The Home Song Stories Page #4

Yes, you did! You wanted her to die!

No, I didn't.

We were supposed to save her, Tom.

And now we've got no mother.

After Rose died,

Uncle Bill took an early retirement

from the Navy

and came back to look after us.

We lived with him for three years.

Then, completely unexpectedly,

on August 1 6th, 1 977,

Uncle Bill, our father,

had a heart attack and died.

May stayed in Melbourne

and got a degree in Psychology.

She works as a School Psychologist.

Although she kept all of our

mother's cheongsams,

she's never worn any of them.

I left Melbourne when I was seventeen

and went to study in Canberra.

Literature and Philosophy.

I eventually became a writer.

Perhaps the most unlikely thing

about our childhood is that,

in spite of everything,

May and I turned out kind of normal.

But we never talk about our mother.

Neither of us knows what to say.

The night my mother died,

I remember thinking,

I should cry now.

But I didn't.

In All these years,

I've never shed a tear for her.

Instead, I write about her.

Bringing her back to life, over and over.

Trying to understand her.

Or perhaps to punish her.

Or just to remember...

to feel...

to accept...

to forgive...

to love.

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