For our mothers

On yesterday in Sutherland

As you know, I remained in Wollongong but in my mind’s eye I too saw Sutherland. My cousin Russell says the day went well, and he has shared from the order of service.

…and another such day

I have not opened the box that contains the following for many years now. There are so many memories in it!

In 2017 I posted: Recently I posted about Vermont Street, Sutherland, where I lived from 1952-1955, and again in 1963-4. The circumstances of that first sojourn are well expressed in my mother’s words from the 1960s:

Then in 1945 the guns of War ceased. We hoped so vainly they had stopped for all time–and the father came home. The next few years held struggle of a different kind for the young weary parents whose lives, like so many, had been so deviously interrupted. To return to the normal, the everyday, does not perhaps seem difficult, but it is so very difficult, as so many found. Everything had altered, values and concepts had changed. One thing sustained this young family–the love of man for woman, of woman for man, of man and woman for their children. To hope, to pray, with faith, that some day, sometime, there would be a better world for all to live in. Again the years went swiftly–two years, four years, ordinary troubles, measles, mumps, broken arms, children’s hurts to mend–the guiding, the helping, the encouraging, the children growing, the joys, the laughter.

The babe of 1940 [my sister Jeanette] was now a slight, fair, lovable schoolgirl of twelve. So proud were the parents of this so dear a child who held the promise of the future in her clear blue eyes. The dreams they had–the dreams she had–such lovely dreams, such beautiful golden dreams.

The father and the mother bought a house, their first “own” home. Just an ordinary house in an ordinary street, in an ordinary suburb, in an Australian city. A house with room enough for the children to grow in to live in, to be “home” in all its true and good meaning. Moving day came with all its pressures, its turmoils, but with happiness in the hearts. The unseen figure in the shadows moved closer and struck, taking with it back to the shadows the beloved child, the child with so much promise, so many dreams–the child whose very presence had helped the mother’s war-torn soul through the years and whose sparkling nature had helped the father through the rehabilitation period. The beloved blue eyes were closed to this world forever.

So we were all grieving in that place, I see now more clearly: my father, brother, and myself no less than my mother. I can recall nightmares often involving death, and odd little memorials made of pebbles that I would make in various obscure parts of the garden.

My mother took to growing flowers, even winning a prize in the local flower show for her pansies or sweet peas or violets — I don’t quite recall which. Her flowers were those of that time — no natives among them. That came later when we moved to Kirrawee and had waratahs and wattles and bottlebrush in abundance.

Kay was there that day, and in their characteristic kindness Roy and Kay opened their Leonay Street home to us for gathering after the service.

Not there is our lovely cousin Irma Martin. I feel she was there, though.

Irma was indeed a good kind lady. Without her life would have been much harder for my parents – and for me – in the years from my father’s long difficulties and death (1974-1989) and my mother’s last years and death. In an old-fashioned phrase, Irma was simply a brick. She enabled the funerals of both my parents for a start.

I see too next to John Moody’s signature that Michael Xu signed with his full Chinese name. See 25 years ago in a nursing home in Annandale my mother passed away to learn why the service was conducted by the Reverend Canon John Moody.

I note too that Aunt Gwen was at the funeral, along with her daughter Elizabeth and her other daughter Joan and Bruce Syme, Joan’s husband. Aunt Gwen passed away in 2000, as I have only recently learned.

Precious memories.