Page 19 - Gwen Landsberry - Memories Memento for Family

Back to our cosy cottage at Junee and a relax and
read with a glass of Rose – until it got too cold
outside.

Mum was in bed early. A big few days.
Back home tomorrow.

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9 October 2011
It’s late. I put my book down, turn the lights off, climb up and into the big four poster in the cottage
where we are staying, pull the doona tight around me like a cocoon, and listen to my Mum’s gentle
breath. I want to be like this, next to her, when her last breath has been breathed, just to touch the
skin I have touched since birth, to feel it one more time before it becomes cold and unyielding.

I reach over and place my hand on Mum’s, feeling knobbly knuckles and broad hands that can still
swing a mattock and hold a shovel to keep her garden growing, and count the ticks and tocks of the
big old clock passing time.

10 October 2011

Four fabulous days in Junee and now we’re homeward bound. The landscape rushes by and we two
are encapsulated. Strobe-like images of pastoral scenes flash past, framed by railway carriage
windows. I feel our minutes flashing by too. I want to gather them all up, stop them running so fast
toward empty, toward no time left. Every word she says or repeats, every phrase and memory, a
movement of a fine strong hand, a caring word from kind lips I know so well. The train is our Tardiis,
with everything moving in slow motion and me picking up the words that she has dropped to hold
them to my heart, or to my ear like a seashell just to hear her voice again. And she, listening to my
dreams and hopes with always-Mum encouragement and interest. ‘Really darling?’ she will say and
then I talk some more, and she always believes me; always believes in me. chuggeda chuggeda
sideways squeak creak bouncing up and down chuggeda chuggeda clunk clank squeak squeal
rocking side to side. Day fades to night and we two could be anywhere in the world, cocooned in
shawls and scarves with lights streaking striping cutting the sapphire night into pieces. Go on
forever. We are here. We are now. Go on forever in this place where there is no need to draw
hands on a clock or know what season it is or even to remember one’s own name.

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