Natalie The Strong
Without Prejudice
I find in the writing there are facts I have to skirt around and don't like it but there are some things that don't need to be written.
But because I am the person I am, sometimes I have to write things that were once hidden and can't be anymore.
I write to empty out the sadness and fierce rage I used to feel and in the writing I find solace and memories, good ones and some bad. Thats life.
I only hang around with people who are not scared to tell the truth. That have no "side" and are probably blunt, but thats OK.
I had a Mum who would not tolerate stupidity or false people and had no hesitation in doing so or saying so.
She was brilliant in her ire though.
Once I had just had Yvette and had to take Mum to the bank, she had arrived from Sydney for a visit. You were never quite sure with Mum, she had been very ill and was refusing an operation on her Thyroid.
We think now she had Graves Disease and the thyroid reactivated in her the Post Traumatic Stress she had suffered after the war. We were never sure.
So we went into the bank and Mum didn't drive, so no licence for ID and she carried her passbook and handed it over. Needing money a quick withdrawal, she was fine as she faced the bank teller, poor teller!
"We can't verify your account details", he said.
I'm sorry", Mum replied.
"Well you have no ID and your account is in Sydney and we can't verify who you are"
Mum pulled up into her 5' 1" frame and gazed at the hapless teller and I moved towards the back wall with my babies.
I was about to make a dash for the door and thought better of it, curious to see what would happen, no one with any sense crossed Mum in "High Dudgeon", ever.
I thought she'd say
"Call the Manager"
in her imperious voice but she didn't, she just gazed at the teller with those brilllliant cornflower blue eyes of hers, slightly prominent from the Thyroid. They were two penetrating eyes that saw in to your very soul.
"Young Man". she said.
"I know who I am, I don't know who you are and youv'e GOT MY MONEY.
A few of the customers shuffled nervously at her louder voice and the teller looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I just leaned against the back wall and waited.
"Well, we could ring Sydney," the teller suggested,
"But you would have to pay for the phone call"
"Do it", Mum said and turned to me and winked.
So they did, having not thought of this suggestion until Mum started to lose it.
She was verified over the phone and the teller asked how much she wanted and gave it and asked Mum for $5 for the phone call.
"No", She said.
"Thats your fault and you can pay it"
"Come Janette"
And she sailed out in her Kaftan as if she hadn't just wrecked that poor mans day but she was right and I admired her pugnaciouness.
It sometimes didn;t go so well when she wasn't medicated.
I recall the endless trips to Supermarkets where she would rip open packets of things and just start eating them and once she piled 24 cheesecakes into her trolley.
She loved Supermarkets for some reason and we were always in them with her when she wasn't well. She was like trying to look after a ticking time bomb. You were never sure when the "fits" would come.
One word or gesture could trip a full blown "fit", where she would lose it and have to be restrained. And the best place or time for that to happen was when they asked her to open her bag at the Checkout.
"Why, do I look like a thief?" She would ask.
"Company Policy", they would reply.
"CALL THE MANAGER", she would demand, using what we called her RAAF voice, the same one she used on the phone.
The Manager would arrive and she would patiently wait until he had finished his company policy about looking in handbags.
"Do I look like a dishonest person?". she queried.
"No"
"Then why would you think you have the right to look in my handbag?"
She loved these exchanges as she knew her rights and was not about to have them violated. It was something to do with being in the War, following dumb orders, I guess.
She gave me Catch 22 to read when I was 12 and I thought it was the most insane thing I had ever read. Anyone that knew Mum would not find that crazy of my Mum.
She knew I was a good reader and wanted my opinion, at 12. and what was more remarkable to me was that I had formed an opinion of the book and told her.
"I thought it was genius"
She was satisified with that.
But as far as Supermarket Managers or staff or anyone else that waved what she called the little "Red Flag", meaning they only had that tiny bit of power but wanted to flaunt it and annoy the shit out of her.
She hated time wasters or false and ungenuine people. She had an IQ that was genius level and would cut them down at the kness with a pithy remark.
Some of her sayings my whole family follows to this day, she was never an affectionate Mother, no kiss, hug but she pushed us relentlessly mentally to be educated and smart.
Here are some,
When we would ask what was for tea, the reply was always
"Shit with sugar on"
If we wailed about something that was wrong, she would say
"This is not Nazi Germany and they can not line you up against a wall and shoot you"
"Nil Illegitema Carborundum", roughly translates to
"Don't let the bastards grind you down"
If I said I was "trying", she would answer. "Yes, very"
If we asked where something was, she would reply,
"Up in Annies' room behind the wallpaper"
She was smart and fierce and a warrior Mother. I am sure the teachers at our schools quaked when she came looking for them and it was always we were wonderful and the Tecahers were wrong.
And she was good, I'll give her that, we were brilliant to her and she argued that I didn't drink milk and didn't have to even attempt ro do so anymore.
By 7 I could read adult books so I was released from Janet and John readers and was allowed to read whatever I wanted. Thanks to Mum x
She was most achingly proud of Ian, who was Dux at his High School and she went ape shit when he decided to join the Army. She was so opposed to it. But he did and he went to War, the Vietnam one and she was so unahppy about it all.
I wish she had lasted. She died by her own hand when she was only 53, I feared for years prior getting to that age as I too would go mad. But these days, (Not in those Days) we have these womderful things called antidepressants.
My Doctor told me if they had been a avilable 30 years ago she could have been a lot better. I realised looking back, her fugue states, her hysteria, her crashing out rock bottom were all to do with Clinical Depression. And the cure in the old days was ro sedate people. Making them worse.
I was diagnosed with it as was my sister Jackie, we good girls. we just take our little pill every day, our "anti crazy" pills. We have a mild form and I have other family members with it as it tends to run in families and is just a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Jackie and I learned a good lesson then. diagnosed within 6 months of each other. we were both shocked beyond belief; I seriously thought my crying a little morning and night and waking up in the small empty hours and not being able to get back to sleep was hormonal.
I went to my family Doctor, the calm amd excellent Roger Johnston, who was not long out of Med school when I first met him in 1972. Thats how long we have been patient, client and trusted friends.
I was crying when I told him I thought I had some sort of hormonal trouble and he asked me 12 questions and he diagnosed me with depression and anxiety, high anxiety and he gave me a pill right then and there for my anxiety.
I cried again and said ,
"I can't have depression, my Mother had depression and she died"
I refused to have depression.
He looked at me and repeated you have depression and handed me a video and a phamplet and a script for Zoloft and sent me home. And I watched the video and read the pamphlet and took my tablets.
I then realised after two weeks of slight nausea and a bit of dizziness that the world didn't look so grey. In fact one day it was like someone had turned on all the lights, the grass looked greener, the sky, blue and colours flashed at me.
I could eat better and sleep at night, which was a big bonus as I had been sleep deprived for a long time. And I had Yvette and the boys safely housed by then, my ex Nifty Nev was in Ireland for a year and I had bought a small house and started feeling better and better.
I went to Ireland shortly after for a trip to see Nifty and his Mum, Chris and I had being feeling better so I stopped taking my medication. A trap. Because I then went into meltdown mode.
I started taking them again when I returned to Australia and by the November of that year, turned out to be allergic to too much Serontonin. But I didn't know it. I thought I had a bad stomach bug and it was embarressing at work.
Doctor in Queensland was poo pooing, my thought that I had something wrong but I knew there was. So when I went to Doctor Johnston in melbourne I told him I thought I had Gardia, a stomach bug big in the news that year. As people in Sydney had Gardia from contaminated water.
I was seeing him in an emergency way as I had contemplated taking my own life. I had diaorrhea all the time and one day at my daughters I lined up all the little blue pills that I was going to take to end all the illness and stress. And I couldn't do it. I thought of my daughter and son in law coming in with kids and finding me body, I couldn't do it.
But I was scared so scared and tired and worn out and even the thought of a simple shower was impossible. I imagined the water hitting my body and knew it would hurt, I couldn't be bothered.
I got in my car and was on my way to a Motel to do the job properly and out of the blue, Karin my Sister In Law rang me. I had left a message on her answering machine and she rang in concern as I sounded "Funny"
She gently and persistently talked to me and told me to come to her house for a cuppa, and then I could go to the Motel. So I went to Karins and she talked me down and I told her what I had been contemplating.
She suggested I might be allergic to the medication, by that time it had been months of stomach pain. So I stayed with her and went to see Roger Johnston in an emergency appointment. I still didn't tell him the truth at first, saying that I thought I had Gardia.
(God, doctors must get so sick of self diagnosing patients) It turned out I was allergic to Zoloft and the results only became bad after 3 weeks of the taking of them. So I had been putting up with being ill for 5 months. I am nothing if not perverse!
So he put me on a better one with less of the Serentonin and I told him I had been suicidal and he sent me to a therapist. a lady one.
Jackie and I have been on our little tablets for years now and will be on them forever. I find mine worse in Winter, a form of SAD and feel better in the Spring, Summer and Autumn, And in the past as soon as I would feel better I would go off them.
Not good, thats just the mind saying you feel better now, stop taking them, it's a voice I ignore now as I have lost too much to depression and will not allow it to rule my life. It helps me write as writing is such a lonely isolating occupation. But I love it and have to do it.
I am a decade on from when I was first diagnosed and it's a constant companion, but I deal with it and get on. I can't give into it, I can't allow my kids to suffer because of it, nor myself. It is what it is and I take my pill and better my life.
Jackie took off for italy with her daughter, leaving hubby at home and it was her first step towards independence. Her Doctor she had to stop being the dutiful wife and helpmeet and Mother, Grandmother and "Do" something for herself.
I had to stop Over mothering my girls and be a single happy person. And that was hard if I am honest. I had become bossy and controlling out of sheer anxiety and it had to stop.
So I am older now, wiser, I hope. Not such a nightmare to my kids and try to be tolerant and not so "Nit Picking". I din't realise I was being like that. I wanted to be better.
And depression at first robs you of everything, your confidence, your sleep. your thoughts. I remember Robbie Williams coming out about depression, which he had and stating,
"I get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and see a fat twat who is untalented and trite and God knows why people allow him to sing"
And that's before he takes his antidepressant for the day.
I like the fact that celebrities will be open and honest like that as it influences people all over the world and there just might be one person out there that is struggling with the same thing.
And will do something about it.
So my Mum was one of the most honest people in the world except about her illness. With that she would lie her head off to any Psychiatrist and he would let her walk, smiling indulgently at Nat and as soon as we were out the door, she became "nutty", again. Dad and I just rolled our eyes at her, she had enough reason to want to get well.
Helen was only 10 then and needed a Mother, she had Dad, he adored her as did Mum, but having a 10 year old that needed her would not hold her to life, nor would Dad.
We thought she somehow she could just snap out of it, having seen her performance before her doctors, but that was just sheer cunning on her part. She was sick, mentally ill and bad, one of the worst, she'd had shock treatment time after time, nothing.
And one hot day in Sunny Queensland she just took off with her end in mind. She had stored up pills, sleepers, that she must have kept hidden for a while from Dad. He checked her pills and knew how many she had to take per day. 11.
And the pills had made her put on loads of weight and she hated it. Wearing kaftans which billowed around her body. And in her last stint in Psychiatric had tried to take her own life, we weren't to know about that till later.
So she went off into the shimmering heat one day and disappeared. Just disappeared. And the next day a man walking his dog in Redcliffe found her body in a park. She had a soft drink can beside her and an empty bottle of pills. her head nestled on her handbag.
Why she chose there to die we have no idea, who knows the workings of a mad person.? And in brutal honesty I say it loud and proud, she had something to teach us in her death. She had had enough of illness and madness and being scared of night terrors, screaming out and waking the entire family.
She would bake cakes when she couldn't sleep and never ate them. Nor did we. I feel a desperate sadness for her, having to put up with all of those years of illness. But in the end she was just very very sick and wanted to be out of her own pain.
And then we took it up all that pain and felt it in her loss. our beyond brainy Mother, our elegant and funny and down to earth Mum. It was rotten to lose her but a relief in a way too as our lives had not been normal for years with her.
She knew it, we knew it but it still was an awful shock for her to die.
But in the end she saw how much she was affecting us and how she felt she would never be cured and I think, (Just my opinion) that she made a rational decision in a moment of blinding clarity and decided to end it. By then she saw people and heard voices and I can only think of her terror at losing her mind.
Her instrument, her passion, I always believed that if you cut my Dad open music would flow out and with my Mum, it would be words. She loved words.
I found a half written story of hers and it was about a girl called Lucy, my middle name and her own Mothers. It was good, and there was a hilarious letter to the Prime Minister in her bag.
She wrote of her disgust at her last haircut, God knows why the Prime Minister had to know about it, but that was Mum. crazy to the end. In the month before she died, she used to ask for Jamie, she thought she had left him at "Woolies".
He had died at age 11, her son, our brother 20 years before. And maybe on that last day she went looking for him and maybe she found him in her mind and he asked her to join him. We will never know, but she remains an enormous influence on our lives.
I went back to school as a Mature Age student because of her and went to Uni because of her and today I write because of her, that's what she gave me and I am not going to waste it. She wanted education more than anything for her children.
And when they handed me the Humanities Prize of The Year for English I knew she was there and she was applauding. I did the whole year for her, owing it to her and I am sure she was with me in the small hours as I struggled with imagination and analysis.
Shw would have been proud and prouder of my honesty and my laying it on the line for the whole world to see.
Love you mum. x
Love your daughter Janette
I find in the writing there are facts I have to skirt around and don't like it but there are some things that don't need to be written.
But because I am the person I am, sometimes I have to write things that were once hidden and can't be anymore.
I write to empty out the sadness and fierce rage I used to feel and in the writing I find solace and memories, good ones and some bad. Thats life.
I only hang around with people who are not scared to tell the truth. That have no "side" and are probably blunt, but thats OK.
I had a Mum who would not tolerate stupidity or false people and had no hesitation in doing so or saying so.
She was brilliant in her ire though.
Once I had just had Yvette and had to take Mum to the bank, she had arrived from Sydney for a visit. You were never quite sure with Mum, she had been very ill and was refusing an operation on her Thyroid.
We think now she had Graves Disease and the thyroid reactivated in her the Post Traumatic Stress she had suffered after the war. We were never sure.
So we went into the bank and Mum didn't drive, so no licence for ID and she carried her passbook and handed it over. Needing money a quick withdrawal, she was fine as she faced the bank teller, poor teller!
"We can't verify your account details", he said.
I'm sorry", Mum replied.
"Well you have no ID and your account is in Sydney and we can't verify who you are"
Mum pulled up into her 5' 1" frame and gazed at the hapless teller and I moved towards the back wall with my babies.
I was about to make a dash for the door and thought better of it, curious to see what would happen, no one with any sense crossed Mum in "High Dudgeon", ever.
I thought she'd say
"Call the Manager"
in her imperious voice but she didn't, she just gazed at the teller with those brilllliant cornflower blue eyes of hers, slightly prominent from the Thyroid. They were two penetrating eyes that saw in to your very soul.
"Young Man". she said.
"I know who I am, I don't know who you are and youv'e GOT MY MONEY.
A few of the customers shuffled nervously at her louder voice and the teller looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I just leaned against the back wall and waited.
"Well, we could ring Sydney," the teller suggested,
"But you would have to pay for the phone call"
"Do it", Mum said and turned to me and winked.
So they did, having not thought of this suggestion until Mum started to lose it.
She was verified over the phone and the teller asked how much she wanted and gave it and asked Mum for $5 for the phone call.
"No", She said.
"Thats your fault and you can pay it"
"Come Janette"
And she sailed out in her Kaftan as if she hadn't just wrecked that poor mans day but she was right and I admired her pugnaciouness.
It sometimes didn;t go so well when she wasn't medicated.
I recall the endless trips to Supermarkets where she would rip open packets of things and just start eating them and once she piled 24 cheesecakes into her trolley.
She loved Supermarkets for some reason and we were always in them with her when she wasn't well. She was like trying to look after a ticking time bomb. You were never sure when the "fits" would come.
One word or gesture could trip a full blown "fit", where she would lose it and have to be restrained. And the best place or time for that to happen was when they asked her to open her bag at the Checkout.
"Why, do I look like a thief?" She would ask.
"Company Policy", they would reply.
"CALL THE MANAGER", she would demand, using what we called her RAAF voice, the same one she used on the phone.
The Manager would arrive and she would patiently wait until he had finished his company policy about looking in handbags.
"Do I look like a dishonest person?". she queried.
"No"
"Then why would you think you have the right to look in my handbag?"
She loved these exchanges as she knew her rights and was not about to have them violated. It was something to do with being in the War, following dumb orders, I guess.
She gave me Catch 22 to read when I was 12 and I thought it was the most insane thing I had ever read. Anyone that knew Mum would not find that crazy of my Mum.
She knew I was a good reader and wanted my opinion, at 12. and what was more remarkable to me was that I had formed an opinion of the book and told her.
"I thought it was genius"
She was satisified with that.
But as far as Supermarket Managers or staff or anyone else that waved what she called the little "Red Flag", meaning they only had that tiny bit of power but wanted to flaunt it and annoy the shit out of her.
She hated time wasters or false and ungenuine people. She had an IQ that was genius level and would cut them down at the kness with a pithy remark.
Some of her sayings my whole family follows to this day, she was never an affectionate Mother, no kiss, hug but she pushed us relentlessly mentally to be educated and smart.
Here are some,
When we would ask what was for tea, the reply was always
"Shit with sugar on"
If we wailed about something that was wrong, she would say
"This is not Nazi Germany and they can not line you up against a wall and shoot you"
"Nil Illegitema Carborundum", roughly translates to
"Don't let the bastards grind you down"
If I said I was "trying", she would answer. "Yes, very"
If we asked where something was, she would reply,
"Up in Annies' room behind the wallpaper"
She was smart and fierce and a warrior Mother. I am sure the teachers at our schools quaked when she came looking for them and it was always we were wonderful and the Tecahers were wrong.
And she was good, I'll give her that, we were brilliant to her and she argued that I didn't drink milk and didn't have to even attempt ro do so anymore.
By 7 I could read adult books so I was released from Janet and John readers and was allowed to read whatever I wanted. Thanks to Mum x
She was most achingly proud of Ian, who was Dux at his High School and she went ape shit when he decided to join the Army. She was so opposed to it. But he did and he went to War, the Vietnam one and she was so unahppy about it all.
I wish she had lasted. She died by her own hand when she was only 53, I feared for years prior getting to that age as I too would go mad. But these days, (Not in those Days) we have these womderful things called antidepressants.
My Doctor told me if they had been a avilable 30 years ago she could have been a lot better. I realised looking back, her fugue states, her hysteria, her crashing out rock bottom were all to do with Clinical Depression. And the cure in the old days was ro sedate people. Making them worse.
I was diagnosed with it as was my sister Jackie, we good girls. we just take our little pill every day, our "anti crazy" pills. We have a mild form and I have other family members with it as it tends to run in families and is just a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Jackie and I learned a good lesson then. diagnosed within 6 months of each other. we were both shocked beyond belief; I seriously thought my crying a little morning and night and waking up in the small empty hours and not being able to get back to sleep was hormonal.
I went to my family Doctor, the calm amd excellent Roger Johnston, who was not long out of Med school when I first met him in 1972. Thats how long we have been patient, client and trusted friends.
I was crying when I told him I thought I had some sort of hormonal trouble and he asked me 12 questions and he diagnosed me with depression and anxiety, high anxiety and he gave me a pill right then and there for my anxiety.
I cried again and said ,
"I can't have depression, my Mother had depression and she died"
I refused to have depression.
He looked at me and repeated you have depression and handed me a video and a phamplet and a script for Zoloft and sent me home. And I watched the video and read the pamphlet and took my tablets.
I then realised after two weeks of slight nausea and a bit of dizziness that the world didn't look so grey. In fact one day it was like someone had turned on all the lights, the grass looked greener, the sky, blue and colours flashed at me.
I could eat better and sleep at night, which was a big bonus as I had been sleep deprived for a long time. And I had Yvette and the boys safely housed by then, my ex Nifty Nev was in Ireland for a year and I had bought a small house and started feeling better and better.
I went to Ireland shortly after for a trip to see Nifty and his Mum, Chris and I had being feeling better so I stopped taking my medication. A trap. Because I then went into meltdown mode.
I started taking them again when I returned to Australia and by the November of that year, turned out to be allergic to too much Serontonin. But I didn't know it. I thought I had a bad stomach bug and it was embarressing at work.
Doctor in Queensland was poo pooing, my thought that I had something wrong but I knew there was. So when I went to Doctor Johnston in melbourne I told him I thought I had Gardia, a stomach bug big in the news that year. As people in Sydney had Gardia from contaminated water.
I was seeing him in an emergency way as I had contemplated taking my own life. I had diaorrhea all the time and one day at my daughters I lined up all the little blue pills that I was going to take to end all the illness and stress. And I couldn't do it. I thought of my daughter and son in law coming in with kids and finding me body, I couldn't do it.
But I was scared so scared and tired and worn out and even the thought of a simple shower was impossible. I imagined the water hitting my body and knew it would hurt, I couldn't be bothered.
I got in my car and was on my way to a Motel to do the job properly and out of the blue, Karin my Sister In Law rang me. I had left a message on her answering machine and she rang in concern as I sounded "Funny"
She gently and persistently talked to me and told me to come to her house for a cuppa, and then I could go to the Motel. So I went to Karins and she talked me down and I told her what I had been contemplating.
She suggested I might be allergic to the medication, by that time it had been months of stomach pain. So I stayed with her and went to see Roger Johnston in an emergency appointment. I still didn't tell him the truth at first, saying that I thought I had Gardia.
(God, doctors must get so sick of self diagnosing patients) It turned out I was allergic to Zoloft and the results only became bad after 3 weeks of the taking of them. So I had been putting up with being ill for 5 months. I am nothing if not perverse!
So he put me on a better one with less of the Serentonin and I told him I had been suicidal and he sent me to a therapist. a lady one.
Jackie and I have been on our little tablets for years now and will be on them forever. I find mine worse in Winter, a form of SAD and feel better in the Spring, Summer and Autumn, And in the past as soon as I would feel better I would go off them.
Not good, thats just the mind saying you feel better now, stop taking them, it's a voice I ignore now as I have lost too much to depression and will not allow it to rule my life. It helps me write as writing is such a lonely isolating occupation. But I love it and have to do it.
I am a decade on from when I was first diagnosed and it's a constant companion, but I deal with it and get on. I can't give into it, I can't allow my kids to suffer because of it, nor myself. It is what it is and I take my pill and better my life.
Jackie took off for italy with her daughter, leaving hubby at home and it was her first step towards independence. Her Doctor she had to stop being the dutiful wife and helpmeet and Mother, Grandmother and "Do" something for herself.
I had to stop Over mothering my girls and be a single happy person. And that was hard if I am honest. I had become bossy and controlling out of sheer anxiety and it had to stop.
So I am older now, wiser, I hope. Not such a nightmare to my kids and try to be tolerant and not so "Nit Picking". I din't realise I was being like that. I wanted to be better.
And depression at first robs you of everything, your confidence, your sleep. your thoughts. I remember Robbie Williams coming out about depression, which he had and stating,
"I get up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror and see a fat twat who is untalented and trite and God knows why people allow him to sing"
And that's before he takes his antidepressant for the day.
I like the fact that celebrities will be open and honest like that as it influences people all over the world and there just might be one person out there that is struggling with the same thing.
And will do something about it.
So my Mum was one of the most honest people in the world except about her illness. With that she would lie her head off to any Psychiatrist and he would let her walk, smiling indulgently at Nat and as soon as we were out the door, she became "nutty", again. Dad and I just rolled our eyes at her, she had enough reason to want to get well.
Helen was only 10 then and needed a Mother, she had Dad, he adored her as did Mum, but having a 10 year old that needed her would not hold her to life, nor would Dad.
We thought she somehow she could just snap out of it, having seen her performance before her doctors, but that was just sheer cunning on her part. She was sick, mentally ill and bad, one of the worst, she'd had shock treatment time after time, nothing.
And one hot day in Sunny Queensland she just took off with her end in mind. She had stored up pills, sleepers, that she must have kept hidden for a while from Dad. He checked her pills and knew how many she had to take per day. 11.
And the pills had made her put on loads of weight and she hated it. Wearing kaftans which billowed around her body. And in her last stint in Psychiatric had tried to take her own life, we weren't to know about that till later.
So she went off into the shimmering heat one day and disappeared. Just disappeared. And the next day a man walking his dog in Redcliffe found her body in a park. She had a soft drink can beside her and an empty bottle of pills. her head nestled on her handbag.
Why she chose there to die we have no idea, who knows the workings of a mad person.? And in brutal honesty I say it loud and proud, she had something to teach us in her death. She had had enough of illness and madness and being scared of night terrors, screaming out and waking the entire family.
She would bake cakes when she couldn't sleep and never ate them. Nor did we. I feel a desperate sadness for her, having to put up with all of those years of illness. But in the end she was just very very sick and wanted to be out of her own pain.
And then we took it up all that pain and felt it in her loss. our beyond brainy Mother, our elegant and funny and down to earth Mum. It was rotten to lose her but a relief in a way too as our lives had not been normal for years with her.
She knew it, we knew it but it still was an awful shock for her to die.
But in the end she saw how much she was affecting us and how she felt she would never be cured and I think, (Just my opinion) that she made a rational decision in a moment of blinding clarity and decided to end it. By then she saw people and heard voices and I can only think of her terror at losing her mind.
Her instrument, her passion, I always believed that if you cut my Dad open music would flow out and with my Mum, it would be words. She loved words.
I found a half written story of hers and it was about a girl called Lucy, my middle name and her own Mothers. It was good, and there was a hilarious letter to the Prime Minister in her bag.
She wrote of her disgust at her last haircut, God knows why the Prime Minister had to know about it, but that was Mum. crazy to the end. In the month before she died, she used to ask for Jamie, she thought she had left him at "Woolies".
He had died at age 11, her son, our brother 20 years before. And maybe on that last day she went looking for him and maybe she found him in her mind and he asked her to join him. We will never know, but she remains an enormous influence on our lives.
I went back to school as a Mature Age student because of her and went to Uni because of her and today I write because of her, that's what she gave me and I am not going to waste it. She wanted education more than anything for her children.
And when they handed me the Humanities Prize of The Year for English I knew she was there and she was applauding. I did the whole year for her, owing it to her and I am sure she was with me in the small hours as I struggled with imagination and analysis.
Shw would have been proud and prouder of my honesty and my laying it on the line for the whole world to see.
Love you mum. x
Love your daughter Janette
