Penny Mulvey
9 January 2024
How did you see the New Year in? Mine was spent cleaning, sorting, driving to an op shop (several times) to drop off “stuff”. The kind of jobs many of you might have done before – once, twice or even more.
With my two sisters, I was rummaging through, putting aside and discarding the belongings of a loved one. Not just any loved one, but the one who brought me into the world. The three of us had come together for the second time to empty our mother’s house.
The woman who had outlived two husbands – my very strong-willed mother – had fallen (yet again) in the early hours of a Friday morning in late 2022, and this time death had claimed her.
Read more: Please don’t say to me ‘God is in control’
My father had died many years before. In fact, the last time I saw Dad alive was at my wedding when I was just 22. I flew up to Sydney and went to the funeral home before the funeral to say my farewells. I remember it so clearly. The body in the box was not my Dad. He might have had his physical attributes, but he did not have the spirit, the life, that defined him. Without that spark that gives us life, he was very much an empty vessel.
And so it was with my Mum. Part of the role of funeral homes is to “pretty up” our departed loved ones. We provide a suit or favourite dress, maybe some nice jewellery, and the funeral staff do the hair, put on some makeup, do what they can to support family members farewelling their beloved.
All that was in our past as we gathered at Mum’s home to sort through her life, each of us making different decisions about what should go, what might be worth keeping. Would that item have resale value? Is this letter worth keeping? Sometimes it was granular and sometimes the decisions depended on who was doing the sorting.
One of my sisters is quite sentimental. The other is entirely pragmatic. I’m more the former than the latter.
You might be asking why I am writing about this? You might not want to know, or you might have sorted through relatives’ houses before and be quite experienced at this essential task.
We collect so much of everything over a lifetime – clothes, precious items such as antiques, jewellery, letters, cards, pieces of art, kitchen items (so, so many!!), plants, friendships, furniture, books, photos, photos and more photos.
But what does one person’s life come down to? Maybe that’s the fundamental question. And even though I thought I knew the answer to that question regarding my Mum, in going through drawers and cupboards, I saw more of her than I had seen with my daughter eyes. A silly thing perhaps, but I was stunned to find a certificate awarding a teenage Pam her Grade V in Music Theory. My mother had never demonstrated any knowledge of, or interest in classical music when I was growing up. I had to persuade her to let me play a musical instrument. There was also a certificate relating to the Pianoforte.
In the small safe was a range of cheap jewellery, and an old letter from an insurance assessor that had valued every item of furniture, vase, china, painting, persian rug etc etc in the house. The letter dated back to the 1970s. Totally irrelevant now. Why had she kept it?
My mother was not a woman of faith. I tried to have conversations about God with her in the latter part of her life, but she was not interested. She did not want to talk about death and she had a strong aversion to funerals. I suspect she feared death, as many do. This is one of the strengths of faith. It gives language for death and it gives permission to talk about death as well.
What I did discover as I read cards that I and others had written to her over the years, and as I read copies of letters she had written to others? I saw a larger view of her than I had formed. I had always known she was generous. Mum had trained as a physiotherapist. She was smart. She was strong. She was immensely capable.
I had interviewed her about her life in the last few years and had put together a book. She was thrilled. But that did not reveal to me what some letters did. Mum tried to right broken relationships in her later years. She had written beautiful letters to two key people in her life with whom things had gone south. I don’t know whether those letters reached their intended sources, and I don’t know whether they made any difference, but I do know she tried.
My mother had lived a full life. I know without a shadow of a doubt that she loved me. And I am glad I was able, with my sisters, to undertake this job, for as I scrubbed cupboards, or stopped to look at photos or a letter, Mum felt present. Was I doing a good enough job? Why did I keep that item but not the other?
I also claim, with confidence, that God is the God of love who wants all people to be with him and the heavenly host. And so I hope that she, along with Dad, are with the multitudes in heaven.
Penny Mulvey is interim chief communications officer at the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne.
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