Agh! My mother is driving me crazy!!! Last night she insisted on helping with supper but refused to peel the beetroots “on principal”. This morning she interrupted my clearly late-for-work rush to insist, insist I pay attention and remember who Oedipus’s daughter was. Oliver is grinning through it all but I can see him counting the hours under his breath. Only 47½ before she returns to New Zealand and peace descends again.
Mum and Mike are in town for the funeral of Mum’s sister, Anne. “There’s a sister?!” my stepmother gasped when she heard of Anne’s existence. Like the rest of us, she struggled to believe the world had produced anything close to my mother. Oh yes.
Anne was just as insane, just as talkative, just as loveable-slash-offensive as my mother is. They were the spitting image of each other. My cousin Tina once said to me “Your mother and mine were separated at birth and your mother got the heart”. Harsh, you might think, but more forgiving than Anne’s other daughter who refused to even contact her for the last twelve years of her life. It’s all very Running with Scissors and slightly amusing one step removed, each of them as bad as the other, aware of all faults but their own. “I don’t leak” Anne said over and over again to me and my sister Becky one evening. “You can say anything to me and your secret is safe. Remember this: I Don’t Leak”. Well, she does now.
Anne was found by her neighbour and best friend Julie on Saturday evening. She’d been making jam when she died, which is a lovely way to go I think. At a certain point she decided to curl up comfortably on the living room floor and gently leave the world. Julie, when she found her, sat and held her hand until the ambulance came. Then she sealed the still open jam and took it off to sell at the charity fete as Anne had intended. There were no flies apparently so we’re not too worried it had been in a room with a dead body in the Australian summer heat for two or three days.
Given all the disfunctionality and bad blood flying around I must admit I was quite looking forward to the funeral. After all, one of the guests was going to be the daughter of the man Anne had been sleeping with for 25 years (despite being good friends with his wife). Also, Anne’s half-brother John had displayed the family’s propensity for drama by flying in with 80kg of luggage despite having only met Anne once for an hour several years ago. Anne’s son, Tim, couldn’t come as he’s “unwell” with major quotation marks. But the real draw card was to be Antonia, the estranged daughter. Seven times engaged and reported to have kept the ring each time (treasured family heirloom or not). Very well hitched in the end and suspected by Anne to have ditched the family so she could invent a more suitable background for herself. I imagined her in furs and outrageous heels, mysterious and alone at the back of the chapel.
In the event she sat at the front. Cried throughout the ceremony and held the hand of her lovely husband. Tina, her sister, made a beautiful speech which didn’t pretend things had been better than they were. She was eloquent about the love she felt for the difficult woman we were there to remember. Mum was stoical until the very end of her eulogy (“It’s very strange” said Oliver who’d typed it up “but it all seems to be about herself”). Then she broke down in tears and spoke of how she’d miss her sister. The music was wonderful, very fitting for a woman who’d spent most of her life alone. The Ballad of Lucy Jordan etc.
And then the next day I had to pick up some things from Anne’s flat. Mum and Mike have been helping Tina clear it out (Antonia only wants the jewellery) so I slogged upstairs expecting boxes and mayhem. But most of the stuff had already gone and the place was empty but for the stain on the carpet where they’d found Anne lying.
Suddenly, in this sad and empty flat, where my mad aunt had cooked for me and made me laugh, jokes about leaking and crazy relatives felt disrespectful. Here a woman had died alone. She was self-opiniated and talkative and mad as a stick but in the end she was a lonely old lady. And like the rest of us she just wanted to be loved. So I’ve forgiven mum for the beetroots and Oedipus and all the talking. She’s only here for another 47½ hours and I don’t know when I’ll see her again after that.
