May 12, 2019
It’s Mother’s Day here in Australasia. I called Mum in New Zealand this morning. No answer. This worried me because a couple of days ago, she’d had a funny turn. My sister Jocelyn and I worried that it might have been high blood pressure or her heart but Mum refused to talk about it. ‘It’s over, Rover,’ she told me. ‘I’m fine now. Just shut up about it, Diane.’
When I couldn’t get hold of her this morning, I worried. I called Jocelyn. She’d spoken to Mum a couple of hours earlier. ‘She was fine. A bit chesty but fine.’ My brother David lives near Mum but he’s away this weekend. My mother lives in the country. She is partially sighted and can no longer drive. She can’t go very far unaided.
In the middle of all this, I got a message from my brother Bruce, ‘I’m eating breakfast with your mother.’ He’d driven two hours to surprise her with a Mother’s Day breakfast. I called his mobile and told him that Jocelyn and I were worried about Mum’s heart after the funny turn. He replied, ‘She’s just ordered Eggs Benedict and beef brisket with ciabatta bread.’
Photo: My mother and sister, taken during summer.