Champagne Laughter

April Fool's Day has just passed. This marked the anniversary of my mother's death, now six years ago. Her final breath was a moment of survivors' glory for us all (not only her nearest and dearest, but even the most far away, including, I have no doubt, some random guy waiting for a train at Frankston Station). And even though the time, sometime shortly after 10pm, by far dodged the prankster's hours, it was surely a surreal gesture to Mum's life that her family were no less than cheering in the hours which followed. Indeed, by 2am when the night doctor finally arrived for his ash cash - oh yes, even certifying the dead has its perks in the medical world - we had champagne laughter flowing. The fond banter, the jovial reminiscence, the joie de vivre of kiddies at a float parade marking 60 years of memories. Myself? Giddy with joy and exhaustion. So worn by the delirium of a weariness I could have bottled and put insomniacs to sleep with for a lifetime. In occasional glances, daring the guilt of such happiness to join us for more than a passing second, we would check our smiles, our relief, and offer up a moment of intended condolence for anyone who perhaps, maybe, just didn't get the joke. Eyes which would momentarily claim, 'Of course. You're right. This is so sad. Beth's gone. And too early, too young.' But only a second. Maybe too, wiped out by another hopeless grin lighting up some corner of the kitchen and blinding us all again.

It's ok to think whatever you're thinking. Denial? Shock? Despair? Some random spot on that incessant web of a grief map no doubt. Or maybe you've been here? Into such a room: The warm space of a family kitchen worn by sorrow and grieving, spit polished with the resilience and fortitute of loving through the barrage of messy, interminable death plodding around them.

Before Mum died, not just in the final two months but in pockets of time over a few years prior to her death, the terror of her dying would wake me at random hours such as the ones in which we were celebrating at the tail end of April Fool's Day. If sorrow and grief stabbed me, as I contemplated her 'not being' any more, whilst she was still alive, imagine how cruel it would be to me after her death. The torment was regularly unbearable. I would lie in my bed become a pool of acid and knives. Stab and burn and mock and the grief burnt my tongue and eyes.

Daylight was always reprieve after my mind got the better of me in such moments of reflection. I would be dulled by the burning into a sombre, sober plod through the day. And it would, of course, be another day. One in which Mum was alive. And life was still hanging about, fiddling with its collar, stretching its neck, twiddling its thumbs, putting on these occasional acts of purpose, no matter how seemingly trite or insignificant. It was always, until the end, just enough to ward of death.

I had just turned thirteen when my Mum got cancer. I'm thirty nine now. So was she. Perhaps why I'll rejoice at reaching forty? Unscathed. In some bizarre sense, despite knowing I'm in an average life span demographic in the late 70s or early 80s, forty seems like success. Like, once there, anything else is a bonus. That's how it was for mum. Although she wanted to see her kids become adults and I was the eldest of three. She begged her God for a few years up her sleeve. She got twenty. Twenty years in and out of cancer, the last few insidious.

Of course, most of it is superstition, the whole thing about surviving thirty nine unscathed by one of mortality's little elves and I'm not particularly that way inclined. But if my mother could pack in the amount she did in the two decades she shacked up with her 'friend' cancer, jostling for space, determined to get along with this bugger, share the cooking, the chores, offer it suggestions as to where else it might like to live, then what's not to embrace with a healthy body and a begging heart?

I am still wondering when I will begin the sobbing. But there's only so much death one can grieve over, perhaps. Like crying wolf. When it finally came, expecting to be fawned over, it had already had its turn. Well and truly.