It has been 2 weeks and 2 days since my mother died.
Such is the nature of mourning. Every day counts. Each days brings us farther from the incalculable mystery of when they were still alive, and able to communicate with us.
There are few key messages to give to a parent, when there are few minutes left.
I love you, or I am sorry - or maybe, I forgive you - but always, finally, I love you, and thank you.
I want to write more about my mother, but she was very private.
I will say, now, as Halloween nears - she was the kind of mother who would sew elaborate costumes for my brother and me. I once went as Kanga with Roo in my pocket (in fact of course my Roo was a Kanga doll).
My mother was born in the Eastern Townships, Quebec, Canada, in a rural setting, though her parents were teachers. She had 3 sisters and one brother, and was the eldest sibling, which early on established her take charge approach. She spent some summers on the Gaspe peninsula, in Port Daniel, where her uncle and aunt owned a large farm with sweeping views of the bay. She grew up loving animals and outdoors. She loved to hike and ski (cross-x) and swim. As a teenager, she was an excellent track and field competitor. She became a vegetarian later, to underline her love of animals.
My mother was highly intelligent - she attended one of the best universities in Canada, McGill, entering a year younger than nearly everyone else, and studied for a teaching degree, taking courses in psychology with Dr Hebb, still one of the greatest neuroscientists of all time. As an aside, she had excellent handwriting.
She was beautiful - tall, blonde, athletic and slim, and was a department store model until she gave birth to me when she was in her early 20s. When she visited Hollywood when she was 18, it was said by my uncle Jack she was offered movie contracts, and turned them down, for she was already in love with my father, Tom E Swift, who was a top-20 recording artist with Decca records, in Canada, in the early 1960s; he did rock and roll. My mother and father were in love from the day they met until the day she died (he had died young in his 60s, too many years before her). They met at a skating rink at the teaching college for McGill.
My mother loved gardening; my mother loved to cook, and no one made cookies (biscuits), vichyssoise or other delicacies like she did. She also made the best macaroni and cheese, usually mixing in freshly sliced tomatoes, or tuna. She loved to dress up and go to movies or a meal or dancing with my father. She loved cinnamon gum, pearls, and lipstick.
My mother took me horse riding; she took me to James Bond movies when I was a kid. She'd let me stay home from school if a good Bogart film was on TV. When young she was a lot of fun. She liked to play Scrabble, eat cashews, sip Canada Dry. She enjoyed wine with her meal.
My mother did not like comedy, or cruelty, and she hated war. She despised the Flintstones because Fred lied to Wilma, and Hogan's Heroes, because it trivialised war.
She was greatly affected by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and some of her uncles had fought in WW2; her father, a crack shot as a country boy, had volunteered and been rejected on the grounds he had "bad eyesight" - an absurdity that perhaps saved his life.
My mother read a few books a week, her entire life. She read all the Canadian classics. She was a huge fan of Leonard Cohen, and took me to see him once in concert; I also went to Madonna with her. When I was younger, she used to plan long trips, across the USA or UK, and we'd drive for weeks, and see everything. She once went on a round the world trip just with my father, and they visited China extensively, when it was still a mostly-closed country (in the early 80s).
My mother studied our family tree, and was an expert on family history, going back centuries. She was very proud of our ancestors, some of whom were shipbuilders, admirals, and aide-de-camp to Viceroys. One of them once hosted a Royal Visit to their home (a Great House) and then went promptly bankrupt! So extensive was her genealogical knowledge that, at a banquet at Pembroke College, Cambridge, she found herself seated beside one of the world's leading Genetic Scientists; they ended up deep in conversation for half an hour after everyone else had retired to the next room for dessert wines by the fire.
She knew much about English, Scottish, Irish and Canadian history. She always voted Liberal, and admired Pierre E. Trudeau.
My mother was the most stubborn person you'd ever meet. My mother had zero interest in money, or business, or greed. She considered materialism a lesser state of being.
I was encouraged to be a poet by her. She used to read me poems all the time, and some she recited from heart. Her favourite poets were Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, and Frost, after Cohen. She used to recite "we are the hollow men" in a deep ominous voice, which made me laugh as a little boy.
My mother was not cuddly; she was not a physically warm person - she came from a family background that was stern, puritanical, and kept emotions unexpressed. She didn't like to hug, and rarely used the L word. But she was one to say when she enjoyed something: "that's really neat!"
She met personal and family tragedies with laconic stoicism. She went to her own death with little complaint, and no publicly stated metaphysical views on an afterlife. She was probably agnostic, though she belonged officially to the United Church of Canada, a bland and undogmatic denomination.
My mother's Achilles heel was handling negative aspects of her family's experiences - shadow sides of things. These were invariably swept under the carpet. Other than this aspect - which I have learned to contextualise - she was a wonderful mother. The lack of engagement with some major childhood traumas, including my own mental health challenges - strained to breaking sadly, sometimes - our trust bonds - because she was a sunnier person, who preferred to see life with its rose-tinted glasses on.
People who met her met a brilliant, stylish, culturally-interested person with the charisma of a slightly acerbic movie star. She liked to wear leather jackets and sunglasses into her late 70s. She loved the songs of Meatloaf.
...
My mother loved discussing outrageous subjects at dinner, murders, politics, UFOs. But she hated comedy and didn't like to laugh at my father's bad jokes. She held great parties for my friends when I was young, and kept all my school and debating records, and all my early writings.
My mother was an excellent Grandmother to my brother's son Alex. She doted on him, and became his best friend. She was a big fan of my brother's music and bands and was very supportive of him.
I see my mother in the round, as a passionate wife, a dedicated mother and grandmother; her own career as a teacher she set aside.
When young she drove a red sportscar, purchased with her modelling money. When my father died, she bought a sportscar again.
She was so alive, so strong-willed, so smart, so actively engaged in following the news, in caring about people and events. I consider it a tragedy of my life she and I clashed more as she grew older, but we both loved to debate issues, and had strong views.
I see now my mother was so much more than me and being my mother - and her whole life, was, on the whole, full of event, travel, love, food, books, movies, music, nature, pets, family - except for the natural tragedies of human life and human nature, it was not so bad after all, and in many ways, a great life, though it could be mused that such a brilliant woman would nowadays likely have sought a more public career. But my mother was private and did not ever seek attention.
Indeed, she had no funeral or obituary, and wanted no notice or fuss made of her death. What an enigma. I am so devastated she has died.
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