The Blackest Book

My mother had a stroke. Full, left sided paralysis. Permanent. It was an incredibly heart breaking and stressful time to witness and support her through. I knew that only death would cure her. I gave her a small black book to write some of her memories in. I didn't read what she wrote as I thought it was private. The weeks flew by and then the months. There was a slow, excruciating debilitation throughout that time. She became quieter, less interested in anything. She slipped further and further away from me and then she died. That was it. Death was so final. It didn't matter that she was 82 years old at the time. Having your mother in your life is often the most beautiful part of your life but you don't know that at the time. The time I had with her would never be enough.

Whilst packing up my mother's belongings from the nursing home I came across her black book. I put it in my handbag to read at a later time, perhaps after the funeral. Life went on in the midst of grieving for my mother. Hectic, chaotic and busy times with my children and grand children. Normal life resumed and months went by. On the anniversary of my mother's death I thought it was time to read her black book.

In tiny writing my mother had written the story of her life. Funny memories and terrible tragedies. She wrote about her father and her escapades with him during the war in Holland. One of her memories was having to use garden hose as bike tyres and trying to be as quiet as possible riding the streets in the night to fill bags with acorns from the oak trees to feed her grandfather's pigs.

My mother and grandfather would also ride on their bikes at night to find flowers for funerals. After my grandfather died, my mother continued to find flowers for the funerals of family and friends that died throughout that terrible time. To be caught out at night after curfew would mean immediate death by the Gestapo. I asked her why finding flowers was so important. My mother said that you must have flowers at a funeral to show that you were loved and known within your community. It would be shameful to be buried without flowers. At my mother's funeral flowers were placed all around her coffin. Every flower imagineable and especially tulips.

She wrote about the birth of her sister and the day six weeks later when her father was shot by the Gestapo and died. She had rarely spoken of this when I was a child but in my mother's final years she grieved for the loss of her father at 12 years old and how that impacted her life. Her father and four other men had rescued an injured British paratrooper and were hiding him whilst he healed from his wounds. All five men were shot dead that day on Bakker Straat in Arnhem. They did not die straight away. Many lay groaning for hours. People nearby were warned not to help them or they would be shot too. Later the Gestapo came back and shot each one in the head. There is now a memorial plaque listing the names of the men. When my mother's sister was 12 years old she was hit by a truck and died whilst riding her bike.

I asked my mother once why she would have left her mother to migrate to Australia. She said that was what you did - whatever your husband said you must do. My mother and grandmother wrote to each other every week on airmail parchment. My mother never saw her mother again after she left Holland.

When my mother was 72 years old she travelled back to Holland and it miraculously was the 60th anniversary of her father's death and it was celebrated in a church in Arnhem. After the service, a lady came up to my mother and gave her an old Holbrook's tobacco tin. The lady had found it and held onto it for 60 years hoping to find a relative of the man it belonged to. Inside was her grandfather's name, his wedding ring and a medal. On the outside of the tin was a big dent of where one of the bullets hit. As it was in his left shirt pocket it had stopped it from hitting his heart. Bullets in those days were not as lethal as they are now. My mother went back inside the church and lay her father's wedding ring on a bench to thank the church for commemorating his death every year for 60 years. She brought that in back to Australia and loved telling the story of how she came to have it.

My mother's stories helped me to understand why she had this incredible quality of joy and happiness. She laughed and danced and sang, always. She taught my children how to laugh from their bellies. Big, joyous laughter. She knew how sad life could be and how hard so she enjoyed every good moment life gave her. Even her eyes sparkled with glee when she was happy.

Reading my mother's black book made me laugh and cry at the same time. It healed the terrible loss I was feeling. Her stories brought her back to me. As I finished reading, I checked the little wallet at the back of the book and found one of those tickets you have to scratch with a coin to see if you won a prize. I scratched the ticket and found that it was a winning ticket of $20,000.00.

I knew exactly what to do with the money. I would take my family to Holland. We would walk the streets of Arnhem and lay flowers in Bakker Straat for my grandfather. We would visit all the places my mother loved and find any family still living and my mother would be with me on the journey. She had given me many gifts throughout life about living it to the fullest, but this was one final gift that would allow me to walk in her footsteps and know where she came from. That was the special gift. The gift I will never forget.