Anne Hawe’s middle name was practical. And she liked simple. When she needed a new skirt, she disappeared into the sewing room. When us boys needed a smack, she whipped off her left scuff. When dad learned to drive a car, she stuck to her push-bike until skull-caps were mandated, then never rode again. In the knife and fork drawer, she kept a ten-ml spanner for the mower blades. If there was no one else, she found a ladder to do the gutters. When hubby had an affair, she stayed for her four boys. Simple.
When Anne’s mother, brother, and mother-in law fell in a heap, she took ‘em in. When her father-in-law, eldest son and husband took to their deathbeds, she nursed them at home. Simple. When her time came, she booked a pre-paid berth next to the loved ones she’d cared for and outlived. Her only remaining son was tasked with two jobs. #1… Tend the garden (sprinkle her ashes) #2… Scratch his flat head over a suitable epitaph, and post it off to the funeral man. Simple. She even found a way to amend directive #2 from the afterlife. True!! Or so it seemed.
Covid was mum’s friend at her farewell. What could be simpler than a dozen mourners sweating it out on plastic seats, sharing hankies across the requisite one-metre gap? Or the fact that the delicate aroma of pink roses in bloom was already a given at the well-grassed vetting pen, Longreach Racecourse? Simpler yet, some weeks later, her ashes came in the mail. Wrapped in a saffron satin satchel, mum commenced to ash-to-ash and gather dust on top of her old piano. I’m sure she was happy.
Four years on, I packed the urn in the old ute, and headed south of the border, it wasn’t all about mum. Near Gloucester and Kempsey, I caught up with old friends. At Armidale, I took some pics of the houses we rented, not much changed since ’68! At Tamworth, I shifted into first along the Manilla Road, and peered through the trees for sight of the place where my younger brother gassed himself in his Kingswood sedan.
At Wingham cemetery, I tugged at the drawstring and pried the top off the urn. Nowadays, they’re plastic. Of course. Not that I noticed or cared a hoot. For just then, a biting gust caught and carried aloft a plume of greyish powder, and burned at misty eyes. To think I was last man standing before a simple headstone that celebrated five out of a family of six. Real men don’t carry hankies, not when a sleeve will do. But they do cry. And the best thing when they do? Tend the garden, just like she said. Simple. Then, hit the pub.
Before I did, I saved the dregs (a good third by any measure) to make another nice grey cloud at the far end of the adjoining property. Sounds wacko, and I’m sure the new occupants of Mum and Dad’s old digs agreed if they stood at the kitchen window. But it was where she loved to walk amongst the grey gums with Max, their pet bully. And smile at her own half-hearted admonishments for the times when he shat and cocked a leg on the tombstones across the road.
Outside Wingham Hotel, Mum’s plastic urn made a hollow ker-lunk at the bottom of an empty wheelie-bin. I’m sure she’d approve, provided it was labelled recycle. The satchel was about to follow, until I felt and heard a papery rustle of something it the depths. With shaking hands, I reached inside for my mother’s second amendment.
At the bar, I savoured the slow burn of OP rum, and tasted the mid-day bonhomie. The note was simple; six handwritten words in blue biro on a folded scrap of A5. ‘Steve,’ it said ‘… put me anywhere – love, Mum.’ Perhaps she read about the hike at the bowsers before she turned her attention to the daily cryptic. Perhaps she simply changed her mind. Symbolism never did much for her anyway. Whatever. Speculation vanished when the old man beside me tapped me on wrist. ‘Penny f’y thoughts young fella,’ he slurred, staring through rheumy eyes. I scribbled Mum’s epitaph beneath her second amendment, and slid it along the bar to him. ‘Got that part right,’ I said ‘… donchareckon?’.
OUR MOTHER, OUR ROCK. A SIMPLE LIFE, SHE SIMPLY CARED.
I reckon I did.
Steve Hawe 