First Mother's Day

May 10, 2009

By Susannah Walker

With her grief still raw, Susannah Walker faces her first Mother's
Day without her mum.

'HOW are you?" a colleague asks. It is four days since my mother's
funeral, my first day back at work. I wonder what to say.

Do I tell him that my mother died near the end of a perfect summer's
day, a day so sweet and warm the very fact of it should defy death? That
I had spent the day at her bedside but she died 10 minutes after I left
to prepare dinner?

That when my sister rang with the news, I stood in my mother's
kitchen and finished peeling the potatoes? Not because I didn't care,
but because I simply didn't believe it was true. On the way back to the
hospice, I was stunned to see a couple walking along the street
laughing, as if the world hadn't just changed. My mother's skin was
still warm but her body was a discarded husk.

She had eluded death so many times that we used to joke she was like a
cat with 100 lives. And ever since I was a little girl, watching the
ambulance take her away again, I had believed that if I just loved my
mother enough I could keep her alive.

Perhaps I should tell my colleague that although it's only 9.30 in
the morning, I am exhausted by the effort of getting out of bed, because
burrowing blindly down to the bottom and staying there is the only
sensible thing to do.

I showered, dressed, left the house, caught the train into the city.
At work I went straight to the toilets and spent 20 minutes swigging
Rescue Remedy and not crying — putting off the moment when I would see
my colleagues and they would not know what to say.

When the moment comes, I try to walk like the person I used to be,
but find I have to wade through a rising tide of thick, invisible mud to
reach my desk.

Not so long ago, it was expected that people in mourning would
withdraw from public life for up to a year to give them time to come to
terms with their loss.

My colleague does not seem to have noticed that my skin feels as if
it has been rubbed entirely away. Unfortunately, this has not rendered
me invisible. Nor did it spare me from having to go to the funeral and
endure "fellowship and refreshments" — small talk and bad coffee — in
the church hall afterwards.

In the endless night before the funeral I call on my mother's
formidable willpower. I promise myself that if I don't cry during the
service — because I know I won't stop — I can let go afterwards among my
family at the private cremation.

At the crematorium, a ghastly soulless room with '80s pastel pink
walls and peach-coloured vinyl chairs, we laugh when the funeral
director plays a pan flutes CD. Mum, a Mozart fiend, would have hated
it.

That night my parents' home is full of people. One couple stay for
six hours and do not mention my mother once. I try not to show how much I
hate them for consuming our food, our attention, our energy, and then
leaving without saying her name.

Later, I sneak out of the house with my best friend as if I were a
teenager. We drink and smoke and gaze at the sky. She sees a shooting
star.

I wonder what my colleague and his mother will do on Mother's Day.
What do motherless daughters do? I will stay at home, hidden from all
the mothers in the world, and plant a tree in the garden.

A magnolia, because my mother loved them, and so do I.

People try to be kind. Their well-meaning platitudes rain down on my
head. She had a good innings. She was ready to go. She's not suffering
any more. It just takes time.

But when a stranger tells me it never gets any easier, I wish she had
opted for a platitude instead.

I have nothing to say to anyone, but inside me the same words batter,
over and over: "My mother died. My mother died."

When she sees me, an old family friend says simply: "You poor girl." I
find it strangely comforting. At 43, I am a child again.

I sit down at my desk and turn on my computer. There are hundreds of
emails in my inbox. I have been away much longer than I planned. Delete,
delete.

I went home to see my family and part of me didn't come back. I try
to remember what my job is, what my life was, who I am, now that my
mother has gone.

My colleague is waiting for an answer. "Fragile," I say.

Susannah Walker is deputy editor of theage(melbourne)magazine.

(Borrowed from: http://www.theage.com.au)