I just received a sympathy card reminding me of something I'd prefer to have forgotten. My mother Helena died a year ago today. Sure, she had to go eventually (though 67 seemed cruelly young) but did she have to go so close to Mother's Day? How I hate those cheery posters selling gifts and cards and things-to-make-mum-smile that go up everywhere I look this time of year!
She's the one to blame or credit with my going into the arts. Same with my little brother Jon. She was emotionally explosive, highly cultured, off the wall- an actress at heart- and with her death, our nuclear family lost its muse. My dad, myself and my two brothers still get together regularly, but it's simply not the same without her energy.
So in honour of a showbiz personality who never found her way into showbiz- a creator of creators if you will- here's the eulogy I gave 12 months ago. On the one hand, it's so personal, it might interest no one outside my own family. On the other, it's the biggest story anyone can tell. A human life...
Mum once gave me a birthday card that showed one cow advising another: “On your journey through life, don’t forget to stop and eat the roses.” And that was very much her style. A piece of practical advice, sincere concern for my well-being, and a zany twist.
As her son, I ought to know her as well as anyone, but I wouldn’t claim I understood her completely. Still, the time I came the closest was four years ago, going through the old home movies to make a video of her life. And there were boxes of Helena. Whenever little Helena sneezed or said hello or crossed a room, it seems her Daddy took a picture. If not her Daddy then her husband, if not her husband then her son. And it hit me that she wasn’t just my mother, she’d been a centre of attention her whole life. She was the one the camera’d turn to. She’s the one who’d see the camera and go “Hi!” She loved attention. Revelled in it.
So I put in these shots of herself and her family, her friends and her dogs, in the places she’d lived, on the travels she’d made, which got gradually bigger and better the more time went on. I cut it to one of her favourite songs, and gave it to her for her birthday. And I guess she hadn’t looked upon her life as a success until she watched it all together in order like that, 'cos she was useless for an hour. Floods of tears. It became her favourite video, and the one she’d show to anyone who visited. Twice, if possible. That’s my happiest memory of mum. She loved the movie of her life. And we were all a part of its making.
The last home movie mum appeared in was Christmas last year. She was fun to be with, upbeat, gracious, everything she’s good at. But it turns out she already knew the cancer was returning. I asked her “How did you not show it, and I don't just mean on camera, but to us here in the room?” She answered simply: “I’m an actress. I’m a great actress.”
And she was.
She had a sweater at one time that carried the 2 masks of the actor: the comic face and the tragic face. I always thought that fit her perfectly. She was either very happy or very angry and there wasn’t much between. She might pretend to be happy to see you when in fact she couldn’t stand you. These extremes of her personality made her endlessly unpredictable, and also endlessly entertaining. We never knew what she was going to come up with next.
She got that off-the-wall vivacity from her mother. She had started out in Melbourne surrounded by Hoffmanns, Hausers & Werners, and carried many of their trademarks all her life. A love of dogs, good food, good wine, good conversation & good arguments. Love of culture: she read novels by the truckload, went to plays, went to the movies, knew the names of all the actors, and could make agreeable conversation with anyone. I don’t think it’s any accident that two of her three sons ended up in the arts.
Still, Helena had a practical side as well. She earned a Pharmacy Diploma, working here and overseas throughout her 20s. Once the puppy fat came off her, she got popular with the boys. Then before long she had married one, and within a few more years was raising her own. I think she always had a fantasy of living as an independent woman- she used to say “If I had my time over again, there’s no way I’d have kids!” But we’re not sure quite how seriously to take that. She’s the one who insisted on having more children, and for Coco the dog to have puppies and to keep two of those. Deep down I don’t think she minded too much hanging out with the family she'd bred.
When asked why she married our Dad all she'd tell us was “he was persistent” but there was obviously a lot more to it than that. She did admit telling her mother, the day of her wedding: “Mum, I love him,” then she’d add “Isn’t that sickening?” She would much prefer to tell us he had green teeth when they met, and that his face was a Bensley face just like his mother’s, “like a pancake with 2 raisins for eyes.” Yet she never seriously questioned the arrangement. Rex and Helena worked and played together, took big risks together, raised three children and three dogs, and made and spent a fortune together. Two apparently mismatched people in a marriage that stayed as solid as a rock for 40 years.
She was a good ally in business, managing the overseas accounts at Multi-Contact for a decade and a half. She helped him socially in many a roomful of strangers, with her talent for starting conversations from nothing. I remember him describing how she went up to some stranger at a function, said “Hello. I’m Helena Williams,” as she would. And then of all the left field things to say, she came out with “So what do you think of the slide in the dollar?” And it turns out this bloke actually worked in the currency market, and went on for the next half an hour about it!” She had a knack for saying the most perceptive things out of the blue, and none of us ever understood quite how she did it. She often worried we were running out of money, but despite some stressful times, it never occurred.
She was always drawn to water, especially since a psychic told her she must always live near water lest she shrivel up like a prune, and fortunately she had a husband who could afford it. She loved the waterfront at Seaforth where we lived for many years, she loved to swim among the fish at Heron Island, navigate the French canals, ride in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race spectator fleet, and meet the whales of Hervey Bay. She maintained a swimming habit right from girlhood into her 60s. One of my most enduring images of her is getting tickets to Heron Island from my Dad as a birthday present, and clapping her hands with glee like a little girl.
We could make each other laugh: we made a culture of our own: the weekly comedy hour over Sunday dinner, birthday cards ghost-written from the dogs. She added commentary to home movies of me as a child dancing adorably with a beer carton on my head. She’d say: “The things you do with kids. That’s not funny. Putting a beer carton on his head? That’s stupid! Absolutely ridiculous.” Her moods could be fiery, sunny, jaw-droppingly caustic, and usually funny as long as you weren’t in the crosshairs.
She proudly called herself a Jewish mother, even though she was only one quarter. Well into my 30s, I still had to call her whenever I drove interstate to reassure her I hadn’t died on the road that day. She cooked... reliably, but always like a pharmacist. If the recipe said you use 4.5 ounces of flour in something, then 4.5 ounces precisely went in. Not 4.6, not 4.4. At least you knew what you were getting, and the 7 things she cooked she cooked very well. Leftovers were invariably divided into individually sealed containers, marked with our names and what they were and when they were cooked.
She was concerned about our health and our good looks. Her girlhood memories of being taunted on the diving board with the words: “Jump, Porky, jump!” led to such helpful hints for us as: “You look so fat if you eat another thing you’ll burst!” She kept her own place in a state of Germanic cleanliness, and when she came around to visit, she’d insist on cleaning ours too.
Just before her first big operation last year, I said “You know, mum, I just realised something. Even if you lived a hundred years, we’d still never hear you say “Boys, don't change a thing. You’re simply perfect the way you are.” She laughed and said “I always want you to be better!”
Nevertheless, despite our failings and our flaws, I think it’s clear she loved the family she’d created. She wept when Rambo, the last dog she ever had, was put to sleep. She burst into tears when I left for L.A, saying “I said I wasn’t going to cry…” She cried as we receded out the door before her last big operation.
Not too long before her illness was diagnosed, I had asked her if she had any regrets. There were her kids who, in her words, had given her joy and despair, and she regretted the last few years at Multi-Contact when she should have returned to pharmacy, but on balance, she couldn’t think of anything big, and said in fact, “if I had my time over again, I don’t think I could have done as well.” She was slightly amazed that she’d managed to pack so much in.
By the end, she had travelled in time and in space: from Melbourne prior to World War Two up through the ‘56 Olympics, Houston Texas for the moon landings, Sydney for the opening of the Opera House, Germany during reunification, and Sydney once again for the Olympics. Big euphoric historic moments: she was right there in amongst them, time and again. In the early years of this century, she saw the first of the megaliners dock at Circular Quay beneath her city apartment, and the Airbus A380 flying in. By which time, nothing short of a comet crashing into the sea would have impressed her. No new year’s fireworks were as good as Sydney 2000. No apartment had a view as good as home. When a whale was in the harbour, she’d say “I’ve seen them from up close”. She’d seen it all.
But still, she didn’t want to go.
Her final performance was done for her family alone. It’s been said that there’s a moment when the parent becomes the child in the relationship. But that never happened here. She wouldn’t allow it. Staying classy to the end, she insisted on sitting up when Jon and I went in to see her at the hospice. When I kissed her good bye, she spoke up through the pain and the morphine and the total lack of energy in her body to say: “Thank you. You’re very kind. You’re good boys.”
What more could I want from my mum?