A Few Words

Friday, 20 May 2019. Words at my mother’s funeral.

Good morning everyone, thank you for being here with us today. The show of support since mum passed has been incredible, including people travelling from as far as Japan to be here.  We would never expect people to make the journey but we are so deeply grateful that you have.

Some people who didn’t know mum very well or not at all, and who are here to support myself, Petra and Johnn, again we are deeply grateful. 

A big thank you to friends and family, to my STA family who have been so wonderful as things progressed with Mum’s illness and to my new Les Mills family who have been so understanding and supportive given I just started my new job with them 22 days ago!  It seems fitting to be there as I have memories of sitting in the back of the Les Mills gym in Auckland watching mum do her jazzercize class.

Thank you to Johnn and Petra for everything you have done for Mum and particularly when she went into hospital.  A special thanks to Auntie Diane who has been our solid rock.  We are eternally grateful for your support and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

And although they’re not here we want to acknowledge how amazing the medical staff have been.  We saw doctors, neurologists, dieticians, physiotherapists, psychiatrists and many wonderful nurses who cared for Mum.

Although we knew this day was going to come it is very surreal to be standing here.  Mum was one of the healthiest people you could meet – very active, hardly missed a day at the gym and ate very well (apart from a sweet tooth).  The first signs of the disease appeared when her speech slowed down back in June 2017 and then disappeared altogether a few months later.  We could never have imagined then what we were facing and that our Mum would come to the end of her life so unfairly at just 57 years of age.

But she packed a lot of experiences into her life and for that we are truly grateful.

I came into her world when she was 22.  She had just finished her psychiatric nursing training and had been working at Tokanui Hospital.  She often spoke about her time there, including when a mentally ill elderly lady almost knocked her out with a punch in the nose!

Mum raised me on her own until Johnn joined our family when I was about three.  She proudly purchased our first home in Te Awamutu, and I remember the creaky floorboards and a giant pond in the front yard with fish that she dug out as she was afraid the neighbours kids would fall into it.

The back yard bordered on a farm and Mum had always told me to never go over the fence as they sometimes had bulls in the paddock.  Starting young with my defiance my three year old self wanted to see what was down the hill.  So one day Mum couldn’t find me anywhere and then finally looked in the back paddock to find me running as fast as my legs could carry me shouting ‘the bulls are after me, the bulls are after me’ as some curious cows wandered after me.

Then there was the time I tried to help Mum out by filling the petrol tank…with water…. We made it about a k out of town before the car conked out and Grandad had to come try and get us started.  I kept quiet but he figured it out.

Gran likes to tell the story about coming over one day to find me eating a dirty bean – if I was hungry before dinner I could eat something from the garden.  Mum got her green fingers from her father and she had an impressive vege patch as well as a beautiful flower garden that she spent many hours tending.

I remember one day waking up and finding a person lying on the lounge floor.  I was scared but I tip-toed around them, turned the TV on and then tip-toed back to the sofa to watch cartoons.  I was maybe 4 or so.  Turns out it was Mum’s first aid dummy….

Mum would often host Guy Fawkes at our place which would also serve as my birthday celebration, being just a couple of days later.  All the family would be over lighting fireworks into the night.  Mum loved hosting events, she would put so much effort into baking, often sewing an outfit for the birthday girl as well.  She was a great host but preferred to be in the background to make sure the event was a success.

Mum was pulled over by the police one day while we were transporting the cat to the vet.  She had a red 1970s triumph Toledo and the back seat didn’t have any seat belts.  The cat had taken priority with the front seat and I was in the back which the officer wasn’t too thrilled about. 

Mum loved animals and over the years we have had cats, dogs, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, turtles, a hamster and fish.  We had a very loved cat called Pagan.  When mum went to choose a cat there was a beautiful fluffy one, and Mum picked Pagan, the black cat with a tuft of white as she knew the fluffy cat would be snapped up soon.  That cat was so pretty and she didn’t want the black cat to miss getting a home.  That care extended to insects, another trait from Grandad, and we would never ever kill a spider that was in the house, it would be placed carefully outside.  Later in Bangkok, the scorpion that turned up on our kitchen floor also got chauffeured out into the garden after we’d had a good look at it up close.  In our apartment a few years later she bought a nest and it attracted birds to our 19^th floor balcony.  Johnn wasn’t even allowed to eat breakfast out there in case he disturbed them.

We left Te Awamutu when I was 8 and moved to Auckland. With no Google maps or GPS we ended up over the harbour bridge (which is a terrifying view down when you’re from a small town). We were meant to end up in Orakei!

Coates Ave was a great first house in Auckland with a big garden that was like a maze.  Kurahaupo St after that was in a bit of a dodgy neighbourhood as they didn’t have a lot of money back then and that was when Petra came along.  I was supposed to watch her being born but instead was quarantined with chicken pox.

With both of her pregnancies Mum got very sick with hyperemesis and with me actually was put into an induced coma for two days and at times almost died.  Apart from these events she was incredibly healthy.

My parents decided to build a house and they found a stunning spot on the edge of an estuary in Pakuranga.  Mum spent a lot of time painting the house, creating the beautiful gardens and sewing the curtains. It was a labour of love that lasted about five years before it was fully finished and that was only because we were moving to Thailand.

The move to Bangkok happened when I was 16 and Petra was 7.  Up until then Petra and I had never actually been on a plane.  We navigated this new world as best we could.  It was extremely hot and the bread tasted funny.

It was pretty rare to see a falang – or foreigner – back then and we had the most amazing experiences.  I remember the first time we saw an elephant in Bangkok we were so incredibly excited.  We pulled over, dived out and fed it bananas.  I also remember visiting a local restaurant and pointing at a dish written in Thai and hoping for the best.  Out of all the amazing Thai dishes that could have arrived we had managed to order chicken feet…

We all have special memories about our house on soi 49.  That was the real Thailand, amongst the locals.  We had a big back yard with a lot of trees.  We had birds, lizards, bats, toads and even once a snake.  One day we came face to face with a tokay, a giant of a lizard that Thai’s consider unlucky.   The squirrels ran back and forth across Thailand’s very famous spaghetti mess of phone lines.

The locals got to know us as the only way to get back to the main road was a little red truck, like a mini ute.  You could only get them until a certain hour though as then they’d be getting drunk with their mates in the evening.  When we left Mum gave her favourite driver Petra’s dollhouse and some clothes for his daughter.  As a relatively poor man he was shocked at her generosity and so thankful.

Mum explored Bangkok by foot, out early every morning to avoid the heat and taking long walks to her favourite coffee spot.  She discovered the red bus on one of the main roads would just drive people up and down that very long road.  She was the only foreigner on this basic bus with its windows open to the car fumes.  It cost 7 baht, or 34 cents.

She did a lot of volunteering in the early years including with aids babies.  She was part of a women’s group that worked with a lot of needy causes.  She started a psychology degree and got top marks on her assignments.  She had dreams of counselling people one day.

We were very pleased to be able to offer some of Mum’s clothing and household items to charity.  The Aunties are an Auckland based organisation who exist to provide sustained support for, and walk alongside, women and their kids who have been through domestic violence.  We couldn’t think of a better place to send her things and know she would be so happy to be able to help so many people in their time of need, particularly women.

Mum had a real generosity of spirit and a care for people, even though she wasn’t always able to say the right words. 

And even when she had no words at all.  I had dental surgery recently and Mum came over with food for me.  I was so touched that she was the sick one tending to me.

To her core, Mum lived for the betterment of her daughters lives.  She made sure we studied hard, even tutoring us herself in certain subjects.  Education was very important and she was an avid reader, something she encouraged with me.  A number of people have commented in the last few days that she would have been so proud of me and my achievements and I simply wouldn’t be who I am today without my mother’s guidance and encouragement in education.

She loved to learn and had a real love of medicine and science.  She was also deeply spiritual and believed in her version of god.  Our hearts are warmed with the knowledge she wasn’t afraid of death and the thought that she may be looking down on us today.

I would have never wanted to have admitted it but Mum and I share so many traits.  Today I am very proud of that.  Our love of reading that I mentioned.  She loved to dress well and was always looking very classy.  She was very strong willed and definitely wore the pants in our family (sorry Johnn).  She was so caring of people, insects and animals.  She liked design and collecting beautiful objects for the home.  She was inspired by me to complete an interior design diploma (and then went and got better marks than me).  A love of travel.  And a shared love of shopping.  Thank you Mum for making me both soft and strong.

I am deeply sad but I am so grateful for what we had.  Small moments like holding hands in hospital, a special message she wrote for me the day before her death, ‘Sarah Lovely’, Mother’s Day with all of us there.  She had some lovely trips in the last couple of years including to the South Island with Gran, Cheryl and Brian, motorcycle trips in the North of Thailand and heading off to Papamoa beach for the weekend.

She was a very special lady and we are going to miss her very much.

When we realised she had a terminal illness I started to make decisions to ensure I lived my best life.  And we hope that you will take that message away with you today.  Don’t wait to say I love you, do the things that make you happy and drink the expensive bubbles.