The Sins of the Mother

By Ellen Tipping

It was her fathers funeral. Fionas son, Luke, with insight and eloquence, captured the exuberant essence of the man. Edward arrived late and stood anxiously at the back, his eyes locked on Luke as he spoke. His timing had been exquisite, painfully and tragically so. He left abruptly without speaking to the assembled family and friends. Who was this man? Why had he come?

Fiona was adjusting to a very different life in retirement. She was engaged with both ends of the age spectrum, reviving old friendships, and exercising. Ah, Procol Harums A Whiter Shade of Pale. It reminded her of Teddy. She sat down on the park bench and took off her headphones, puffing slightly. The sun had come out. Teddy had taken a photograph of the three of them here under this beautiful elm. He had set up the camera on a tripod a few feet from where they sat on a rug with little Sophie. They were both looking up at the camera, smiling with infinite calm.

Increasingly dismayed by her sons distance and disdain and haunted by the past, Fiona had an imminent sense of her own mortality and a desperate need for resolution with her beloved son. The Sins of the Mother explores the fragility and complexity of family relationships. It is about the helplessness, confusion, and anger of old age. It is about a young childs unmediated experience of, and response to, his world. It is about regret and the resurrection of the past. It is about the pain of separation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543405484

Ellen Tipping

Ellen Tipping is a psychologist. Literature and its illumination of human behaviour and relationships are lifelong passions. Hence, after years of policy-related research in health and education, she started writing fiction, which aims to do just that.

Book preview

PART 1

THE FUNERAL

‘W e have come together to thank God for the life of Henry, to mourn and honour him, and to lay to rest his mortal body, and to support one another in grief. Let us pray… I am the resurrection and the life says the Lord…’

Edward slipped in quietly and stood by the door, anxiously scanning the gathered family and friends, their heads bowed in prayer.

‘I now invite Henry’s grandson, Luke, to give the eulogy.’

Luke walked to the podium, stood silently organising his notes, and then raised his head, his concentration momentarily broken when he caught sight of the tall stranger at the back.

Edward’s eyes locked on Luke. God, this boy – this young man – could have been me thirty years ago – the same swept back dark hair, square jaw, same height and build . . .

Luke’s gaze passed over the assembled group. He spoke of his grandfather’s relationship with his mother, Luke’s great grandmother, and how she had exhorted him as a teenager to ‘play a fair game son’, which he had done all his life; he spoke of his grandfather’s courage under fire during the war; he spoke of his devotion to, and unstinting care, for his ailing wife in her final years, and his grandfather’s shared happiness late in life with Karen, his second wife. Then, with a gentle glance at his mother, Luke spoke of his grandfather’s passion for his two daughters; and, voice breaking with emotion, he spoke of the love and joy Henry shared with his grandchildren. Even some of the men in Luke’s mesmerized audience were moved to tears, including Edward who had not known this man.

Jesus, what am I doing? I can’t. I can’t do it. Edward’s timing had been exquisite, painfully… tragically so. He turned abruptly, slipped quietly out the door, walked briskly to his rented car, got in, and stared blankly at the dashboard. His racing heart slowly subsided, his equilibrium gradually returning with the mundane rumble of traffic. Just go for fuck’s sake. Forget it. He turned the key in the ignition, flicked the turn indicator and glanced in the rear vision mirror.

‘…rest in peace and rise in glory, in Jesus name. Amen.’

The coffin - escorted by the grandchildren - was wheeled down the aisle and out of the chapel into the silver glare of a winter sun at noon. Holding David’s arm, Fiona followed, greeting friends and neighbours rising from pews on either side. Outside she hugged her sister, Margie. But all she could think of was her son’s eloquence and insight; how he set the stages of her father’s life within a sentient evocation of that period in time; how he used her father’s expressions to capture the exuberant essence of the man; how Luke understood the basis of her father’s equanimity in a way that she herself had only recently seen: Henry’s overwhelming concern for the comfort of others.

She’d read that the inhibitions fall away with dementia and the true self is revealed. She’d witnessed this in her mother-in-law. Can anyone fight around here, she’d asked aggressively when Fiona had visited her in the nursing home recently. It was the repressed anger of an immobile, once intelligent, woman whose life had consisted of housework relieved by playing tennis and bridge with her ‘girl friends.’

In contrast, Fiona’s father – gallant to the end – became, if anything, even more solicitous of others. She remembered how he would try to share the food on his plate with those at his table in the rehab centre; how he would smilingly struggle to open a door for a woman, or even a man, much stronger and more physically stable and able than he.

It was close to five by the time the last guests left: Fiona was exhausted but somehow euphoric. Funerals bring the family together in a positive way: the finality of death puts other gnawing tensions into perspective. She liked the way funeral parlours these days offered light refreshments for all those who attended the funeral; and then close friends and family could come back to the house for a glass of wine, even champagne, and more enticing food, to celebrate the life of the loved one. Luke and his sister, Sophie, stayed on to help clean up. No matter how simple one tried to keep it there was always more to do than you imagined.

‘Anyone for tea or coffee?’ Fiona asked.

‘I’ll have a camomile thanks, mum,’ Sophie said.

‘Ordinary old for me, darling,’ David said.

‘What about you Luke?’

‘No, no. Thanks mum,’ Luke hesitated, ‘Who was that guy, that tall guy, arrived late…?’

‘Yeah, I wondered that. Stood at the back. By himself… older guy,’ Sophie said.

‘Mum?’ Luke glanced at Fiona, who was by the sink filling the kettle.

‘I don’t think I saw him,’ she said vaguely.

‘He brought the flowers, I’m pretty sure; beautiful, aren’t they? Christmas Lilies, I think,’ Sophie said. His were the only ones apart from those adorning the coffin as the family had requested donations to the Cancer Council in lieu of flowers. Sophie picked up the card and read, ‘Heartfelt condolences to Henry’s family, Edward. So who’s Edward?’

‘I don’t remember an Edward,’ Fiona shook her head. ‘Years ago mum and dad had old family friends – and I mean old, considerably older than they were, called the Edwards.’

‘I looked for him after. When we were having coffee. But I, I couldn’t see him. The way he looked at me when, when he arrived – it was… it was strange. Almost as if he knew me,’ Luke said.

‘And strange, turning up and then not speaking to anyone,’ Sophie added.

Fiona lay on the sofa, her feet up on David’s lap, thinking of her father. She only really got to know him after her mother died. Of course, she hardly saw him for the first four years of her life. One of her earliest memories was holding on to his military great coat hanging on the hat stand in the hall. He loved children: how sad that he missed the crucial early years of his daughters’ lives. He adored Sophie and Luke, and Fiona had an image of his mesmerised face watching little Chris, his great grandson.

‘Remember that time we took dad to Tideways with Chris?’

‘Mmm . . . full of toddlers playing in the sand with their buckets and spades, and in the water with their little boogie-boards. I think it was the first time we took him to Tideways,’ David glanced at his wife.

Fiona could see Chris now with his bucket and spade, bright yellow, matching his sun hat and the trim on his navy blue tee shirt and bathers, his little face luminous under the sunhat with reflected light, his big eyes so serious, so engaged in all there was to see: the water gently rolling into the shore, the deep blue of the distant sea dotted with white yachts, the children in the foreground . . .

Chris waddles down to the water and looks out to sea, then turns, coming back to where Fiona is sitting on a beach towel beside her father relaxing on a sun lounge in the shade of the jetty. Chris takes her finger, saying, ‘up, up’ and pulls her. He wants to go in the water but not by himself.

That was possibly the only time Fiona had taken her father to the beach with Chris: it was just before his final stroke and admission to the nursing home.

David got up from the couch and put on a CD of Wartime Favourites which they’d played during the afternoon. Fiona could still hear her father singing ‘now is the hour when we must say goodbye, soon we’ll be sailing far across the sea.’ Funny in primary school when asked to name a famous Australian singer she’d said Gracie Fields, to the consternation (or amusement) of her teacher and possibly her mother: of course the right answer was Dame Nellie Melba whom Fiona had never heard of. South of the Border, Don’t Fence me in, Sentimental Journey, By the Light of the Silvery Moon… And this one, I’ll be seeing you, it reminded her of a night, soon after her mum died, when her dad came around for a meal…

‘Henry, a little more wine, maybe a drop of Cointreau?’ David returns to the table after putting on some music.

‘Better not thanks, Dave.’

The three sit around the table listening to the music, long after the light has faded, but no one wants to move or fracture the mood of quiet reflection.

‘I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places

That this heart of mine embraces all day through

In that small café, the park across the way

The children’s carousel, the chestnut trees, the wishing well…’

During the evening her father spoke about the war, about his time in Perth before being posted to a base in Darwin; he spoke of the first time he heard that song dancing with a girl at a place overlooking the Swan River – he starts singing along, intermittently, his eyes watering.

‘I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day

In everything that’s light and gay

I’ll always think of you that way

I’ll find you in the morning sun

And when the night is new

I’ll be looking at the moon

But I’ll be seeing you’

Henry breaks off, ‘Mm… Kathleen… that was her name.’ He’s silent, nobody moves or speaks. ‘She lived in Cottesloe near the beach… I wonder what happened to her… after all these years’ There’s a long silence and then he stands up, shaking David’s hand, ‘I must get going, you two’ll be wanting to get to bed. You’ve no doubt got an early start in the morning.’

Which was true.

They must have been playing the same CD that night for her father. ‘Remember the time just after mum died when dad talked about a girl in Perth during the war, darling?’ she glanced up at David after the song had finished.

‘Mm, vaguely. I remember he’d asked your mum if he could go to dances, see girls, while he was away; and she’d said as long as you don’t spend any money on the bitches. That’s what he told us anyway.’

‘I don’t remember him saying that… and, if mum had said that, it wouldn’t have been at that time, not during the war,’ Fiona was thoughtful. ‘It might’ve been later, I mean, when he went interstate for work or something.’

‘Mm. Let’s watch the news, shall we?’ David reached for the remote control.

Staring blankly at the television screen Fiona thought about her mother, her mother in those final weeks, months… clinging to life, refusing to let go, and her father just… giving up. She wondered if women cling to life more than men do. Not because they’re afraid of death… Fiona didn’t fear death, what she feared was separation – being separated from the people she loved. Maybe that accounts for why some people hang on to life and others turn their back on it. But god she had found