SO NOW THERE IS THIS QUIETNESS
2012
I have not been shopping since my Mother died three years ago.
Well, I have shopped, but not shopping. Real shopping, like I used to do with her.
When my Mother died my life stopped; maybe this is auspicious as ‘stopped’ rhymes with ‘shopped’.
In reality, my life did not stop – it simply stopped feeling like my life, the life I had had for almost sixty years before that.
Shopping was a career for my Mother, like mothering, cleaning, or doing the laundry, and one of the many things she taught me to do well, and she loved us to shop together. Feeding those she loved was a priority in life and she foraged in Coles and Woolies, and after Aldi arrived in Australia, she adopted them, for she loved a bargain and could stretch a dollar like nobody else. After she died, I found in her purse the small silver Aldi coin one inserts into the trolley to release it, and now I carry it in my purse, and try to imagine her checking out the specials with me.
She endured an unhappy childhood and a bitter mother, she survived hunger and deprivation and World War 2. She was a devout wife and mother, and a loyal, hard working North Country woman who left school at 13. She attended Mass each Sunday, the closest she got to heaven before she died. She, my Dad and I would sit in ‘our’ back pew, something I now do on my own. Her favourite store was Vinnies. She volunteered there two days a week for twenty five years until she died, two months before her 87th birthday. She often brought home clothes for the family, and when people admired what we were wearing, she would smile proudly and say “It’s from Davey Jones ….”
My Mother once said to me “If you can’t carry it, drag it.” She and I did that a couple of times at the tip in Brisbane, after finding some particularly good shelving or a table. Her memory and fear of being hungry never really left her. She was like a lioness, dragging home to her pride the bounty her expert eyes had tracked down and seized, then sighing with satisfaction. Sometimes, on the hunt, she never caught anything. Like an old fisherman, content with dropping his line in the water, not actually to catch fish, but to learn about fish, and for the experience of fishing, she simply trawled. She was not only shopping but preparing to shop – and this was one of the ways she connected with the world.
She knew dozens of shop assistants by name – they all knew hers – and she knew as much about their lives and children and health as she did of her own family. Her heart was just as engaged and she was just as interested. She kissed and she hugged and no-one tried to escape her embrace. Babies drew her like a magnet, she could sniff one out at fifty paces, and she could calm a stranger’s screaming baby in minutes. Children stuck to her like glue, and her shopping bag always contained contraband for them. She gave with her whole heart and with her constantly in action oven. Her reputation for mince pies, apple pies, scones and sausage rolls crossed continents. She bestowed them to people who were kind to her – and so many were! - the station master, the doctor, the postmaster, the butcher, and the pharmacist.
There were hundreds of people at her funeral. Many of those who loved her wore pink feather boas and our brightest clothes to wish her luck as we waved her goodbye. But I saw the granite man who makes the roads here, strangely attired in a suit, weeping for my Mother. As did the butcher, the baker and several shop assistants.
My Mom and Dad were happy people, party people, dancers, singers, poets and story tellers. They were lovers until the end, and after a lifetime together, she could not live without my Dad. Her aorta split - she broke her heart - quite literally, and joined him on their wedding anniversary, six months after he died.
So now there is this quietness.
Sandra Groom 2012