After by Nikki Gemmell

Author:Nikki Gemmell [Gemmell, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2017-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

The Speaker: ‘It is with sadness that I report the passing of Elayn Gemmell, who was a valued casual member of the switchboard team for the past 13 years. Elayn passed away suddenly on 23 October 2015. Elayn was the mother of Mark, Paul and Nikki and known as Nonna by her much adored six grandchildren. She was a beautiful, fun-loving and gentle person. Elayn always approached her work with professionalism, dedication and enthusiasm and was extremely proud to work for the Parliament of New South Wales. She will be sorely missed by all who knew her.’

The colleague explained that members and officers of the House, the entire chamber, then stood in their places as a mark of respect for Elayn.

*

In the churchyard afterwards the grandchildren release balloons that match the riot of flowers on Elayn’s smart white coffin, into a tall blue sky. G, the funeral director, and B, the vicar, walk slowly behind the hearse, side by side, as it’s driven solemnly out the iron church gates by a woman in her broad-brimmed hat. It’s a deeply moving image. The couple from the local restaurant, where we’d had Ticky’s birthday dinner less than a fortnight before, do the catering for the wake. We offer up Elayn’s favourite celebratory tipple, bubbles with orange and mango juice, her tropical Bellini. Elayn would have loved it. All of it. We got it right.

*

Yet Boh cannot stand up to do his poetry reading. He’d insisted on speaking at the funeral but broke down when he saw the confronting sight of the coffin at the altar. I hadn’t prepared the children for that: Nonna dead in a box, with us yet not. My boy is a heave of weeping throughout the service. For months he’s been the thirteen year old going through all the normal, clanging, hormonal changes, and now this. Various family members hold him; most fiercely, myself. Without a word Boh’s older brother, Ticky, takes his poem and reads it for him when it’s his turn and he cannot. With all this, the family is growing up.

Gleaning a truth here: of the imperative to be more tender with family members, only that. Everyone has their struggles. I looked across often at my fragile, broken Boh during those days, lost in a place I cannot completely reach. Know that I have to learn to give up the children to the wild places; the wild places that are not mine. Every parent does.

*

R – a friend of Elayn’s in her eighties – grips my fist after the service, tighter than it’s ever been held. ‘You’re now a part of the S.W.S.,’ she whispers.

‘What’s that?’

‘The Strong Women’s Society.’ She speaks as if this is a highly secret, select organisation to which I’ve suddenly, finally, been granted honorary membership. Mum was a member of it too, R declares; she had been for decades. Holding on to that. Seizing her interpretation of the unknowable; still, the unknowable.

*

At the service’s conclusion, Boh breaks down once again. Stays in the church, embarrassed.

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