I love you Mum. My awareness of you, and my awareness of the lack of you, ebbs and flows with time. But you are always there, like the moon pulling at the tides. So what the hell is this expansion and contraction? One second is one second, right? A minute is a minute. And a year is supposed to be a year. So, how is it possible that five years have passed since the day you died? Five whole years?? I was 47 years old, but I can’t remember anything about being 47, except that’s how old I was when you died. In some ways it feels like time stopped at that moment. Except it wasn’t time at all, it was you. You stopped. Existing. In the present tense, anyway. You just froze in time. And the last message you ever sent me will always be the last message you ever sent me.
The last message.
But still, I talk to you. As if you were here. Or there. Or somewhere. Not in fully formed sentences, but more like fragmented thoughts. Like I wish, I wonder, I’m sorry, I love you. Half-formed ideas that stick in my throat, and in my heart. Because the second they start forming, I realise there’s nowhere for them to go. So they abort. They reject. They miscarry, but still, I talk to you. It hurts Mum. It really fucking hurts. But it’s OK, I let it hurt. I want it to hurt. Because hurting is better than not hurting. But sometimes the pain of missing you is so bad, that I can’t help but cry. And the crying helps, so I sob. I crumple, and I sob my fucking heart out. And the oxytocin floods my body and I feel a little bit better. But the pain doesn’t actually go away. The pain is still there, and you are still gone.
I was clueless. I didn’t know, I honestly didn’t know that I would experience it so painfully. You were so unwell, and your life seemed so stripped of joy towards the end. I had brief, guilty, cavalier thoughts that perhaps death would be a kind of blessing for you. Fuck, I actually thought that. I thought it might be better. I had no idea.
I’ve thought about you a lot over the last five years. I’ve wondered a lot of things that I will never know because you’re no longer here to tell me. I wonder what you would think if you saw your beautiful rings on my fingers. The very same rings that you wore every day, and that were a part of you. I wear them now, every day, with love and pride. Would you think it was weird to see your rings on someone else’s fingers? I wonder if I could have done more to make you feel important. I wonder how you would have coped with covid. With all the lockdowns. I wonder if you knew exactly how stunning your smile was. And I wish you knew how much I love it when people tell me I look like you. I wonder what happened that day in 2012 when you left your dirty jeans in the laundry hamper in your bedroom in the house in Greece, and then just flew back home to Melbourne for the last time. How could you know that you would never go back? That you would never see your jeans again. Or your sister. How could you know that eleven years later I would pull your jeans out, with the worst feeling of finality that I’ve ever felt in my life?
Sisters ♥
I wish I could hold your beautiful face in my hands and tell you how much I love every line, every wrinkle. Every sign of a full and spirited life. I wish I could tell you how desperately I miss you. I wish you’d known that you were so adored that your absence has created a massive black hole in my heart. I wish you could tell me how I’m supposed to go from a life enveloped by your love, to a life devoid of it? Because, when you were alive, no matter where I was I was bathed in pure and unconditional love. How do I go from that, to suddenly having it ripped away from me without any fucking warning, without any kind of preparation? I’m still grappling with that. I know that you never truly appreciated how important you were, and how much of an impact you had on people’s lives, but you were an extraordinary woman and you still are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever known. I wish I had told you that more often. I wish I’d made sure that you knew it. That’s a regret, because I’m not sure that you did know. I’m not sure that I did convey it well enough. And now it’s too late.
I wonder about your collection of beautiful rocks and crystals, which I had to arm-wrestle Mary and Pieta for when the three of us went through all your things. I had to give up some pretty good shit for the honour of claiming them as mine. I wish I could ask you where you got them from. Each and every one seems like it must have a story behind it. I wish I knew what they meant to you.
Each one a geological marvel, each one part of my mother’s story
I wish I’d spent more time with you. I wish I’d talked to you more. I wish I had been more affectionate. I wish that we had listened to more music together. I wish we’d gotten high together. Danced together. I wish I knew the recipe for your rice pudding. I wish I had made you laugh more. I wish I hadn’t been so dismissive. I wish you could hear me speaking Greek. I’m getting so good at it, and you’d be so proud of me. I’m taking online lessons with a gorgeous woman from Piraeus called Marilena, and we’ve become such good friends. Her personality reminds me so much of you. I wonder if you knew that life is a circle. Μακάρι να μπορούσαμε οι δυο μας να κουβεντιάσουμε στα ελληνικά. I wish I’d bought you a better mobile phone. I wish that neither of us had to deal with our feelings of social anxiety alone. I wish you didn’t have to worry so much about money. I wish you’d had more joy in your life. More than anyone I’ve ever known, you deserved more joy. I wonder if you know where my purple dress is? The beautiful one I made when I took up sewing after Dad died? I can’t find it and I don’t know where it’s gone. I’m sorry that David and I had a big fight in front of you a month before you died. I’m sorry I didn’t listen when you told me what you wanted, and when you told me what you didn’t want. I’m sorry I took you for granted.
Life is a circle
I wish you’d used your mobile phone to call an ambulance when the landline wasn’t working. I wish you’d pressed your medical alert. I wish you’d gone to the neighbour’s house before sunrise. I wish you’d knocked on their door and woken them up in the middle of the night. I wish you’d bashed their door down. I’m sorry I wasn’t there in the hospital with you, with Mary and Pieta. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you died. I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to you. I wish we could have heard each other’s voices, just one more time. I wish I could have told you that I love you. I wish you’d known that I was there with you. I wish you knew that you are always here with me.
My father died 20 years ago today. His death fucked me up pretty good. Actually, his illness didn’t do a bad job of fucking me up either. Watching him deteriorate from a strong and vital man into a shell of a human being, someone I barely recognised, sent me plummeting into the deepest and darkest depression I’ve ever experienced. The ten months of his illness were agonising, and the months afterwards were very much worse.
Until my father died, work was a source of great comfort for me. A place I could escape the gnawing torment of his decline. A place of relief from the anguish. I was working as a junior air traffic controller at Moorabbin, which is a busy airport full of training aircraft. It’s chaos. Delving into work, my focus was laser sharp and blinkered, all the better to not allow any thoughts of my father to seep into my consciousness. I was depressed, yes, but I was functional. In stark contrast, after Dad died, I became catatonic. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything. And I certainly couldn’t work.
I was off work for three months, and spent all that time at our family home with my Mum and sisters. I slept in the living room on a foam mattress which I made up every night, and packed away every morning. Sleep was elusive; my head filled with swirling memories and jagged thoughts that were so painful I would just sob into my pillow for hours. I was eventually prescribed sweet, merciful Temazepam to help with the debilitating insomnia, which was a life buoy thrown to me when I was drowning in a tempestuous sea of grief. My waking hours were spent staring into space. Aimlessly shuffling from room to room. I was completely numb and I don’t remember much from that time. I lost a lot of weight. I rarely left the house. I cut myself off from all my friends. My father’s death knocked me out. It was a king-hit that took me more than 18 months to emerge from.
My mother never resurfaced from her loss. When Dad died, a very large part of her did as well. She never stopped loving him with all her heart, and she stubbornly refused to live a full life without him. To my Mum, Kon’s ashes embodied his soul, and until the day she died she kept a lit candle beside his urn on the mantelpiece in the living room. She said goodbye to him when she left the house, and hello when she returned. Goodnight when she went to bed, and good morning when she woke up. It was her way of staying connected to him, even though he was gone. It was her way of keeping him alive, and that gave her comfort.
My mother’s death hit me very differently. Firstly, even though I knew she was sick, I didn’t know that she was at death’s door, so I was totally unprepared. Secondly, she was my mother, not my father. And thirdly, after Dad died, I still had my Mum around for another 15 years. But when she died too, suddenly they were both gone and I experienced not just the loss of a very important person in my life, but the loss of my roots, my anchor, my family unit, and my very foundation. And the loss was profound. I didn’t get depressed, like when Dad died. Instead I succumbed to an extreme and overpowering sadness, the depth of which I could never have imagined possible. The sadness that I felt was not normal. My whole life leading up to this event, sadness was a room on the ground floor. Maybe when things got really bad, it went down to the basement. But suddenly, when my Mum died, I realised that it was not the lowest, or the worst, that I could feel. I learned that there were twenty cavernous levels below the earth that could fill up and overflow with my sadness. It’s like when people say you don’t know how much love you can truly feel until you have a baby. Well, maybe you don’t know how much sadness you can feel until you lose your mother.
I’ve spent the last four and a half years since my mother’s death fiercely grieving her. I miss her deeply and still sometimes cry myself to sleep when it just hits me in the chest that she’s gone and that she’s never coming back. I think of her every single day. I see her picture on my bedroom wall every single day. And every single day something reminds me of her, and I’ll say emphatically, “I love my Mum”. Because I really fucking do.
Conversely, in the last four and a half years, I have hardly thought about my Dad at all. Deplorably, I haven’t had any room in my heart for him. And I feel so incredibly guilty that the all-consuming grief I feel for Mum has completely supplanted the grief that I was holding for my Dad. And of course, intellectually and emotionally, I know (I know!) that I still love my father and I know that I miss him and I know that I grieve for him. And of course it’s not a competition about who I love or miss the most. But I am grateful that this, twentieth anniversary of his passing, is an opportunity for me to once again focus on my Dad, and to once again make some room for him in my heart where he belongs.
My parents were very different people, and had very different parenting styles. My Mum was all heart, loving, open and warm. My Dad was more outgoing and filled the room with his personality… which could sometimes be a lot. He had been raised in a household where the man was in charge, the man was the be-all and end-all, the man wore the pants and the man had the last word. My Dad’s gentle nature prevented him from becoming the kind of authoritarian parent that his own father was, but still he could be pretty strict and uncompromising, especially when my sisters and I were teens. I think that when his three daughters started growing up, it triggered an internal clash between his easy-going personality and the stern parental conditioning he’d grown up with. And this started causing a rift in our family. Being the first born child, being the one for whom rebellion simply wasn’t an option, I accepted all the rules. I was the good girl. And I’m grateful to both of my sisters, for being significantly more ballsy than I was and smashing down the barriers that had been put around us. I’m grateful because, even though it caused a great deal of heartbreak and strife and tension in the house at the time, it was the catalyst for our father to change. As a parent, and as a man.
I have to give my Dad props for being able to shed generations of toxic masculinity, and to look inwards and realise that he no longer had to be so overprotective and controlling of his daughters. He understood that if he didn’t make changes within himself, he was at risk of pushing us away, or even losing us completely. And he changed. He just did it. He softened, he became more accepting, and he became more affectionate and open and loving. He became more himself. It was a truly remarkable transformation. Over the years, my relationship to my Dad evolved from worship, to reverence, to fear, to shame, to disrespect, to ambivalence. And then I went back, and I got to know him as a person, as a human being. And I started loving him again. And finally, at the end, after all that, we were friends. I’m so grateful that we had the opportunity to complete that circle while he was still alive.
I have so many beautiful memories of my extravagant and irrepressible father, whose extraordinary zest for life left an impression on everyone who knew him. Even though it may seem trivial, a memory that I hold very dearly is of how gentle my Dad was when he put my hair up in a ponytail when I was a kid. As opposed to my Mum’s confident and efficient method of whisking my hair up and quickly twisting the hair-tie around the ponytail, my entire head fit into my Dad’s enormous hands as he tenderly stroked my hair, trying so hard to not pull even a single one as he lovingly gathered it up on top of my head. And I knew, I just knew, even then, as a five, or six, or seven year old, that it was a special moment between us. I cherished that moment when I was a kid. And I cherish it now.
One family story that became legend over the years demonstrates how meticulous and fastidious Dad was about certain things. He always took such great pride in the way that he looked, and in particular the clothes that he wore. His sisters, Dimitra and Sophia, recently recalled the story for me, setting the scene at a large family dinner. Dad, Mum, aunts and uncles and friends of the family were all there, gathered around the table. Someone was carving and serving a large roast chicken, and a few droplets of gravy splashed onto my Dad’s shirt. As was his wont, he became very upset. Everyone there was accustomed to witnessing Dad’s over-the-top reactions whenever he got even a minor stain on his clothes. But this time, apparently, he became so melodramatic about it that my Aunt Sophia (who was up to here with Dad’s histrionics) lost her patience, and lost the plot. Wild-eyed, she pushed her chair back, walked around the table to where my Dad was sitting, grabbed the chicken drumstick off his plate and furiously started rubbing it all over his shirt, yelling, “It’s just a fucking stain, Kon!!!” As you can imagine, everyone was so shocked at the unexpected insanity of the moment, they all burst into laughter. Everyone, that is, except my Dad, who sat frozen like a statue, staring straight ahead with a stony look on his face.
Hello police, I’m dressed to kill and I’d like to report a murder.
Thinking back, I remember lots of stories from my Dad’s youth. Like the time a tree he was standing right next to was struck by lightning. Knocked out by the impact, my father lost his sight and couldn’t see for hours afterwards. When his eyesight returned, he went back to the tree, which had been cleaved in two, and found a stunning gemstone in the cradle of the split trunk. The stone was a brilliant azure blue, and I remember seeing it and holding it and being in awe of it when I was a kid. My Dad treasured that gemstone, and I wish with all my heart that I knew where it was.
My father’s family were so poor that his parents couldn’t afford to feed all six of their children, so when my Dad was 17 years old, a deal was struck to foster him out to some neighbours, a rich family that lived just down the road. Until then, my father had never even worn a pair of shoes. So the pride that he took in his clothes later on in life makes total sense to me. The couple that “adopted” my Dad were in their sixties and didn’t have any children, but they promised to secure him financially and to love him like their own. The first few months went smoothly, and Dad helped them on their farm and generally did whatever was needed around the house. He even used to drive the couple to church every week. In a village where most families couldn’t even afford a bicycle, this was a big deal.
After a while though, the couple started talking about weddings, suggesting that Kon marry their niece, but he wasn’t interested. So the old guy started imposing a curfew, saying that my Dad (who was 19 years old by that time) had to be home by 10pm on Saturdays. Obviously this was total bullshit and Kon justifiably stayed out until the wee hours of the morning that first weekend. He did the same the weekend after. And on the third weekend in a row that he came home late, he found the door to the house locked. And that was it, that was the end of the deal. That Sunday morning, his younger brothers and sisters woke up to find Kon sleeping on the floor next to their beds, and the whole family rejoiced that he was finally back where he belonged.
Beloved siblings (Back row: Roula, Kon & Christos and Front row: Stavros, Sophia & Dimitra)
Kon Stathopoulos was a singularly brilliant man. He pulled himself out of abject poverty in Greece, and created a whole new life for himself in Australia. He completely rewrote his destiny. My Dad was a dreamer and a big thinker! Sure, he drove trucks, and then later taxis, but my Dad was too big to be a taxi driver forever. He worked some shitty jobs to make ends meet, but in his spare time he was an enthusiastic entrepreneur. Bow ties, light up yo-yos, silver screens for cars, decorative ceramic tiles. He tried a whole bunch of innovative business ideas before finally starting his own company, Plastercraft Contractors.
A one-man show, my Dad took solid plastering to the next level, turning it into an artform. Within just a couple of years he had built such a great reputation in the industry that he was asked to singlehandedly restore the exterior of a large church in Ballarat. He was also commissioned to create a new plaster cast emblem for the Red Eagle Hotel, in Albert Park, the very same bar where Kylie Minogue had her 21st birthday party!!! He then landed the extremely exclusive job of re-designing and building the beautiful and iconic fountain at Government House in Victoria. Every year on 26th January, Government House opens its doors to the public, and thousands of people get a chance to peek inside the stately home and to roam through the gardens. There are also monthly tours of the 11 hectare garden which anyone can book, so why not go along on one of these tours and see for yourselves the amazing sculptural achievement created by my very own father.
The construction phase.
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The standing ovation phase.
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The current phase.
Later on, due to the success of his business Dad expanded into larger scale projects like apartment building construction sites. He often invited me to join him and earn a little bit of extra cash, and I once hit the jackpot, making $400 in one week being an elevator girl, asking big burly construction workers wearing hardhats, “Which floor?” for eight hours a day. It was here that I first saw the man that my father had to be when he wasn’t with his family. For the first time, I heard him casually throwing around words like, “fair dinkum”, “bloke”, “smoko”, and I even heard him say “fuck” a few times. My brain exploded. As a 21 year old I’d never heard my Dad swear at home, yet here he was cursing with such ease and regularity. It was surprising, but also kind of nice, to discover this other side of Dad that I’d never seen before. It added yet another dimension to him.
My Dad left his mark on some pretty important buildings, but his passion project was building a holiday home for our family in Ancient Korinthos, in Greece. The construction took him several years, and was (mostly) finished just before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. His dream was for the five of us to holiday there, as a family. But tragically, he never lived to see that happen. The house is still there, an empty monument to one man’s vision.
Mum and Dad hard at work. Literally building their dream home.
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The dream. With Greece’s only Hill’s Hoist.
I have a cute little blue urn on my bedside table, which holds a little bit of my Mum’s ashes and a little bit of my Dad’s ashes all mixed together. I thought that having my parents close to me when I sleep would provide me with some sense of closeness to them, like my Mum used to get from having Dad’s ashes near to her. But I was wrong. I get nothing from it, except an academic understanding that my Mum and Dad’s cremated remains are next to me when I’m in bed. I have no response to it at all, emotionally. Sometimes I’ll shake the urn, and listen to their bone fragments rattling inside. I know what’s in there, I know that it’s them, but even so, there’s no connection to who they were when they were alive. I wish there was.
Hello Mum and Dad, it’s me, Chryss.
My Dad really shaped the first 32 years of my life. His first job in Melbourne was in the inner-city suburb of Carlton. So naturally my father was a Bluebagger. Therefore I am a Bluebagger. Dad inspired my love of tennis, and I played competitively for years, even aspiring to turn professional when I was sixteen. He taught me all the tricks of how to play a solid game of backgammon. When I was 15, he taught me how to drive a manual in a rusty old Land Rover on a hilly farm with no roads. And once I’d mastered that, he took me to an abandoned industrial estate in Springvale to learn how to drive his crappy work van. The one with the dodgy clutch and the sticky column shift. And once I could drive that, I could drive anything. I’m pretty sure that the reason I love to throw epic parties (and I really do love to throw epic parties) is because I inherited my Dad’s passion for entertaining, and showing people a good time, and living large. It’s funny, what gets passed down from father to child. Being a sports fan can be one of those things. Wanting things to be just right, might be another. A house in Greece, another still. But maybe a zest for life and knowing how to dream big are the most important things a man can pass on to his daughter. Thanks Dad.
My Mum died three years ago. Saying it out loud anchors that awful event in time, crystallising exactly how long ago it happened. About a year afterwards, a certain pesky virus barge-assed its way onto the world stage, rudely grabbing time by the balls, warping and skewing it, and rendering us all collectively stranded in temporal limbo. Multiple lockdowns, bans on travel, social restrictions and endless zoom meetings all served to smudge the days together, leaving us few memory milestones with which to mark time. My Mum’s death is a pretty major milestone. And yet, because of the pandemic, I find it difficult to reconcile the time that has passed since she died with everything that has occurred since.
I have written enough about my Mum for you to know how immeasurable an impact her death has had on me. Every single day. You know some of her recipes for traditional Greek foods like tzatziki, stuffed tomatoes, my favourite meatballs with white sauce and chicken in red sauce. You know about the book she wrote, filled with herbal remedies for all sorts of common ailments and my promise to translate and publish it in English. You know all about her difficult childhood, her deep love for her husband, and her attachment to our family home. You know a little bit about what I went through when my mother died, and the grief I have experienced since.
But there are so many stories about my Mum that you don’t know. Stories of little nothings, stories of things that left a mark. Funny stories, sad stories, weird stories. When someone you love dies, your relationship stops being dynamic. No new memories are created with them, and what you’re left with is just a series of static snapshots from the past. And it’s all too easy to fall into a pattern of remembering the same curated catalogue of memories, which can then actually become your entire memory of them. I don’t want that to happen with my Mum. I want to remember as much real detail about her as I can. And so I’m reaching into the past, beyond the inadequate narrative that has already started forming. I’m reaching back into the history I shared with my family, into the day to day stories that may have felt inconsequential at the time, but which have become precious pearls to be salvaged from the past. Stories that would otherwise be in danger of fading from memory. And I would like to share a few of them here, for posterity. So that a fuller, and more colourful and textured version of my Mum can live on in the world. Even after I’m gone. These aren’t necessarily true versions of events that happened, but rather just my personal, fallible memories. And like I said, they’re only snapshots, marred by time. But these memories are my truth. And they are all that I have left.
So, this is some of what remains.
The time I dropped my bag in the middle of a busy K-mart, frozen as I watched what somehow seemed like a million tampons slowly spill out and dramatically roll across the department store floor in every direction. Wishing for the ground to open up and swallow me. Hoping, beyond hope, that no-one had seen it. Which is exactly the point at which my Mum started bellowing with laughter, bringing everyone’s attention to the errant tampons, pointing at each one as I awkwardly ran around trying to collect them all. Why Mum, why??
Or the time I fucked around with a faulty bedside lamp when I was six years old and copped a mild electric shock which threw me to the floor. Mum ran in, naked from the shower, yelling at me, while also lovingly sweeping me up in her arms to give me a comforting cuddle. And the time I was seven years old and decided to visit the lovely old lady over the fence, kind of forgetting to tell anyone, precipitating a missing persons call to the police and a neighbourhood search party. While Mum was frantic with worry, I was learning how to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the piano, leafing through old encyclopaedias and chatting with “Granny” over tea and biscuits. When a policeman eventually reunited me with Mum she enveloped me in a tight embrace, tears cascading down her face. She squeezed me so hard, and then flipped me around and smacked me just as hard on my bewildered, embarrassed butt. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. But I felt the love.
Granny’s house was just over this fence.
Burning up with a fever of 41º when I was eight years old, I remember my Mum on the phone to the doctor, carefully writing down his instructions to fill the bathtub with cold water and ice-cubes, and to plunge me into the tub every 20 minutes until my temperature dropped. We both cried as she talked me through it, her hand gently on my chest to keep me calm in my delirium.
Mum rebelliously sneaking a McDonald’s cheeseburger into the hospital when I was recovering from ear surgery when I was fifteen. I greedily scarfed the burger, basking in the glow of our conspiratorial secret. And then I threw up, everywhere. The nurses were not impressed with me, or Mum.
One night when I was a baby and Mum was heavily pregnant with my sister Mary, she heard a noise in the backyard and called the police. Dad was on the road, trucking interstate and she was always so anxious and scared when he was gone. When the cops arrived, they took one look at the bear trap she’d set up outside the back door (oh yes, I did say bear trap), turned to her incredulously and said, “Uhhh no, lady! Nooooo!!” adding that she’d be the one in trouble if a burglar was injured by the trap. She didn’t quite understand what the problem was, but she promised she wouldn’t use it again.
I’ll never forget the feeling of drama and excitement the day Mum won $1000 on a scratchie ticket. She made a grand entrance through the front door of our Elwood flat with an enormous smile on her face and four brand new, big, puffy doonas stuffed under her arms. Being relatively poor at the time, a feather duvet was the epitome of posh luxury. As a ten year old, I remember thinking, wow, so this is what it feels like to be rich!
Celebrations!
When I was transferred to the country town of Albury/Wodonga for work a few months after my Dad died, Mum decided to come with me for the first couple of weeks to keep me company and help me settle in. We developed a routine, including daily walks along the Murray river where she taught me which wild grasses were edible, and which ones to avoid. We’d cut them out of the ground with my crappy Swiss army knife, and carry them home in a plastic shopping bag to cook and eat them together, savouring the quiet comfort of each other’s company. We didn’t have to say the words but we were both desperately missing my father.
My Mum was the most accommodating person I’ve ever known. But she developed a dramatic flair for stubbornness in her later years. On our way home from that trip to Wodonga, tension started running a little high. After nearly three hours on the road, we’d just reached outer Melbourne in peak hour traffic and it was pissing down with rain. We got into a “disagreement” about the cause of my father’s lung cancer. Red flag territory. We were waiting for a traffic light to turn green, and I demanded that she admit that Dad’s history of smoking had to have contributed to his illness. She obstinately refused, citing his work with asbestos and other toxic chemicals as the main cause. Tempers flared and I insisted, declaring that I wasn’t going to continue driving until she admitted she was wrong. Obnoxiously, I pulled on the handbrake and turned the engine off for emphasis. We were parked, baby. At a busy highway intersection. In rush hour. In the rain. I knew she would be uncomfortable with this, but, unexpectedly, my mother wouldn’t budge. The light turned green and the cars behind me started going crazy, honking and beeping. My windshield wipers were no competition for the rain bucketing down in sheets, and the windows were fogging up from all the hot air in the car. I desperately wanted to prove my point but I was also starting to freak out. This wasn’t the way I had expected my little stunt to go. Cars started driving around us as we continued shouting at each other. Me shouting at her to please, please, please just admit it so that we could go. Beseeching her. And her shouting at me that she would do no such thing. Stoic. Defiant. She parked herself in the passenger seat with her arms crossed and a stony look in her eye that I’d never seen before. In the end I caved, releasing the handbrake and turning the car back on in defeat, inching forward towards the traffic lights that had cycled back to red. We sat in heavy silence for a minute, and then looked at each other and burst into laughter, falling into each other’s arms. Discovering this stubborn streak in my mother shocked, and (I’m not gonna lie) impressed, the hell out of me.
As you might be able to tell, I didn’t always have an easy relationship with my mother, and that was especially true during my adolescence. Between the ages of 15 to 23, I was an insufferable asshole to every single person in my family. When I was 18, Mum spent three months in Greece after her father died. I remember the day she came back. Mary and Pieta were jumping up and down with joy when Mum walked in the door, while I hung back, wearing “trendy” new clothes, heavy eyeliner and a big, fat attitude on my face. Too cool for fucking school. I know that my icy reception must have hurt her, but at the time I didn’t give a shit. Memories like this bring me a great deal of pain, but they still deserve to be remembered, just as much as the good memories do, because they are part of the deep and complex relationship I had with my mother.
I remember Mum’s beautiful singing voice. When she was young, she harboured a secret desire to be a professional singer, and she worshipped the popular Greek musician Marinella, closely following her career for decades. Whenever my Mum broke out in song, she would get a faraway look in her eyes. I don’t know where she went, but she owned the world when she sang. To my untrained ear, my Mum sounded just like her idol and now, whenever I listen to her favourite Marinella tracks, I get shivers. All I can hear is my mother’s voice.
A stunning head shot.
This magical song from the late seventies was one of my Mum’s favourite Marinella tunes, and we grew up listening to it. I know every single word, and hearing it now fills me with such joy and such heartbreak at the same time. Watching the video, I am struck by how similar my Mum’s fashion style was to Marinella’s. Also, that they both had asspiles of sass!!
And they say never meet your heroes. What a load of bullshit. Look at the joy on my Mum’s face when she met her idol Marinella.
Spending time in the garden with Mum during our more recent visits back home, I was pleasantly surprised to see how popular she was in the neighbourhood. All day long, people would drop by, or stop to have a chat. I had been concerned (from afar) that she was becoming too reclusive, so it helped me to worry less about her, knowing that she had a strong network of friends to keep her from getting too lonely. When Mary, Pieta and I were living at the house after Mum died, we had to tell the postman that Mum had passed away. The man handed us our packages and cried on the doorstep.
There are many memories of Mum intently leafing through the pages of a book of dreams when I was 9, 13, 17, 31 explaining to me that the snake I’d dreamt about represented something to be wary of, perhaps a person who didn’t have my best intentions in mind. Or telling Pieta that her dream of losing a tooth meant that she needed to be careful about losing something important in her life. I never really believed in these things, but I did enjoy being entertained by the mystical spirituality of it all. And I respected my Mum’s belief and conviction in the symbolism. She was also passionately interested in fortune telling, numerology and astrology. Perhaps because she wanted to believe that life could be influenced by things greater than us. That there was a chance that things could always get better, despite the odds.
The infamous and shocking morning that Judy, a family friend staying at our holiday house, brushed her teeth and notoriously spat it out in the kitchen sink, casual as you’d like. Mum nearly fell on the floor, absolutely apoplectic in disgust and horror. The incident became folklore in our family and we talked about Judy’s unforgiveable crime for years, long after we lost touch with her.
I have so many memories of my Mum’s vivacious smile from every time David and I arrived at her house in a taxi from the airport, suitcases in tow. The excitement and joy in her heart so easily expressed in her big, beautiful smile is forever etched in my memory and in my heart. Twelve times in eleven years I saw that look on her face. The flip side was how sad and deflated she would become on the day we had to leave Melbourne to return to Dubai. We’d be watching TV, waiting for our ride to the airport and I’d glance over and see Mum looking at me, quietly soaking me in, with her doleful brown eyes. Clutching onto her unspoken wishes that we could just stay, forever. I’d go and sit next to her, holding her in my arms, squeezing her hand tightly, my heart burdened with sadness and guilt. It never got any easier.
Timeless.
I’ll never forget the messages that Mum and I exchanged the day before she died. I was burning the candle at both ends in Tbilisi and WhatsApped her to conceitedly complain that I was suffering from a migraine headache. She was worried about me. Even though she was in a great deal of pain, her primary concern was the wellbeing of her daughter. I remember that so clearly. And I also remember her telling me about the change in Melbourne weather. She told me that she was cold. And a few hours later she was dead.
In the months after my Mum’s death, crushed by the weight of my grief, I struggled to remember our last day together, or the final time we said goodbye. Can you even imagine? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mother alive. All the farewells we’d shared over the years melded into a blurry melancholic montage, and I couldn’t pinpoint that one single very important moment. Over the last three years I believe I’ve accurately recreated it with the help of David and my sisters, and the messages that were sent on the family WhatsApp group that day. But I’m still not really sure. That’s the problem with death, and it’s the problem with goodbyes. Every single time you say goodbye, could be the last time. You never know which moment is going to turn from just another everyday interaction into one of the most important moments of your life.
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