She didn’t seem to know how to die — but then, she hadn’t known the secret of living either. And when she didn’t know what else to do, when she didn’t know the answer, she did nothing.
Those last few years were an agony for her, I believe: of lying in a bed, of being bathed, of being put into a padded reclining chair, of being fed, of being bed-panned, of being medicated, of being put back to bed again.
And what did the observer see? A tiny, emaciated, incredibly old woman who dozed away the hours and the days, rousing only to do battle with that terrible monster, Joyce, by turning her head away. Exquisitely clean, yet giving off the subtle aroma of dying cells.
She had an ineffable nose for sensing the right moment to do the wrong thing, and that even included her dying, for after nearly a hundred years of living, I think all of us who were left had forgotten that she might actually die.
Bruni, my friend and musical collaborator from Hamburg, had managed to find two precious weeks to come to Norfolk Island to work with me on an opera about Cleopatra. Her commitments in Europe were extremely heavy, but there were reasons why I could not travel any farther than Sydney, so it had to be Bruni who climbed on a plane. I met her in Sydney, and took the time to see Laurie, who was bed-bound by now and hardly ever awake. I sat down on the side of her bed, leaned over and spoke to her; but the eyelids remained shut, the mouth slightly gaping, toothless and cavelike. I continued to sit, I continued to speak to her. No response. Then a little vulturine claw groped across the covers to find my hand, took it, and gently pressed it. Slowly it slipped away, her sleep became a soft snore. I left.
Bruni and I flew from Sydney to Norfolk Island immediately after that visit, and I confess that a part of my mind couldn’t get away from Laurie’s taking my hand, squeezing it.
Ric woke me in the middle of that first night home. Laurie had died. My reaction wasn’t filial; all I could think was how Laurie had managed to do it again. I would have to fly to Sydney and spend at least half of Bruni’s precious time seeing to the obsequies of my mother. Planes to and from Norfolk Island don’t fly every day, or even every second day.
Then Ric had a brilliant idea.
In the morning I called the undertaker in Sydney. “I don’t suppose you could pop my mother in the fridge for a couple of weeks?” I asked.
He gave a whoop of joy. “Oh, could I?” he asked. “I am swamped with burials at the moment. If you’re absolutely sure you want this, I’d be delighted to oblige.”
“Pop her in the fridge,” I said.
So Bruni and I had a full two weeks of work, then flew with Ric to Sydney. Laurie came out of the fridge.
Her wish was to be cremated, so the service was held in a huge non-denominational chapel at a Sydney crematorium. There were six pallbearers and four mourners. Ric, our friend Michael and I were downstairs, while Bruni was in the choir loft with an organist. Bruni is an operatic diva as well as a composer. She sang Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and her own “Kyrie”. Never was a corpse so gloriously serenaded, though I am sure Laurie would have preferred Gounod’s “Ave Maria” and “Climb Every Mountain”. For once, the choice was mine.
I had the ashes interred in the crematorium rose garden. Laurie had asked that they be scattered over the Jamison Valley from the pinnacle of Echo Point, but that is a thousand-foot cliff, and I could see the newspaper headlines: HUNK OF TROCHANTER KILLS HIKER ON VALLEY FLOOR! COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH’S MUM THE ALLEGED BLUNT INSTRUMENT! It would be just like her. Smell the roses instead, Joyce.
Other Books by Colleen McCullough
Tim
The Thorn Birds
Cooking with Colleen McCullough and Jean Easthope
A Creed for the Third Millennium
The Ladies of Missalonghi
The Masters of Rome series
The First Man in Rome
The Grass Crown
Fortune’s Favorites
Caesar’s Women
Caesar: Let the Dice Fly
The October Horse
Antony & Cleopatra
The Song of Troy
Roden Cutler, V.C. (biography)
Morgan’s Run
The Touch
Angel Puss
The Carmine Delmonico series
On, Off
Too Many Murders
Naked Cruelty
The Prodigal Son
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2011
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Colleen McCullough 2011
The right of Colleen McCullough to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
McCullough, Colleen, 1937-
Life without the boring bits.
ISBN 978 0 7322 9448 9
ISBN 978 0 7304 9897 1 (epub)
A823.3
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