Your clock's still ticking but time stands still here.
The dressing table tells your story - favourite cards; faded photographs; symbols of your faith; dried flowers from wedding bouquets; sentimental gifts and memories of yesterdays.
Outside, the birds still flock to the garden you loved. They wake me early.
On a lemon tree branch, a dove sits singing your song. A bittersweet goodbye.
The phone just rang. My sister was sobbing “She’s gone”. My grandmother had just died. Granny made chicken soup to comfort us and ward off the cold...I was making chicken soup when I took the call.
Mabel Elizabeth Sewell was an amazing woman who fought valiantly to live in the face of myriad illnesses that destroyed her body but left her mind and wit intact to the end. But it was time for the suffering to stop in her 90th year.
I'm crying tears of grief but also tears of relief. The grief is for my loss and the pain I watched her endure this week while sitting at her bedside. The relief is in her liberation from bodily struggle and the peace her spirit will now find.
She was like a second mother to me and my shelter in fierce storms. As a little girl, I climbed through the hole in the fence that separated our houses when I was unhappy or in need of a treat. As a teenager, her home was a refuge for my mother, sister and I when we sought escape from my violent stepfather. Whenever we landed on Granny's doorstep in search of safety, she would invite us in, envelop us in protective arms and share her strength - she had ample for all of us.
Grandma was comfort food and cosy flannelette sheets, favourite old books you never tire of reading, birds on the windowsill and a garden full of roses. Her home always smelled of baked dinners and pumpkin scones and I don’t ever remember feeling cold there.
She lived for her family and cared for her chronically ill husband with devotion and loyalty unsurpassed in my experience. Grandad died 22 years ago and she missed him terribly but she loved life too much to rush to join him.
Her home wasn’t her entire life: she had a rich social and work life…volunteering tirelessly for the Royal Blind Society and working as a Wollongong hospital aid known as a ‘mauve lady’ – her favourite colour. Her hospital job involved making patients and their carers as comfortable as possible…running errands, lending an ear and making cups of tea. Those years of devotion to others were repaid ten-fold in recent years by my mother who selflessly tended to her every need, but dependency caused by physical limitations didn't come easily to Grandma.
Grandma grew up in a tiny dairy farming town called Berry on the NSW South Coast and only left these shores once, on a trek to Papua New Guinea with Grandad to share his wartime experiences on the Kokoda Trail, but she was worldly-wise.
Pragmatic, diligent and thrifty, she was also the first environmentalist I knew – she was still recycling Alfoil and reusing tea bags up until a few months before her death. Her sharp wit and delight in laughter sustained her and kept the rest of us amused…and amazed. Even on her deathbed she was making quips during moments of clarity.
She had the spirit of a wartime heroine – plucky, opinionated, stubborn and courageous she was determined not to be beaten. She was so feisty she even staved off death which the doctors predicted would come much sooner than it did. She fought fiercely against so many illnesses – her biggest enemies being the vascular disease that long ago robbed her of her mobility and the cancer which she battled for 14 years.
She sucked joy out of life with every breath and tried courageously to mask the pain. But it was time for her to go…to join Grandad who she still missed so much two decades after he made his own journey to heaven.
And there she’ll wait for the rest of us…pain-free; making cups of tea; doing crossword puzzles and going for brisk walks with Grandad through gardens…picking roses without fear of thorns.
Musical Dedication: Longtime Traveller by The Wailin' Jennys Grandma