit to a couple of hours.  Son and daughter argued.  Mary finally gave up and agreed to leave to keep the peace between them.  She languished in the nursing home for nearly a year. 

Mary had few hobbies.  She was interested in her garden but that was ended with the illness.  She took up bowls and enjoyed that for a time, until the illness.  She liked reading, romances or light murder mysteries.  She had trouble making her eyes focus and the print became blurred.  Books with larger print did for a time.  Towards the end she stopped watching television. 

Her son could not remember seeing her pray.  He prayed as a child so he guessed she had instructed him in what to do.  She took the children to church.  It was something she should do.  They always sat at the back and if communion was happening they snuck out early.  She explained that she had never been confirmed. 

They were not involved in church life.  Her husband never went with her.  Instead he mortified her by driving past the church during services in his truck, empty beer kegs clattering in the back, whilst the Minister bewailed the evils of alcohol.   

Some nurses or carers took it on themselves to try to save her soul.  They told her what she should read, bought bibles and other literature with large print but always ensured that they were compensated financially.  Ministers and priests tried to talk to her, but they only frightened her with their talk.

She did not complain about her own situation.  She liked to talk, to have afternoon tea with friends.  The difficulties in her life reached beyond her capacity to control and eventually overwhelmed her.  She stopped talking to anyone, acknowledged the inevitability of her situation and surrendered.  She did not express anger or resentment against the fate God had handed her.  She did not fight.

She gave up on an unkind world.

 

 

About the Author

 

William lives in a rambling ever-expanding house in one of Adelaide’s inner eastern suburbs. He has been a social worker, manager and bureaucrat for more than thirty years. He loves travelling to unfamiliar places, and learning something of the history of the people and places he visits.

William has completed an embarrassing mix of degrees/ diplomas in pursuing his chosen careers from economics to social work to health management and writing. He is interested in writing and the spiritual, and has had a number of articles published, mainly in professional journals.

In his Master’s thesis A Social Work Perspective on Changing Service Approaches to People with Disability, he wrote about what happens when disablement, mental health, greed, politics and disempowerment collide. William has also had numerous articles published: many far too serious; but some are whimsical like ‘Confessions of a Social Worker’ (Whats Up in Disability, April/May Vol 2, Issue 29, 2009).

In 2010 he published his first book Bloodied Brains and Bureaucrats. He has blog sites about travel to Japan in the ‘80s and his battle with prostate cancer (http://wbloganau.blogspot.com; http://japantravel1980.blogspot.com; and http://godprostatecancerandme.blogspot.com).

Adelaide Centre for the Arts Award 2009 for outstanding achievement

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