Jean Eileen “Gemma” Chalmers

Jean Eileen Ellison was born in Victoria House in Warrington, Cheshire in 1935. Her grandmother Ruth Bramhall ran Victoria House as a gentleman’s boarding house; she also ran a corner shop. Jean said that Ruth was very much the businesswoman, way ahead of her time.

Ruth’s daughter, Jean’s mother Doris Bramhall, met Jack Ellison at the local church where they both taught Sunday school. Doris and Jack were married in August 1929. They had two daughters, Ruth and Jean.

Jack was an inventor. Jean remembered his workshop full of gadgets, including a haybale-lifter that he sold to a local farmer for a pittance. The farmer registered the design and sold it to Massey Ferguson. “They made a motza out of it,” she said.

During WW2, Doris and Jack ran The Lamb, a traditional English pub in Whitchurch, Shropshire. When the family dog Dandy had puppies with a neighbour’s dog, Monnie, Jean adopted the runt of the litter and named her Victoria Plum. Vicky Plum loved to ride into town in Jean’s bicycle basket.

At school, Jean enjoyed Latin, history and French. She played tennis and got to know another player, Margaret Maidley. Jean described Margaret as very funny, very droll. She and Margaret remained close for the rest of their lives.

Jean won admission to Battersea Domestic Science College in London. At a social night there in 1954 she met a group of men from the neighboring Battersea College. That group included Murray McGrath, who she found delightful, and Robin Chalmers, who she thought was a very pushy Australian. Of Robin, Jean said, “We could talk. With a lot of the people I’d tried to go out with, I had nothing to talk about. Robin chattered away. He was interesting.” Jean loved Robin’s intelligence and how practical he was, how good with his hands.

Jean and Robin were married in Whitchurch in 1961. Jean wore a dress from Brown’s of Cheshire, long-sleeved and short-skirted with a fitted bodice, a Parisian design. Margaret and Ruth were bridesmaids and the best man was Ivor Wong, a friend of Robin’s from college who also remains close to the couple. Jean and Robin honeymooned in the Lake District, visiting the Beatrix Potter museum and Derwent Water.

After the wedding, Jean and Robin lived in a flat on Narbonne Avenue near Clapham Common in London. Robin worked as an electrical engineer and Jean as a comptometer operator. They loved going to jazz clubs to hear Humphrey Littleton, Chris Barber, Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine.

When Jean became pregnant, she and Robin moved to a semi-detached house in Shirley. Jean remembered hedgehogs in the garden. Sarah was born in 1965 and Iain followed in 1967. Jean was always very touched at what a doting father Robin was. When they were bringing Sarah home from the hospital, he pulled the car over before they got home. “I have to hold her,” he said. “The nurses wouldn’t let me hold her.” Iain was a home birth, and his dad caught him.

The family sailed to Australia in 1968 on the Fairsky. They saw albatross, dolphins and flying fish. Jean found Cape Town beautiful but was shocked by signs saying For Whites Only and For Blacks Only.

In Sydney, Robin found a job with AWA Two more children followed: Alain in 1969 and Rachel in 1971. With the birth of Rachel the family outgrew their house in West Pymble and moved to the house in Frenchs Forest that would be their home for the next thirty years.

Jean found work at Avon, where she met Hazel Young, the second of her two great friends.

Jean herself was very funny, very droll. She was a working mother – like her Nana, ahead of her time – but she was dedicated to her children and always took their side. When Sarah was diagnosed with epilepsy and when Alain had a badly broken leg, she became their tireless advocate and fought the medical establishment on their behalf.

For a shy, quiet English rose, she had an unexpected spirit of adventure. In 1983 she announced that the entire family would be going away on a hot-air ballooning weekend. It was the first of many such adventures, and quite unforgettable. But daily life in her home was also full of pleasures, like roast Sunday lunches and uproarious games of mah jongg.

In 1990 Sarah married Ian Marrett, whose grandmother lived two doors down from the Frenchs Forest house. Their daughter Kelly was born in 1995 and Ross followed in 1997. In 2000 Rachel married Jeremy Fitzhardinge. They had Claire in 2002 and Julia in 2005. Jean attended the births of all four grandchildren, intrepidly flying solo to San Francisco to help out with Claire and Julia.

After retirement Jean and Robin sold the Frenchs Forest house and bought the Motley, a Winnebago. For seven years they explored Australia, seeing Uluru in the rain, watching whales off the coast of Western Australia. They also flew to Trinidad and Tobago for the wedding of Ivor Wong’s son. They picked up the friendship as if it had never been interrupted. It was the trip of a lifetime.

In 2007 Jean and Robin settled in Barraba, which Robin believes is the most beautiful small town in Australia. Jean quickly became involved with the Clay Pan. Her grandchildren were always plentifully supplied with beautifully knitted cardigans and hats. Jean also made many exquisite pieces of needlework.

Investigation into trouble swallowing in August 2013 showed Jean had aggressive oesophageal cancer. A period in Sydney having radiotherapy treated that cancer, although on January 7 2014 scans showed secondaries.

Jean spent the last four weeks of her life being nursed at Barraba Hospital. The dedicated care and excellent facilities there gave Jean precious time with her husband, sons and daughters and friends. Her great friend Hazel joined with Jean’s daughters in caring for her in Barraba Hospital.

Jean’s sense of humour remained glorious: laughing off concerns about her visitors’ germs, she said: “That won’t kill me!”

Jean is survived by her husband Robin, eldest daughter Sarah, her husband Ian and children Kelly and Ross, eldest son Iain and his partner Rachel, younger son Alain and younger daughter Rachel and her husband Jeremy and daughters Claire and Julia.

A great lady, my mother.

Their names are inscribed on little brass plaques on all the family-supporting pieces of kit in the palliative care room.

Kate Spencer gave us the Rupert Richardson watercolour of Mulwarree. Tony Brown gave us the TV and Clarrie Sugden the DVD. The boombox is from Woody Woodgate. Col Howarth gave us the chair and tables on the patio, and I sleep on Peter Milson’s fold-out bed.

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What piece of kit will have my mother’s name on it?

—–

Sometimes the ghosts open the door and let themselves in.

—–

Last night Mum dreamt she rode Alfie. This morning she started up, saying: “Bebe? Bebe?” She could hear my cat meowing.

—–

I don’t believe in ghosts. I do believe in love. I believe in kindness. I believe in bearing witness. I believe that this matters, and that it’s worth it.

• Sarah: “Sorry, we’re fussing over you again, aren’t we?” Mum: “I like to be fussed over.”
• Have I mentioned how compassionate the nurses are? Humbling.
• Giving Mum water. Hazel: “Don’t know how much you want.” Mum: “A whole jug full.” Me: “I can put gin in if you want.” Mum: “Gin and tonic.”
• Mum: “This is so lovely.” Me: “Having everyone here?” Mum: “Yes.” Me: “We should have done it years ago.” Mum: “Yes.”
• “Look who it is, Mum! It’s your number one son.” “NUMBER ONE SON!”

Mum slept all day Wednesday. I called my brother, Mum’s best friend and my aunt and uncle to let them know how things stood. My brother and Mum’s best friend decided not to come, under the circumstances.

My Auntie Barb and my Uncle Ron, both in their eighties, already busy supporting their youngest daughter Lynne whose husband is also dying of cancer, dropped everything and drove for nine hours to see Mum.

We expected them at 10.30pm. I called the innkeeper every hour until 1am. I slept fitfully from 3am till 5am. No news. I imagined my aunt and uncle dead in a ditch. I called Jeremy and cried.

They were already safe in bed at Andy’s Guest House, of course. Ron was scathing of my concern.

Ron: “Why on earth would I be dead in a ditch?”

When they came in to see Mum, she woke up and wept for joy at the sight of them.

Mum: “I can’t believe you came all this way to see me. It’s so kind of you. I’m speechless.”

Ron: “Obviously not actually speechless.”

We had good hours after that, until Mum realized that her best friend had cancelled her flight. She cried out in pain.

Oh reader, I hope you never have to feel what I felt then.

I called Hazel, who instantly rebooked her flight. She should be here within the hour.

Auntie Barb, saying goodbye to Mum: “Thank you for taking such good care of my little brother. It’s been a wonderful life, hasn’t it?”

After a string of terrible nights, Mum slept peacefully until 9.30am.

“You’ve been asleep twelve hours,” I told her.

“Twelve hours! What time is it? Sarah will be cross.”

“You needed it. You were very tired.”

“I was.”

I helped her into the bathroom. She was very staggery.

“Your hair looks beautiful,” I told her as she washed her face. Jenny came and gave her a haircut yesterday.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“You look beautiful,” I said, and she smiled at me so that her face lit up. “Do you want to go back to bed or sit on the sofa?” I asked.

“Not the bed. But I don’t want to knock you flat.”

“You won’t. I play with horses, remember? And I probably outweigh you now.”

“You probably do!”

“I don’t have to catch you. I just have to push you back over your center of gravity.”

“You’re right, that’s true.”

She made it to the sofa, holding on to her bed and her trolley. I told her what I’d been chatting to Jeremy about. She felt a little ill and asked me to pat her back.

“She only keeps me around because I beat her,” I explained to the orderlies who’d come to clean.

“You can get me back for all the times I beat you,” she said.

“Revenge at last!”

The orderly was anxious to make sure she didn’t walk around in her bedsocks on the wet floor.

“But they have these spots on the soles, so I don’t slip,” said Mum, showing her. “They’re really good.”

The orderlies left and Mum dozed off in my arms. I shifted to hold her better.

“Am I too heavy?” she asked drowsily.

“No,” I said. “I like cuddling you.”

She hasn’t woken up yet, not even when the nurses moved her back to bed in a mechanical sling.

Nurse Karen: It’s great that you two have such a good relationship with your mother. I envy you. I don’t have that.

Sarah: She is the best mum in the world.

Mum: I don’t know what I did.

Me: You always took our side, even when we were in the wrong.

Sarah: You loved us unconditionally.

Me: You took out a second mortgage so I could go to college overseas.

Mum: Did you know, I’d forgotten about that!

Me: AND THEN YOU FORGOT ABOUT IT.

Nurse Dale said: “Every day is precious now.”

She said, “What people want most now is your time.”

Mum’s sleeping more and eating less. She’s sleeping now. When she’s awake, she’s – I have run out of words to describe her valor and derring-do. As she gets thinner she is more and more like a bolt of silver fire. Like Galadriel, only funnier.

My brother Iain and his partner Rachel drove up from Sydney last night. Mum’s overjoyed to have them here. We played some good mah jongg this morning. Mum won a game.

Rachel’s car was fine all the way to my sister’s house, then broke its fanbelt on the way to Pam’s. Luckily Adam is in Tamworth today, meeting his parents and picking up his puppy. He’s getting a new fanbelt for Iain and a new pair of tongs for Dad, who broke his old tongs collecting fallen needles from around the base of the Bunya pine.

I drove down to the markets to spend a bit of time with Dad. We had coffee together in the Playhouse.

But I can’t stay away from my mother for very long.

I love her.

First a clarification on behalf of Dad, who I am pleased to discover still reads my blog with close attention. Dad’s view on his own condition is that he has a little problem with his language, not with his memory.

—–

Dad and I went for a lovely drive the other day. We went out to Mulwarree, the homestead that is the original of the Rupert Richardson watercolour in Mum’s hospital room. It’s only 7km out of town, but the Hereford cattle, the dry golden paddocks and the gnarled gum trees are pure outback.

The lightning storm on Monday night had sparked a bushfire on Mount Hobden, and we could see the smoke streaming off the mountain and the haze falling from it like white rain. We stopped behind the saleyards so that I could speak words of love to four Thoroughbred broodmares, their bellies heavy with foal.

—–

Mum is …stable. She eats little or nothing and keeps little enough of it down, but she can cope with Sustagen, and usually has a glass of it on the go. Sylvia the syringe driver keeps her pain at zero, mostly.

The improvement this has made to her quality of life is hard to adequately convey. After Christmas (when Mum was still treating her end-stage cancer pain with the equivalent of Tylenol) it was hard for her to sit up long enough to play a game of mah jongg. She was folded in on herself. She looked grey.

Now she is comfortable, and the glow has returned to her skin. We play for hours. We watch The Last of the Summer Wine. We finish crosswords. She is teaching Sarah to do crosswords. She tells jokes. She is full of good cheer.

Morphine is mercy.

—–

She is a remarkable listener. Her friends come by and tell her extraordinary, deeply personal stories. Mum is a quiet and accepting presence. It’s a privilege to witness.

—–

I’m settling in for my fourth night on the pull-out sofa. I take my meds, I brush my teeth, I eat healthy food, I swim my laps.

I take each thing as it comes. I look for things that need doing. I do a little bit of work while Mum is asleep.

I’m very lucky to be here.

I’ve slept on Mum’s pull-out sofa bed the last couple of nights. I am expert in the use of Mum’s TV, DVD and breathing bed. I have the freedom of the hospital kitchen.

I leave for an hour or two at a time, to spend time with Dad (whose dementia doesn’t comprehend the severity of Mum’s illness, a perverse blessing), to hang with my therapy wolf (who put a vast paw through my rose gold necklace, but I found the charms in the grass, so it’s okay), to swim endless slow laps at the pool.

Mum’s still funny and brave. From my Twitterstream:

• Nurse: “I thought, when I looked in the other day, you look like a family on summer holiday in a motel. I thought, I wanna sit with them!”
• Somewhat difficult night but “I’m all right really, you know,” says Mum.
• Sarah: “I’m going to make zucchini slice. I feel like a zucchini slice.” Mum: “You look like a zucchini slice and all.”
• “Sarah’s coming over in five minutes.” “Is she bringing the Bailey’s?” It’s 8am.
• “Mum, you’re amazing. You are so strong.” “People keep saying that. How else would I be?”

David Foster Wallace may not have been the best choice. Palliative care is not unlike a cruise ship; comfortable and existentially horrifying.

The syringe driver’s name is Sylvia and it’s our new best friend.

I stayed the night with Mum last night. The sofa in her room folds out. “We’re camping!” I said. “That’s right,” she said. We were both glad I was there. I am good at rubbing her back when she is throwing up.

Her illness bores her, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She loves having her family and friends around her. She wants to chat and play mah jongg.

“Beautiful mum,” I said, “brave mum,” and she laughed.

Her dear friend Hazel is coming from Sydney today.

This morning I went to Jane’s for a shower and to cuddle my lapwolf. I called Jeremy, who told me about Bebe. “Her eyes are still bright,” he said.

Now I am at Henry Street, where Sarah’s black kitten is mewing hello to me and walking across the keyboard purring, exactly the way Bebe likes to do.

I am glad I saved the works of David Foster Wallace for this moment in my life.

Today was a bit easier, a bit harder. Mum slept most of the day. I sat by her bedside reading, or slept in the quiet room across the hall. Friends visited and the family came and went. Sarah and Kelly sat on the couch for hours finishing a cross-stitch of the Cat in the Hat that Mum had started for Al.

She’s still well in herself – a weird thing to say about someone with metastatic cancer, but she doesn’t feel “old” and doesn’t like calling the nurses because it’s not as if she’s “really sick.” When she’s awake she’s very present and enjoys our company. Nurse Dale believes the pain relief is allowing her body to rest itself for the first time in eight months.

I had a long talk to Big, who pointed out that we really need to make sure Dad’s laptop is backed up in case he drops it in a bucket. This is not likely but if it did happen, it would be bad. Sarah has a terabyte USB hard drive lying around, so Al’s going to take it over tomorrow. Systems administration as an expression of love.

So my darling old catty chose a fine time for her kidneys to fail. That’s not entirely sarcastic: I was dreading making final decisions for her, and now Jeremy will do it for me. He brought her home and is giving her fluids and she’s feeling better and will have a peaceful death surrounded by love. Still, yesterday was not easy, and when I said goodnight to mum and she hugged me I was shaking.

“Shh, shh,” she said, stroking my hair.

“Oh no, don’t comfort me or I will start to cry, and if I do I’ll never stop.”

“Yes you will,” she said serenely, and rubbed my back.

In one way yesterday was magnificent. She has had the pump installed – it’s called a syringe driver – and now she is on a continuous dose of morphine. For the first time since she got sick, last May, Mum has zero pain.

Before Big left he said: “What’s humbling is, she isn’t just content. She’s happy.”

This morning we played mah jongg. Dad was very present. He won twice and Mum won twice. This afternoon my brother Iain dug a new post hole for Mum’s mailbox. My brother Alain arrived in the evening. He and Sarah and Mum and I opened the bottle of shiraz and had uproarious fun. We snuck past the nurse’s station in gales of laughter.

Tomorrow Iain and I will set the mailbox in cement. “We will cement the hell out of that hole,” as he put it. Then he has to go home to Sydney.

In between, as I ran various errands, I wept in the arms of Lauren, who runs the deli, and Karen, my Barraba yoga instructor.

People are beyond kind.

Tomorrow Mum gets a morphine pump.

Heat wave. Glaring sunshine. Birdsong. My fucking heart is broken.

I woke at dawn, beset by bird life: galahs, cockatoos, King parrots, rainbow lorikeets, magpies and currawongs all yelling their fool heads off just outside my window.

I’m staying with Jane. She and Darcy and the twins live in one of the lovely old Federation brick houses on the hill above the river. Her spare room is vast, with a high ceiling and a glowing wooden floor and nothing in it but a shelf and a bed, and it opens onto an east-facing verandah. It is so exactly the quiet refuge that I need that when I saw it I was struck dumb. No idea how I can ever thank Jane and her family.

Quiet, that is, except at dawn, with the birds.

I sat on the verandah and glared at the birds and called Jeremy as the sun rose. When Darcy and Jane came out for coffee their dog Chicken came too. She’s a Scottish staghound but she looks a little like the Anatolian shepherds I saw in Turkey and a little like a wolf. She’s bigger than I am. I cleared off the sofa I was sitting on and Chicken kissed me and put her arms around me and her hairy cheek against my face.

“She was bred as a pig dog,” Jane explained. “She could track the pigs and hold the pigs at bay, but she just didn’t want to kill them. They even gave her some piglets -”

“To tear apart?”

“Yeah that was the idea, but she played with them instead. When I heard that, I knew she was the dog for me.”

How do people get through this without animals? Sarah picked me up and I went to Henry Street to snuggle with the creatures there: four dogs (Jake, Peppa, Jess and Toby) and three cats (Oskie, Missy, Tiz). I always thought it would be me with the menagerie.

When we got to the hospital Mum demanded mahjongg. Big had forgotten the rules but not so much that he didn’t win the third game, after Sarah won the first and Mum won the second.

My brother and I arrived to find Mum with her pain under control: radiant with delight at the sight of us, quick to laugh, interested in everything. The palliative care room is beautiful, with a sofa for guests and a door onto a patio. We brought in the quilt that Mum’s friends at the Claypan made for her and it lights up the space.

We talked and talked.

Me: “I asked Dad what he liked most about the years you two were traveling, and he said: ‘Lizards.'”

We all fall about.

Big: “…although lizards are cool.”

Me: “They are!”

Sarah: “Remember the big goanna in Townsville?”

Mum: “With the plastic bag?”

Sarah: “That was amazing.”

Me: “I don’t know this story!”

Sarah: “This goanna – he was huge, like three or four feet long – apparently he hung around the picnic ground a lot, and the day we were there he turned up with a shopping bag wrapped around his head and caught in his jaw.

“So Dad lay down on the grass and the goanna, this wild goanna, it came up to him.

“Everyone in the picnic ground stopped talking. Dad carefully unwound the bag, and the goanna opened his mouth and let Dad lift it off his teeth. Everyone was staring. You could have heard a pin drop.”

Me: “WHY. ARE THERE. NO PICTURES.”

Mum: “We were just caught up in the moment.”

Sarah: “This was before people had cameras all the time. The thing could have savaged Dad. I remember it as being four or five feet -”

Mum, laughing: “Not THAT big -”

Sarah: “No, but in my memory, it’s a Komodo dragon, you know, dripping blood off its teeth.”

Me: “With WINGS.”

Big: “Breathing FIRE.”

(Dad blogged it!)

We are in Barraba, staying in the Playhouse Hotel. This morning Jeremy, Andrew and I had a mighty argument about Harold Pinter over freshly baked croissants. My mother is frail but valiant. My sister is a force of nature. We swim every day and galahs fly overhead, having a bloody good time. There is too much Baileys and Christmas cake with marzipan and icing. Today Julia won mahjongg thrice.

Going through security in Auckland International for the, what, twentysomethingth time this year? I thought, plaintively: I want to go home. But I could not work out what I meant by the word home.

Sydney is very much itself: glary and humid with a gusty breeze; the loud billboards and cheap furniture importers all along O’Riordon Street, and beyond them glimpses of tree-lined streets with nineteenth-century terraces; the lorikeets screaming; the coffee delectable.

Mum has responded well to her treatment and is eating better. Sarah has been a brilliant caregiver. But they are both sick to death of being so far from home. On Friday we will all pack up and go back to Barraba.