It began to drizzle when I arrived in Chiltern on Tuesday morning. My sister, Deborah, arrived from Melbourne at the same time and we met our younger brother, Simon, at the gate of my mother’s house.
“”It’s okay,” said Simon, “I’ve told her we’re going to Yarrawonga to get a dog.”
Me: “”You did what? What the hell did you tell her that for?”
Deborah: “”We can’t do that. We’ll have to tell her.”
But Simon had spent two nights a week with my mother for some years. He was right. But since when did older siblings take notice of the youngest.
Deborah, turning to Mum: “”Mum, Simon is going to Western Australia for a little time. He needs a holiday. We’re going to take you to Yarrawonga, just for a few days to see if you like it.”
Mum: “”I’m not going anywhere. I’m not spending a night anywhere but in my own house.”
Simon in an aside to me: “”Don’t worry, she’ll forget and we can start again with the dog. Don’t worry.”
Mum to me: “”You were here before weren’t you? You had glasses on.”
Me: “”No, Mum, I don’t wear glasses. I was here a couple of months ago.” (She recognised me then.)
Mum: “”When were you last here? You were here with glasses.”
Simon: “”Crispin doesn’t wear glasses.”
Mum: “”I’m not going anywhere.”
Deborah: “”Okay, let’s have some coffee.”
This was running against all our instincts. Our family has strong small-l liberal genes with another layer or two of non-conformity and individualism. You let people find out things for themselves. Individuals should be empowered. Control and force do not work. If someone wants to be eccentric let them get on with it; look where the centric ones have got us.
If my mother wants to live in a dirty mess in a run-down 150-year-old weatherboard house, well at least it is her dirt and mess and her run-down weatherboard house.
Mum: “”What’s going on. Who’s in my bedroom.”
Deborah and Simon were packing some things.
Mum to me: “”You were here before. You had glasses on. I’m all right here. Simon’s very good.”
This was my mother. B.Sc. Dip Ed. Science teacher. Girl Guide leader. Life-saving medallist. Six children. Anglican Rector’s wife running the social side of the parish. Housekeeper. Washer. Ironer. Maths homework helper. Obsessive cleaner. List writer. Cook. Nagger and insistent cajoler. Biologist. Geologist. Leader of school excursions to Central Australia.
And seven-tenths of all of it all now shows up as black holes on the MRI scan.
Utterly stubborn. Destructively independent.
“”I’m all right.”
Deborah: “”Okay, go with the dog idea, and I’ll talk to her on the way.”
Mum: “”How do you know about this dog? If it is just to see a dog, then, all right, but we’re coming straight back.”
She was like the BBC world service on short wave — full sentences of lucidity followed by fading distortion.
I rang the nursing home to say we were having trouble and mentioned the dog idea.
“”Oh, yes, that’s the way. When you get her here we’ll deal with all that.”
I thought that if we could just get Mum into the car, all would follow.
I tried to justify it by saying it is for her own good. But that’s what colonial masters and school masters say.
Deborah went along with the dog story just so she could explain what was really going on when we were on our way – 80kms to Yarrawonga.
How were we to pass that time and answer the inevitable cross-examination from my mother.
It was not to be. We had BBC shortwave instead. There was a lucid bit.
“”Your father came along here.”
We were near Rutherglen.
Me: “”Yes. He came for the altar wine and sherry for the parishioners”.
My father got flagons of medium sherry and diligently funnelled the same sherry into three McWilliams Reserve Sherry bottles marked Sweet, Medium and Dry.
And after church selected parishioners came to the Rectory. “”Come in, Mrs Bloggs. Glass of sherry. Sweet. Medium or Dry.”
Justified on his stipend. Like the dog lie. Justified.
He poured the sherry into dimpled, stemmed glasses – the elegant end of the suite of glasses that starts with the dimpled, handled pint.
Mum: “”I can’t see his face, you know. I don’t know what he looked like.”
She was married to him for 49 years, and his face was lost in the black holes of the MRI scan.
We passed Campbell’s, Stanton and Killen and the other wineries.
“”I taught all these kids,” my mother said. She did, too. The geology for their soils and the botany for their vines. She taught till she was 67 and climbed Ayers Rock that year, nearly 20 years ago.
Then the BBC went into distortion.
“”They came along here and chopped down every third tree. There were huge protests. It was in the Border.”
The Border [Morning Mail] was gospel.
“”Where’s the swimming pool. What’s this place. I’m not getting out of the car.”
I sensed she knew, but didn’t want to admit it.
Deborah and I have the nervousness of the criminally guilty about to be found out. What if she refuses to get out of the car. We can’t force her.
Me: “”We’re just going to get a dog. I’ll bring the dog out if you like.”
Mum: “”Well, if it is just to see a dog . . . ”
She got out of the car and walked to the self-locking gate controlled from within.
Mum walked through the gate and closed, locked behind. There was no going back. Stripped of the justification and gloss, we had lied to my mother and kidnapped her — for her own good. It was a complete parent-child role reversal.
Like a five-year-old she was victim of her own stubbornness. If she had accepted she could not longer care for herself we could have brought things of her choosing and she would not have had to go into the secure wing.
It was bright and airy. There was a pleasant smell of lunch.
The staff were brilliant. They had even conjured up a dog.
Nurse: “”Come along Mrs Hull. Come and see the nice dog.”
It was death, when they talk like that. Intellectual death. But death nonetheless.
The dog is a merciful distraction. A prop in the subterfuge.
Paperwork. Time to go.
Nurse: “”Don’t say goodbye. Too distressing for her.”
Once again for her own good we left by a side entrance. Liars and kidnappers.
But what else do you do? Her children went to the cities for university and jobs. There was no returning to look after the aged like some Third World culture. There is nothing in rural Victoria.
We returned to the empty Chiltern house. It had the institutional smell of disinfectant. Simon had cleaned up the incontinence. There was a week-old birthday greeting from my mother’s elder sister in England on the table. It lucidly bemoaned the physical deterioration of eyesight and legs and expressed horror at friends popping off. “”Hillary Stillwell went out like a light. Just like that.”
When I rang Mum on her birthday she said, “”Yes, they have all rung. It must be Easter. It’s too cold for Christmas.”
Next day I phoned. Mum didn’t know how she got there. But it was warm, the food was good, and she had a new pair of slippers.
In fact, it is not right to say it was for her own good. For she is no longer her. And how can she be victim of her own stubbornness, when it is not her stubbornness?
What a ruthless, humanity-stripping disease that makes children kidnap their own mother.
Will the god that created it please let me die skiing a black diamond run with my boots on?