Prologue: The Party Coffin
There is a photo of my mother in a coffin.
Her eyes are closed but her glasses are still on, indicating that she is, in fact, alive. She’s clutching a bouquet of fake red roses and is surrounded by bunches of fake flowers in real (although empty) beer bottles. She’s managing not to smile.
The coffin belonged to one of my mother’s ex-boyfriends. I think his name was John, but it might have been Allan, or Steve, or Mike. It was a great prop to bring to a Halloween party in 1990, and much hilarity no doubt ensued as people climbed in and out of it, pretending to be dead.
My mother, Gwen, no longer has to pretend to be dead. Just before she reached that inevitable state, we were discussing funeral arrangements.
‘Hey Mum,’ I said. ‘Do you remember that boyfriend of yours–the undertaker?’
‘John?’ she said (or Allan/Steve/Mike).
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Could he do your funeral?’
‘No, he’s dead,’ she said.
And then we laughed and laughed, until the cancer in her kidney gave her a pain in the stomach and she was reduced to wincing and giggling.
It was a moment of levity, taking place for her in the midst of three weeks of surprise suffering, belated and incomplete taking stock, and indignities; and for me, in the midst of surprise anguish, attempted and ineffectual resolution-finding, followed by a years-long eruption of feelings
of abandonment hitherto under – if not unfelt.
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