Yawo!

Grandma, Great-Grandma, Great-great-Grandma, Mum, Sissy, Aunty, Ina passed away peacefully late on 24 October.

Mum

In the afternoon of 16 August, I was seized by a bizarre sensation that Mum was going to die.  I tried to ignore the suffocating grip, like a coat of armour, of feeling, knowing, understanding Mum was going to die.

     I panicked.  I love my Mum.  She can’t die. What would I do without her?

     Over the next couple of hours I came to accept that, at almost 73, having had a major stroke and four mini-strokes, Mum, at some point, will die.  Whether it’s sooner or later, the natural order is she goes before me.  I told myself to get a grip and make the most of the remaining time I have with her.

     The following morning, I left Tony and the kids and slipped out to have breakfast with Mum.  The next day after school, the kids and I went round for a cup of tea.  Seffy and Kibby took the opportunity to watch TV.  We called in the next day and the next.  The knowledge that Mum was going to die hung over me like a monsoonal sky.

     After school on Thursday afternoon I was writing my report to the classroom teacher and Tony rang with the strangest of news.  Mum had had some shoulder pain and went for an ECG which had come back clear yesterday.  She then had a CT scan and Ann-Maree had just called Tony with the results.

     “Mum’s lungs are full of shadows,” he said.  “It’s cancer.  She’s full of it.”

     “What?”  I wasn’t following his words.  Mum was at home and we were about to visit her.

     “The pain she’s had in her shoulder for months isn’t her heart.  Her heart’s fine.  It’s cancer.  It’s in her lungs.”

     “Are we talking about your Mum?”

     Mum, Ina had cancer.  From Tony’s tone, it wasn’t good.  Obviously I have a limited understanding of cancer, but shadows in the lungs suggest secondaries.  That’s not good.  

     It had never occurred to me Ina would die.  She might be close to 87, but she has always been there for us. We lived with her for 20 years. She survived a triple bypass so she'd keep on living.  She is in Cairns.  We are close to Cairns.  She can't die.  She is the backbone of the Titasey family.  We are the ribs that only exist because of her.  These thoughts gusted through my mind.

     It wasn’t my mum I needed to worry about. I went straight home, my gut full of cold, wet rain, and told Tony my feeling about Mum.

    “It’s my mum you were thinking about," he said.

Grandmother and grandaughter

Ode to a toad

I’ve a clumsy hop and a heavy girth
I’m without a trace of beauty
One glance at me
Has all and sundry
Believing my death is their duty.

I can’t help my brown and warty skin
Nor my bulbous eyes set far apart
But my stocky build
Is generously filled
With a gentle albeit lonely heart.

I was imported to eat cane beetles
Scientists’ hopes were naturally high
The beetle flew
I’d nought to do
But go forth and multiply.

I am prey to native fauna
For I am slow and ideally sized
But threatened I secrete
Poison predators eat
Sadly this has seen them well demised.

I am collateral damage
Of an ill-planned experiment
I'm much maligned
By souls unkind
Who punish me with contempt.

I am speared, I’m drowned, I’m clubbed at night
I am doused in toxic Dettol
I’ve no defence
Considered pestilence
For reasons beyond my control.

Since I’m an innocent victim

Of science meddling in Nature’s way
Promise when we meet
You will let me greet
The morning light of another day.

Luck

I haven’t a job nor career.
Finances are tighter than ever.

Both fridges died on the day of the lunar eclipse.

Our house needs some major repairs.

My arthritic toe is killing me.

Luck
by Dorothea Mackellar

I wasn’t born (said the Seventh Son)
Sucking a silver spoon,
But I saw black swans the other night
Flying across the moon,
At dusk, on a rising moon.

I haven’t been lucky in love (he said)
Nor picked up a sixpence yet,
but I found the place where the seagulls sleep,
After the sun is set:
White drifts when the sun is set.

Though I missed some concerts and comedies
And balls in the usual way,
I’ve come on a mother platypus
With her babies out at play,
Velvety twins at play.

I wasn’t born (said the Seventh Son)
With a silver spoon to suck,
Nor bowled to church in a limousine,
But my christening brought me luck.
There are several sorts of luck.

But I know the unquestioning loyalty of an orange-footed swan (quack!).

I have witnessed battery hens tasting freedom for the first time.

At dawn I am roused by the pan flute-call of a pied butcher bird.

And I have the love of a good man.

There are several sorts of luck.

You can never be lonely with a dog and a book!