Eloquent Silence (27 page)

‘She ignored this, not realizing the impact that continuing would have, smiled and added a few more words,

“You know you’re all welcome...”

‘Her son opened fire on her, saying, “We all have busy lives and we don’t have time to call in for cups of tea and all that you’re talking about. Don’t expect us to come. Our weekends are our own. We’ve got other things to do and people to see.”

‘She said she was astonished and burst into tears and was comforted by some of the others. The sound of his voice made her dizzy with hurt, she said. He seemed to be enraged. The thought that she might expect him and his family to visit just seemed to antagonize him beyond belief. They left as soon as she pulled herself together. On the way home she got a text message from him apologizing. But she remains devastated.’

Robyn tapped distractedly with her small, flat feet, collecting her thoughts before restacking her belongings into the basket of her walking frame, simply for something to do to take her mind off her sadness.

Carmel’s face crumbled and she reached for a tissue in her cardigan pocket, using it to wipe her mist-filled eyes. She had gray, wavy hair and kind gray eyes.

‘I don’t know why things are the way they are. I loved my babies, then children to the greatest degree. Did everything I could to protect them from the monsters of the world, gave them love and as much of the world’s goods as I could manage as a single mother.

‘When they were young I was a positive lioness coming out in their defense if other children or teachers bullied them, and even the nun who taught the girls music and smacked them on the knuckles with a ruler. People who openly caused them to feel bullied or lost or wrongly challenged. Later when my daughter was working, I fronted up to a superior in her job in the bank who was giving her a hard time. I loved my children passionately and was in their corner every step of the way. They don’t seem to be in mine any more.

‘Without them in my life, it doesn’t seem to have much structure. My dear old mother always said that nobody had the power to hurt you like family does. They know your weak points and where to strike to get the most mileage out of what they’re doing,’ she finished and twisted her hands together to stop them from shaking.

‘The aged are amongst the most vulnerable in society, as we all know,’ agreed Christine. ‘They’re a soft target, easy to get to and give a blast that can make the younger generation feel so much better. They can get insulted with their oldies over some real or supposed matter, rip into them and give them a rev. Straight away they can feel better and go on their way rejoicing. It’s especially easy to detonate most old women. Blow them out of the water. Kaboom! They don’t have much of a defense system left after living out their lives so they’re really easy to shatter.’

‘Mine believe that by working for a wage in caring for the disabled and aged, that it’s giving back to society. When I was younger I used to volunteer for associations like Lifeline and St. Vincent De Paul, as well as delivering Meals on Wheels for years all free, gratis and for nothing. That was what I thought giving back to society was. Volunteering your time for no reward except out of the goodness of your heart to help those needier than yourself,’ Paula added. She looked around the table at her friends who shrugged, at a loss to follow the thinking of today’s generation.’

‘I know I’ve passed my use-by date,’ Annette said. ‘It happened around the time I lost all my investments in the GFC. Not noticeably at first, but subtly over the following few years. I feel that everything I touch turns sour. My husband of twenty years doesn’t seem to think a lot of me.  If he wants to discuss anything of importance he does it with his children or his brothers.’

‘I think my mother knew better than I did that I was in for a lonely old age,’ said Claudia. ‘She used to urge me to remarry to have company and someone to care for me when she was no longer around for me to confide in and share time with.’

‘I often think of that old adage that says the measure of a person’s love for you is how much they still love you when you are of no further use to them in any way. You’re just still going on living but all you can do is love them. Unfortunately, it often seems that once we become relatively useless we lose our appeal and it’s simply too much trouble to go on loving us. Seems like no reason left to care,’ Annette finished sadly. ‘What’s that old saying about “My son’s my son till he takes a wife, but my daughter’s my daughter the whole of her life”?’

‘Perhaps that was so about daughters once,’ said Claudia. ‘All things have changed with the present generation.’

‘I live near a bypass that runs at the back of our little country town,’ said Veronica. ‘Two of my grandsons travel back and forth along the highway regularly but would never take the small side trip into town to come around to the house for a few minutes. Nor do their parents when they go out west to visit them.

‘My children all live within half an hour of me but no-one ever comes to my door. “Dawson is too far away,” they say. ‘You’d think it was on the other side of the planet, but it’s nothing for them to drive hundreds of miles for a concert or to camp for a weekend. Or to go to any kind of gathering that takes their fancy but not even a phone call to me.’

Christine gave a little laugh that she hoped didn’t sound too disillusioned. Something on the edge of distress looked out of her eyes before she dropped her gaze to the ground, her color rising.

‘One of my daughters is moving to a city one hundred miles away in the foreseeable future and says, “When I’m retired and living a hundred miles away I’ll see more of you than I do now. But I’ll be working for as long as I can.” To me it doesn’t figure. I think to myself, In a pig’s eye, not wishing to be picky or anything but I hardly see or hear from her now. How can one hundred miles make any difference to that? Improve that? I’ll probably be dead by the time she retires, anyway.

‘Doesn’t it make you want to cry? She can’t travel the few miles to my house now so how will she manage one hundred? I say nothing. What can you say? Her children have moved there and it’s where her heart lies. Not with me.’

‘My, doesn’t this sound like a pity party?’ Robyn asked her friends. Her voice was mild but her eyes had gone flat with sadness. ‘I loved my children and grandchildren and thought I would always have them close, if not physically, then at least emotionally. But I’m old now and they have virtually removed themselves from me.

‘They are really preoccupied with trying to keep what they are doing a secret from me in case I want to be involved in it. Might say I’d like to come too, or to do that, too.’ She gave a tired, patient smile, gazing at each of her friends in turn, a helpless, unbelieving look of sad bewilderment.

Then she laughed out loud and eventually her friends joined in, the sounds echoing around the club as though they were really laughing at jokes. None of what they were saying was in the least funny to them but they suddenly felt uplifted from the knowledge that they had friends who understood how isolated they were and who were traveling down a similar road.

‘You know,’ Paula continued thoughtfully, ‘The whole picture was so different with my own mother. We loved and trusted each other but she used to go into fits of anger with me that were beyond my comprehension. She used to go into furious bouts of temper for reasons that I have never understood over things I couldn’t follow. She was a fairly religious person and I bought her a book of prayers and meditation. It was called “Groping Godwards.” She was so angry and bitter that I should think that she was groping towards anything at all, even God. Furious with me and I really had meant well.

‘Another time she was doing a load of washing as I left for work and I asked her if she would pop my ugg boots through the machine. They were just ankle boots, no big drama, I thought. She sulked with me for days over that.

‘Earlier in her life she was a nurse and she told me about the married nursing sister she did a lot of night-shifts with. The sister was in love with a paraplegic and used to closet herself in the room with this man by the hour during night shifts. I was studying anatomy and physiology at the time and made the simple remark that these paraplegic men can often get an erection.

‘She flew into a rage with me over statement. I was puzzled. Still am. She had these unaccountable, (to me), bursts of anger with me all my life but I didn’t hold it against her, not like my children hold the slightest thing against me for months. My mother said some very hurtful things to me over the years but I never resented her for it, forgiving her in a trice. But no one forgives me anything. An unfortunate comment or slip of the tongue is held against me for years.

‘All my life I loved my mother so much that I hardly knew where she left off and I began. It was imperative for me to speak to her each day if at all possible. Even when she was in care in the nursing home I had to ring her every day from wherever I was on holidays or shopping or whatever. Maybe all I’d get in reply was gibberish or silence or she’d put the phone down and walk away but I had the satisfaction of knowing she had heard my voice and I had been in contact with her.

‘In contrast to two of my children who never ring me or only ring me once in a blue moon. One rings me regularly but does not feel obliged as I did to speak to my mother with love. I tried to bring them all up to be more independent than I was but unfortunately I seem to have gone to the other extreme and they don’t give a rat’s, as the proverbial saying goes. In the course of trying not to tie them to my apron strings I have virtually lost them.’

She racked her brains trying to remember when any of her children or grandchildren last rang her but had to shake her head and give up. There was an ache behind her eyes that had nothing to do with eye strain and everything to do with sadness.

Having started to confide in her friends she seemed to have the need to carry on.

‘I know my mother and this daughter of mine, Hilary, used to talk about me behind my back as whenever I arrived into the house after work and that daughter was there, Mum couldn’t raise her eyes to meet mine when Hilary was around. My mother was embarrassed but I’m sure the content of the conversation would have come from Hilary’s judgment of me.

‘My mother was getting further and further into dementia by this time and I don’t know what Hilary was trying to achieve by trying to have a disruptive influence between me and my mother. She certainly wouldn’t want to have taken over the constant care of her grandmother, my Mum’s care, working full time as she was and having four children and a rather wayward husband. Mum had dementia pretty severely and I was caring for her when Hilary had stepped in to keep her company while I was out shopping.

‘Mind you, she never looked after Mum while I had to go away for appointments. Busily working, of course. However, there was an interlude when she took Mum to her house while I went away camping with the rest of the family for a few days. My mother was so pleased to see me come home as she said she couldn’t bear the fighting between Hilary and her husband. That it was so far from a peaceful atmosphere as to be utterly distressing.

‘There was actually a time when she and her then fiancé took Mum to the coast for a few days. Mum was so miserable she rang up and asked to brought home so my son and his wife went to collect her. Mum said Hilary had ignored her for the previous days and she couldn’t bear it. Yet Hilary wanted to be all in all to my mother but her unfortunate nature wouldn’t permit this. Hilary has always been intimidating and hot-tempered and unpredictable. I guess my mother didn’t really know how to handle her but tried to cope with her difficult nature by being unfailingly loving and tolerant with her.

‘So that was the end of the short breaks away for Mum with Hilary at that time. People with dementia need a calm environment which was not provided for Mum. But I know she slandered me to my mother which achieved nothing but distress for both of us. Mum didn’t know how to look at me when I arrived home, as I said. I never asked Mum what was said as she probably wouldn’t have remembered anyway and it would only have troubled her to try to recall. I was her only child and she adored me so what was Hilary trying to achieve beyond spite?’

Paula looked from one to another of her friends. If she could not understand her daughter how could the other women? But they all nodded and smiled in sympathy with Paula whom they were sure would have done her best to cope with her ageing mother in her dementia.

‘I had this conversation with my daughter Jessica the other day,’ Claudia remarked when they had all finished smiling and shaking their heads at the mystery of it all. Her salt and pepper hair was caught back in a thick ponytail, her face was flushed and her eyes very bright.

‘A woman stopped me in a shop, a complete stranger, and asked if I go to a certain gym in town. I said, “No but I know my daughter goes there.” The woman was certain it was me even though I assured her it wasn’t. She even went so far as to keep telling me that it
was
me.’

They all laughed at the concept of her not knowing where she went when out of doors.

‘I repeated the exchange to my daughter and she was obviously mortified at being thought so much like me. “What?” she said. “You’re joking?” That stung me. All my life from the time I hit my twenties, people have told me how much I resemble my mother and I have never been in the least mortified. Makes me wonder how ugly I am or how much more beautiful my daughter thinks she is.’ Claudia shook her bewildered head. ‘Am I so ugly? She must think I am.’

‘Terrifyingly ugly,’ replied Robyn and they all howled with laughter.

‘You’d frighten small children in their homes and horses in the street,’ Carmel confirmed to peals of hilarity.

‘And the neighborhood dogs, too,’ giggled Annette, the general jocularity causing her bottom teeth to lose a little traction which added further to the merriment. ‘Not to mention rickety old men on their last legs.’

‘Especially by moonlight,’ Robyn added to more howls of laughter.

‘
Formidable,’
Christine said in her best French accent.