6. Jan, 2020

Gift from the grave

The thirsty, parched and dusty land in which I live is currently in the grip of one of the worst droughts in recorded history. Trees, plants and crops are shedding their foliage to survive the big dry. Our native wildlife is dehydrating to death and farm stock emaciate to the point where it is more humane for farmers to cut their losses and euthanize them. Trucks roll through towns loaded up with tumbleweeds of feed.

Bone dry eucalypt leaves, unable to find moisture, wither and dry on their branches, then waft their way down to the forest floor to create a build-up of debris. Many of these species of eucalypts are usually life-sustaining food for our cute and cuddly koalas, but now they are a deadly fuel, fodder for the flames. One tiny spark and the oil in their leaves explode like a firecracker. A ferocious gust of wind and before long, you have a country in flames.

It has been a difficult Christmas for many. Fires continue to rage through almost every state and territory of this brown land and there isn’t enough money in the world to throw at them to smother and extinguish the flames. It has been a season of unprecedented turmoil and will go down as the most memorable for me in many ways.

What my country needs most is rain. The grass, sharp and spiky like an echidna’s spine pierces the skin of your feet as it crackles under your weight. Dust and ash being flown about in the winds turn your eyes into irritated and itchy sandpits. The stifling heat radiates upward through the soles of your shoes. Shoes that get stuck in the sticky melting tar from record temperatures spiking the mercury upwards of 44 degrees Celsius.

If you didn’t know you were above ground breathing, you could forgive yourself for thinking you had just stumbled through the gates of hell.

Yet close to my thoughts always are the words of my dear old mum, as the thick ash from nearby bushfires paint the sky red, “it’s a bad breathing day, a bad breathing day Nic”. I honestly don’t think my mum would have lived through this drought and apocalyptic bushfire season, and in some ways, I console myself that she is better not here. To see her suffering more would have broken my heart further.

My family gathered together this Christmas and she was never far from our thoughts and often on our lips as we sipped champagne from the house of Bollinger, my mum’s married name and my maiden name. And although she wasn’t physically with us, her spirit sprung to life in all of us. Each one doing our part to blend and connect, to unite and stand as one family, in solidarity, no harsh words, no friction, no discomfort, we honoured her with all that she had fostered in us. Us, her legacy, all together celebrating and remembering as the family she worked so hard to build.

My mum knew for many months that she was dying before she passed. She had emphysema, a cruel disease that robs you of life-giving oxygen cell by cell.

With knowledge of her impending demise, she sat down and expressed some wishes to my siblings and I. What a difficult conversation this was, but we unanimously agreed to honour them and Christmas day lead to the culmination of her direction.

My mother fostered incredible support and connections with each of her grandchildren. They would all make special trips up to Gran’s to raid the cupboard for sweets and sit and talk to her about personal things they didn’t want to tell us as their parents. Nothing made me happier to know they had dropped into her place, my old home for a chat, and to the kid's credit, they never saw doing this as an obligation, and this was perhaps a testament to the relationship my mum had nurtured with each of her seven grandchildren.

Before Mum died, my sister arranged to order each of them a card with their names on them in the colour that mum felt most expressed and represented their personality. Mum then, over the course of weeks and months sat down and penned notes to each of them and they became heartfelt and honest testimonials to each of their individual characters.

Mum told us she wished for us to include in the card a financial gift and we chose Christmas day to give our incredible children a gift from the grave from their Gran.

It was one of the most touching experiences I have been a part of. It is one thing to get up at a funeral and speak about your loved one who has passed, but totally another to witness them reach out from the grave and present such a loving, thoughtful and generous gift in return.

With not a dry eye in the house, our young adults were far more deeply moved by my Mum’s well thought out and accurate summation than any cheque enclosed within.

It was a sobering reminder of what really matters to us in life.

With all these fires burning around me I have a fire plan pinned to the fridge. On it to take with me is the computer, which houses all of my photos, important documents and personal effects that have great meaning to me, my pets and my caravan just in case we need somewhere to lay our heads.

My oldest son, on receiving his card with some money inside, did not talk about what he wished to do with his financial windfall, with tears in his eyes, instead, he looked up at me with his baby blues and told me he just wanted to frame his card from his Gran.