and excited to embrace his newly found inner Latin, had held my head in his hands and clumsily tried to kiss me on the lips. I remember our eyes being open and far too close together and the burn of stubble rash. Not nice.
My mum simply had a tear in her eye. When I looked up I said, in that classic English understated way, “Well, I suppose we could think about it.”
It was exactly what I wanted and yet I still couldn’t bring myself to ask for help. It was what my mum wanted as well, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to suggest it. It was a brilliant idea and I will be forever grateful to my brother’s wife for slicing through our ridiculous English reserve and stating what was, after all, the bleeding obvious.
I gave my mum a hug and we agreed that she would come to Australia for a period of some six weeks. She couldn’t leave straight away—so I had a head start of ten days. It was a happy and positive goodbye at Heathrow airport, normally when I say goodbye to my mum I don’t know when I will see her next.
And so, a couple of weeks later, I was picking my mum up from Melbourne airport. I was pleased to see her, but also sad. I had become accustomed to the sight of Mum and Dad, side-by-side, pushing their trolley together through the arrivals hall. This time it was only Mum. It didn’t look right. It re-enforced for me that my dad was gone for good.
It was great having my mum with us. She immediately took over a lot of the domestic duties, which meant I was able to concentrate on the girls’ wellbeing and my work. For six weeks we became a new family unit. Three generations living and learning together as we each confronted, and started to deal with, our own demons. My mum was re-living her parenting role from some thirty years ago. I could never have imagined that I would be relying on my mum for day-to-day support at the age of forty-four, and I doubt she ever imagined that she would go back to being a hands-on parent in her late sixties.
But it was as good for her as it was for me. It gave my mum a sense of purpose—she managed the house, did the shopping, did the cooking, did bits of cleaning and drove the girls to dance—and in the evenings we talked about Dad, our lives and what we were going to do next. When I was growing up most of my serious adult conversations had been with my dad and so this was my chance to get closer to my mum and understand something about what made her tick and her hopes and fears for the future.
It was just another example of how, in the middle of the most difficult times of your life, you can still have positive and enriching experiences. I learnt a lot from, and about, my mum—and I became a lot closer to her.
My mum stayed until my birthday in early November. She left a few days later. It was a really difficult day. I returned home from work in the afternoon and found her sitting in the garden reading her book. Our last few hours together were sad. It had been a hugely enjoyable and valuable time but we both knew she couldn’t stay forever and that she had to go home. We each had our own lives to lead.
Saying goodbye to my family after a visit to the UK, or after they have been out to Australia, has been by far the most difficult aspect of my living away from them. The build up to the trip is very exciting, the time spent with them is great and then, for the last couple of days, I always get a slightly empty feeling in my stomach in anticipation of the pain of saying goodbye, knowing that I will not see them again for a few years. The goodbye always seems so final.
And saying goodbye to my mum on this occasion was particularly tough. We had been together for six weeks. We hadn’t spent this amount of time together since I had left home at the age of twenty-one. During her stay my mum had supported me as a single father and we had supported each other emotionally and grown closer as a result. Now we were going back to lives on our own. It was hard.
We had a quiet reflective drive out to the airport, both of us wondering what the next few weeks would bring and how we would cope. We didn’t get too emotional when we said our goodbyes at the airport and I didn’t, to my eternal regret, tell my mum how much I loved her. Instead, I went back to stiff upper lip mode and thanked her for helping me out—I made Prince Charles look like a sensitive, new-age guy.
As my mum disappeared through security I shed a little tear. I drove home with an empty passenger seat. The girls were home from school when I got back and we quietly ate the dinner my mum had prepared that morning, a last reminder of the time she had spent with us.
It was a year of massive goodbyes. My dad was gone, my wife was gone, and now my mum was gone and I felt very alone. I knew I would see my mum again. But I also knew that we would probably never again share the closeness of the past six weeks. Thanks again Mum, I love you.
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