farmdoc's blog post number 256

Today’s blog post is a day late. I’m ashamed, and sorry, to admit I’d forgotten that yesterday marked 13 years since Josie Patricia Ulman, my darling mother, died. Fortunately my sister Sue’s phone call to wish me long life, brought me to my senses. Mum was born in 1922, in her aunt and uncle’s house in Middle Park in Melbourne. Her parents were Sam and Jessie Myers. Her older sister was Sadie Leah. She attended Middle Park School, as I did, then MacRobertson Girls High School. Her only paid work, that I know of anyway, was as a comptometrist for Myer Melbourne. In her mid teens she accompanied her parents and sister on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe where they witnessed, and she diarised, the darkening thunderheads of fascism. She and my father were married in 1943. She was 24-years-old when I was born. She was ambidextrous. She had a favourite party trick of holding two pens side-by-side, one in each hand, and then writing left-to-right with her right hand, and mirror image right-to-left with her left hand. She was very musical. She played the piano. She adored opera. Also Broadway musicals. She was quite a good golfer. Naturally she barracked for South Melbourne and then the Sydney Swans. But she loved all sports. She could hold her own in any discussion about any sport. She loved telling how as kids she and a neighbourhood lad named Ian Johnson played backyard cricket; and he went on to captain Australia. She was devoted to her parents. Both had chronic illnesses – my grandfather (‘Bampy’) colon cancer and my grandmother (‘Nanna’) unstable diabetes. Mum cared for them during the years when Sue and I were growing up and we were living in Middle Park in a 3-generation household. By the mid 1960s my grandparents had died, and we were a 2-generation household. Then in 1969, suddenly, my father died. Mum was then nearly 47-years-old. Subsequently she had some men friends, but no serious relationships. For her last 26 years she lived alone, and she was desperately lonely. She blossomed into a lawn bowls champion. She won many competitions, she represented Australia in the Maccabiah Games in Israel, and she represented Victoria in open national competition. She was an enthusiastic voluntary worker for several organisations, mainly Jewish ones, and especially Temple Beth Israel Women’s Guild and the Montefiore Homes for the Aged. Also she was a frequent visitor to many people whom she termed ‘the sick, sad and lonely’. She adored her seven grandchildren. And they her. In her heyday she was renowned for her cooking. Her food, though not fancy, was always delicious and plentiful. In her grandchildren’s eyes she was a legend for her jelly with fruit pieces in it. And they gobbled her frozen grapes. She developed vascular disease, and her later years were punctuated by operations on her coronary and carotid arteries. I think that under the anaesthetic for her last carotid artery operation, she had an hypoxic episode which affected her brain function – especially her balance, but also her handwriting of which she had been so proud. Despite this, she continued to attend the opera with Sweetheart Vivienne and me. She’d bring her little red book and read us the plot synopsis of the opera we were seeing. And she’d bring more than enough lollies and other treats. They were joyous occasions for us all. On Saturday 30 December 1995 she and Sadie and others went to the Elsternwick Hotel for an early dinner. She was walking up a ramp into the hotel when she fell, perhaps due to diminished balance, and struck her head, causing bleeding into the brain. She was taken unconscious to Alfred Hospital where tests showed brain damage too massive for surgical treatment. She remained in a coma, and she died the next day – 13 years ago yesterday. At the time I was devastated her death had been so precipitate. But as the years have passed, I’ve come to believe it was a blessing. She was a proud woman who wouldn’t have tolerated the loss of independence and dignity that would undoubtedly have been her lot had she not died suddenly when she did. She lived independently and with dignity until the second-last day of her life. And that’s how I remember her. But I’m ashamed, and sorry, that I’d forgotten yesterday. I won’t forget again.