They Left Us Everything

by Plum Johnson

  What I don’t tell them is that the great disadvantage of a limelight at the end of the nineteenth century was that it required the constant attention of an individual operator who had to keep adjusting the block of calcium as it burned, while simultaneously tending to the jets of oxygen and hydrogen that fuelled it—exactly like the jobs we held, tending to Mum. She got her oxygen from people, which is perhaps how she lived so long when deprived of the real thing.

  After I speak, Chris gives the homily and other family members take their turn, telling more funny stories about life with Mum. These are interspersed with hymns: Mum’s Southern favourites, like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Carter has sent his story by email, which Virginia reads in his absence, and Jessica gives a reading from “The King’s Christmas Message” of 1939.

  By the time we’re finished, people are saying they’ve never heard so much laughter in a church. As we file out through the side door, I pass two elderly women speaking to the minister.

  “That’s exactly the kind of funeral I want!” says one of the women.

  The minister chuckles. “To have that kind of funeral, you have to have lived that kind of life.” Then he turns to me, shaking his head at a memory. “The first time I met your mother, I had a headache. And you remember what she did? She made me hold a banana peel on my forehead until it went away!”

  “Did your headache go away?”

  “I guess it did … you don’t see any banana peel, do you?”

  After the service, friends are gathering back at the house for the reception and a friend of my ex-husband’s, Paul, is waiting in the downstairs hall. I pass by and he touches my elbow.

  “Was your mother Jewish?” he asks me.

  “No—why?”

  He waves his arm in front of the bookcase. “Because there are so many Jewish artifacts here.”

  I explain that my mother was deeply religious. Although she was raised Episcopalian, she valued independent thinkers and liked to be intellectually stimulated, so she went to wherever the good preachers were. She didn’t care whether they were in a Roman Catholic church, a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist temple, a Jewish synagogue, or a Baptist revival tent; as long as a speaker had something interesting to say, Mum would go and listen. She’d made pilgrimages to Jerusalem several times and brought back many souvenirs, including the plate with the Hebrew blessing, SHALOM!, that Paul was looking at now. Mum loved the fact that the word shalom meant so many different things—not just peace, but hello and goodbye and harmony and completeness. She said Asian cultures had namaste, but North Americans didn’t have a word like it.

  I show Paul a framed, casual snapshot of Bishop Tutu and, on the shelf above it, Mum’s photo of the Dalai Lama, but he’s fixated on Mum’s clay figurine of a Jewish rabbi, looking like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof.

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying, but if you’re getting rid of stuff and nobody wants this, I’d love to have it.”

  I make a mental note, and several months later it’s bubblewrapped and delivered to Paul. Mum would be thrilled that her souvenir found a proper Jewish home.

  That evening, a few stragglers are still milling about the living room and I’m hearing stories I’ve never heard before. A middle-aged man whom I haven’t seen in decades—one of the young boys who had emigrated with his mother from England and temporarily lived with us in the 1950s—is telling me how he finally met his father for the first time: “After my mother died, your mum said to me, ‘Now you can find your father. Here’s what I know about him. Look there—don’t wait. Do it now!’ Because of your mum, I got to know my father just before he died.”

  When everyone leaves, the dining-room table is a sad mess of half-filled glasses, crumpled paper napkins, empty plates, and crumbs. Mum’s earrings are littered around the ice cube trays we’d taken from her jewellery drawer to use as the centrepiece. Sambo is comatose under the table. There are dozens of floral bouquets—some on standing easels—sent home from the church. Most of the sympathy cards have become detached from the bouquets so we don’t know who sent them.

  The following day, I receive a telephone call of condolence from Elisabeth—my older cousin in England.

  “How are you feeling,” she asks, “now that you’ve joined the rest of us with our backs to the wall?”

  I don’t like this implication that I’ve moved up a notch— into the line of fire—just because, like Elisabeth, both my parents have died. But I understand her growing feelings of mortality. It happens to all of us as we age. Death, like decline, is inevitable, but to me its timing and circumstances have always seemed random, not exclusively hierarchical, and not necessarily something to be feared.

  Life is short, as we learned from the early culling that took our brother Sandy, but it can also be long. Some might say too long. Mum has died in her ninety-third year with her mind still intact, but Dad died at age ninety-two having been supposedly saved in his late seventies by a triple bypass, only to live the last twelve years in the fog of dementia. Perhaps death isn’t the ultimate tragedy.

  After Mum died, we received dozens of letters of condolences from women I barely knew—women my age who’d been mentored by Mum, who looked up to her as an “Other Mother.” I knew she had these relationships—Mum had always taught me the importance of having friends of all ages—but the contents of the letters from her “Other Daughters” filled me with remorse. They didn’t describe the forceful mother I had been experiencing for the past twenty years—the one who invaded my privacy, demanded I call her every few hours, who seemed judgmental and disapproving of my choices—they described an Other Mother who was loving and wise, confident and charming, admirable and true. They described a woman I wished I had known.

  Or perhaps a mother I had pushed away. A mother I just needed to remember—someone who had been there all along.

  PART II

  Inheritance

  Other Mothers

  In many ways, Mum was the ideal mother for any young woman transitioning from the conservative post-war years to the liberated sixties. She was a feminist at heart. But although I inherited many of her attitudes, I stayed in her shadow, observing. I noticed the close friendships she forged with young and old alike, from all walks of life. I saw how the exchange of new ideas fed her curiosity, kept her youthful and broad-minded, and I understood that we can guide and be guided at the same time, but when she tried to mentor me, our mother– daughter relationship complicated things. It’s hard to accept guidance when you’re trying to break away. So, just as she inherited Other Daughters, I inherited Other Mothers. One thing I learned for sure is that we can all use more than one mother … and more than one daughter. It keeps us sane.

  One of my Other Mothers is a sculptor named Pat, who lives near me in the city. Over the years she and I have developed a deep relationship. Pat and I frequently have morning coffee together, buying cappuccino and almond croissants at a small café and crossing the streetcar tracks to sit on a bench in the leafy park nearby. Sometimes we meet for a pasta dinner at a restaurant around the corner. Often I simply drop in—the door to Pat’s house is always open. It’s a restored Victorian workman’s cottage, and in summer the oversized French doors in her living room are thrown open to a walled-in courtyard. Wisteria blooms overhang a tiny pergola in the corner; they weave and drip like giant grapes, shading a small tea table. Blowsy pink peonies the size of salad plates mingle along the fence with orange lilies, climbing roses, and purple irises. Pat’s sculptures settle into the greenery like silent, meditating goddesses. It reminds me of Findhorn—that Scottish microclimate of positive energy where every plant explodes to double its normal size as if by magic.

  Even in the middle of winter, when Pat’s French doors are closed, bright sunlight still glances off the high-ceilinged walls and infuses the room. Her indoor furniture is the same as her outdoor furniture—lacy white wrought iron, the tables glasstopped—bringing the effect of her airy garden insi
de. Vases of fresh-cut flowers are everywhere.

  This morning I’ve made a trip into the city to see her. I holler her name, kicking off my boots, and she emerges from her backroom art studio, her short, steel-grey hair streaked with alabaster dust. She’s wearing an old shirt over stylish clothes. Large silver links loop around her neck and a bold copper cuff encircles one wrist. She puts down her chisel.

  “What a delightful surprise!” she exclaims. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

  I hear the tick-tick-tick as her gas stove ignites and she puts the kettle on. I’ve brought some pastries in a brown paper bag. She hurries them onto a white paper doily on a pretty scalloped plate, setting cups on a wicker tray. Small paper luncheon napkins are thin as tissue, printed with roses. Nothing escapes her artist’s eye.

  For years, Pat has been helping me deal with my relationship with Mum. I know she had a similar struggle with her own mother and I crave her hard-won insights. I feel as if I can tell Pat anything. Even though we’re twenty-six years apart, I feel no age difference when I’m with her—I feel completely understood.

  “I hate to tell you, dear,” Pat says with a laugh, “but we all deal with our mothers until the day we die!”

  Pat should know. Even though she recently turned ninety, her own mother lived much longer and her aunt lived to a hundred and one. Longevity is obviously in her genes.

  Pat’s second career began at the age of seventy-seven when she gave up painting to become a stone carver. When she found this cottage she was a widow in her eighties, an age when most people would have moved into a retirement home, but Pat’s only difficulty had been lifting blocks of fifty-pound stone up to a second-floor studio. All she felt she needed was a place with no stairs.

  She hates Canadian winters and is leaving soon for a month of carving in Mexico. She’s worried about tripping on the cobblestones of San Miguel de Allende, but she’s looking forward to the courtyard at the Instituto where she can chisel her block of stone outside in the sun. She’s taking her new iPad with her so that she can keep in touch via email.

  I have four of Pat’s sculptures in my living room. Most are mother–child figures, but the largest piece is a two-foottall abstract, reminiscent of works by the late British sculptor Barbara Hepworth. It’s a flowing, organic form that looks like a pear split open—womb-like—evoking the mystery of life’s beginning. The alabaster is polished smooth; in some places it’s so thin it’s translucent. It sits on the ledge of my living-room window, where light pours in, illuminating it from behind.

  I’ve noticed that many female artists—as they grow older and find their voice—become more abstract in their work, and Pat and I debate the meaning of this.

  “The sculptures I like best haven’t really been done by me,” Pat says, and tells me that these pieces flow through her, coming from a higher universal place: the sacred place of the divine. These are the shapes that emerge from the stone when she gets out of the way.

  I’ve experienced this energy a few times myself during times of heightened creativity. I’ve always called it “My Street of Green Lights”—when everything flows and there are no roadblocks. I’m merely a conduit for something that is meant to be. The results are astonishing, even awe-inspiring. Our hands haven’t done the work; they’ve only been borrowed— it’s the humility of being a midwife.

  The theme of mother and child runs constantly through Pat’s sculptures—she has lost two of her four children, and I can ask her questions about grieving that I wouldn’t have dared to ask Mum. A lifelong study of Jung has helped Pat transform her tragedies into art, particularly through the interpretation of dreams. Wombs are the provenance of women, to be carried, protected, and celebrated—lamented, and worked out. She tells me that Jung combined spirituality with religion to interpret ancient symbols. I have never studied Jung. Suddenly it seems urgent that I learn more. I want her to help me.

  I describe to Pat a recurring dream I’ve had, concerning Mum’s house. I’m conflicted about staying on there, even though I told the boys I would. In childhood that house was my paradise. As Mum aged, it felt more like a trap. Now that I’ve moved out there, am I taking a step forward or a step back? I don’t want to get stuck there. What will it feel like to be alone for so long?

  “When you feel closer to yourself,” she says, “you’re closer to the divine. Then you can deal with your monsters consciously, without having them destroy you.”

  Pat urges me to stay with myself. “Some things you can’t do in a collective,” she says. “We all have a secret life—something we work through creatively, through art—we don’t have to share it.”

  Pat knows that I’ve been struggling to understand not only my relationship to Mum, but what this ancestral home means to me. I sense that it, too, is womb-like, this container—the source of all my happiness and unhappiness, the two inextricably intertwined, to be understood if at all by the untangling of it. But what is my unfinished business there, my purpose? What will I find?

  “Don’t fight it,” Pat tells me. “It’s where you’re meant to be.”

  Unpacking the Past

  It’s been four weeks since Mum died and I’m knee deep in pocket litter. Each piece is a depth charge exploding a memory.

  In a trunk I find an old Langley’s Dry Cleaner’s receipt crumpled into the pocket of Mum’s Chinese dressing gown. Suddenly, it’s 1953 and I’m seven years old again. Dad’s in the shower, late for work. Mum stands in her dressing room, opens her coin purse, hands me thirty cents.

  “Quick!” she says. “Run up to Langley’s and get your father’s shirts!”

  I stare in disbelief at the old receipt. How could it still be here after all these years? Did she never wear the dressing gown again after that? Did shirts really cost only ten cents each to wash and iron back then?

  From Mum’s winter coats hanging in the mudroom I empty the pockets of baggies, chunks of doggie biscuits, Kleenex, her handwritten grocery lists, a key, chewing gum, a ping-pong ball, red lipstick, and more and more Kleenex.

  Pocket litter turns out to be ground zero, the debris left behind that no thrift store will take: small mounds of ash, yet mountains to climb, for me. We are the sum of our habits, and this is the proof of my mother—the Mum I once loved but can no longer recall. I start to sob.

  Several of my friends in Toronto offer to help me clear out the house, and at first I decline. Many are in the same situation I am. Why should they have to inherit my work on top of their own? But it’s exactly this shared experience that motivates their generosity; they understand what I’m facing. And so I change my mind. I accept their help, gratefully. They tell me that the internal, emotional work will be mine alone and it will be onerous enough.

  Lesley offers to help with the culling of Mum’s clothes. Lesley is a pixie—petite and full of empathy. She’s a well-known illustrator, an acute observer of the human condition, and her whimsical drawings vibrate with tart humour. She and I have often helped critique each other’s professional work and have taken long walks to critique our parents as well. She recently entered the caretaking mode with her own mother, so she understands the demands, but she shows more compassion than I do.

  She drives out from Toronto, and we stuff Mum’s sweaters— forty-three nearly identical red ones—into garbage bags and stack them by the front door for the thrift store to pick up. We do the same with dozens of navy blue and black elastic-waist polyester trousers. I grimace at the thought that my children will one day be doing the same for me.

  We wade through the sloppy tangle of Mum’s handbags and empty them of tortoiseshell combs, theatre programs, compacts, and mints. I try not to succumb to the memories— when and where Mum used each one—but when I find her black pigskin change purse from the 1950s, I get mugged. Guilt is seared into my six-year-old brain. Even the tips of my fingers recall the feel of its two metal prongs when I pried them open to steal a nickel.

  “Aren’t mothers interesting?” says Lesley as she picks
up a lime-green clutch bag from the 1960s. “We cling to that last gasp of being loved by them. Giving that up means growing up.” She stuffs it into the open garbage bag. “Time to let the old girl go.”

  When I get to Mum’s mahogany dresser, I can’t bear to clear it. Her one tube of red lipstick, white rat-tail comb, and small, black-strapped Timex lie scattered on the white linen runner amidst emery boards, nail scissors, and the monogrammed silver dresser set inherited from her mother. The fat red tomato pincushion bristles with all her safety pins and brooches. Silver frames, large and small, hold black-and-white family photographs. In 1991, when my brother Sandy died of cancer at age forty-two, Mum had flooded most of the frames with overlapping pictures of him—so there is Sandy in his pram, Sandy on Grandmother’s lap, Sandy in his cadet uniform, Sandy riding a camel in Egypt, Sandy skiing with Dad.

  Sandy was an elegant, courtly, highly principled young man. He’d spent his life as a banker overseas, first in London, then in Hong Kong (his birthplace), and later in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. When he developed a rare form of cancer called fibrous histeocytoma, he refused the quarter-section amputation offered at Princess Margaret Hospital—“I’ll look like Lord Nelson without his ship,” he said—and we brought him home to die.

  Sandy’s subsequent nine-month period of palliative care rocked our family to its core, even as it stretched out to feel like a well-choreographed ballet with an inevitable ending that we tried to delay. Using June Callwood’s book Twelve Weeks in Spring as our inspirational guide, we transformed his old bedroom in the back of the house into a hospital room; while he could still walk, we helped him downstairs and laid him on a chaise on the verandah. As winter progressed and his tumour grew, he spent more and more time upstairs in his bed. Robin moved home, promising to stay “for as long as it takes,” and Victor and I shared round-the-clock nursing shifts with him. Chris flew in whenever he could.