65 She Left Long Ago 23: October 2024

Josephine Hankin (birth name Wood) was not quite 87 years old when she finally let go.  When she was put in the ground, there was very little left of her - only some thin bones which had been leached of all their strength. 

In any event, for me her real death had happened more than four decades earlier.

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She had always grabbed at every dollar that walked past her, so there was an inevitability to that final argument about money. 

This time she had demanded I give her money that I could never give her because I didn’t have it.  She knew I did not have the money and she also knew I had never had it.  It was not the case that I had once had it and spent it thoughtlessly.  I had never got it and never could.  My university scholarship living allowance was based on her income; she had got a factory job so my living allowance had been cut.

For perhaps the five hundredth time she screamed “If you don’t like it, you know what you can do; pack your bags and get out!” 

I had grabbed my pitiful belongings and walked away into the cold rainy night.  That night in 1969 was when she had really died.

****

 

Mum had finally officially died on 20 March 2012.  By then she had been living in a nursing home for 15 months.  She had suffered a stroke and had been incapable of looking after herself, so the nursing home had been inevitable.

In one of those twists of fate that can be so unnerving, mum had nominated me as her Executor under her Will.  The son she had thrown out of the house into the dark, cold, rainy and windy night had been given the job of disposing of whatever assets she still had when she died.  I wondered why she had chosen me for this job.  Had she decided the child who had walked out when ordered to do so, could be trusted to do what she said she wanted in her Will?

Whatever her reasons, I would do the job honestly and make sure what she wanted was carried out.  I knew no one would thank me for doing the job, but she had still been my mother no matter what had happened.

****

Melbourne provided a bright autumn day for the funeral.  There were very few people at the funeral.  Those who knew mum best were all dead now.  Those of us who attended the funeral, did so because we felt we ought to.  We said what we could but none of it amounted to much.

How could we say that she had been crazy long before she was ever diagnosed with schizophrenia? 

We could not say aspects of mum had been completely unlovable. 

How could we say her life had been pointless for at least the final 40 years? 

How could we say she had treated dad with such contempt that he simply gave up and invited the cancer which quickly entered his ever so welcoming lungs? 

We didn’t say the things that had any meaning because there was no point.  Why would we speak badly of the dead – especially when the dead was our own mother?

***

I had refused to admit I had any fear all those decades ago when I had curled up in a cheap sleeping bag in the back seat of my barely working Morris Minor 1000.  I had parked it in the car park at Monash University.  I had told myself I would be safe there.

Where else could I go?  I had had nowhere else to go; at least I had been sheltered from the rain.

***

So, we buried Josephine in the pre purchased burial plot.  We placed her right on top of dad.

I did wonder at the irony of mum’s final placement. 

Mum had utterly rejected dad and he had given up trying to live once it was clear that all entrances to her heart had been slammed firmly shut.  Cliff had not wanted to live any longer and we had buried him in the same pre purchased grave plot some 30 years before mum died.  We had given him the peace and rest that he so badly needed and had earned. 

Now mum and dad were back together again. 

Would Cliff be glad? Would he perhaps be upset at this forced reunion? 

I hoped that the version of mum we returned to dad in the grave plot was the earlier version – the one he had loved and married but how could I ever be sure this was what happened in the end?  Mum had been severely mentally ill right up to her death.  Did mental illness survive bodily death and still burden her even though she no longer had a body?  I hoped not – for both their sakes.

****

After two weeks of sleeping in the Morris Minor, I had found a slightly more permanent and safer place to sleep. 

Somehow, I had continued to study. 

Somehow, I had passed my exams. 

Life had then swept me away from her. 

I had watched from afar with mounting, sick horror as physical and mental illness reduced her to a skeleton of a human being.  The earlier version might have been mean, but at least she had been verifiably alive. 

Surely this later version – this living, dead woman – could not have been my mother. 

For me, mum left long ago - many years before her final, official death.

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Josephine Hankin (born Wood) and Cliff Hankin – my mum and dad – in the early 1970s.  Smoking was not then the significant social crime that it is now.  Dad became addicted to cigarettes when serving as a member of RAF Bomber Command.  He was unable to ever forget the terrible things he had to experience.  He was such a very good man.  Despite everything, he loved mum until the day he died.