In Leonine Eyes
April 14th 2008 15:33
Now it sits before me, on my desk, Rothschild's Titana box; age worn, yet its labels are still intact. Inside the lid, a gaudy gold coin and family crest display, centre of which is she, Titana, I presume. It is an old cigar box, which I rescued today at my dearest friend's house, who had died last year.
The executor invited my mother and me to come over, while my friend’s possessions were taken away for auction. My mother had to collect a drawing she did for her.
I wanted to go the day before and just sit quietly, midst her now “still life’ background, ponder upon the times we laughed and the times she buoyed my flagging spirits. To sit within her home, imagining; her writing at the desk, laughing in her lounge, painting her colourful and deeply verdant garden.
But no, it always seems such things can never be. When we arrived, there was chaos. The house a mess, paper, objects, stuff strewn everywhere, nearly all of her furniture was already packed in removalist trucks, a constant stream of blue overall clad men coming in and out, their bullishness a cipher for Chinese Olympic Flame guards, keeping me away from my sorely needed solitary moment. I felt like leaving immediately, or screaming; ‘GET OUT!’
I remained silent and subdued, the uneasy waves not breaking my stilled surface.
I still needed to see and stop for a moment; be where she chatted to me over the phone, to sit where she wrote to me, with that incredible copper-plate perfect, calligraphic handwriting, to know the visual stimulation she drew upon, as she filled her notes and cards with praise, thanks and fun and always remembering her favourite ‘fur-niece’ Stella, our dear old pug dog, and the long 'chats' she had with her over the phone.
I wanted to fill my nostrils with memory-scent, my ears, catching long spent echoes of fun and fond thoughts.
But no. The executor had to rush off. Poor man was sick. He left us with it.
The removalists were too busy and mother couldn’t remember where her desk had stood. This was my first, and last, visit to my friend’s home. When I returned to Sydney, nearly two years ago now, she kept putting me off visiting, keeping me at arms length, via the phone and by card. I think she didn’t want me to see the physical state she was in; she probably thought I would make demands that she get better medical help.
I would have, and she would have hated me doing it.
Rooms now gapingly empty, antique adornments missing, in their stead the accumulated detritus of years, hallmarks of her indifference, having stumbled into social self exile, years past; from dust to dust, we and our houses shall all go.
Faint dust-shadow imprints of missing paintings, dust free lines of an old Chinese screen cleanly zig zagging across an unswept corner, clues to an absent Victorian chaise longue, and Edwardian armchairs, having left the gnarled ball stamp of their feet upon the old, worn, wide boards.
I found myself momentarily alone, in her bedroom, this place whispered death, more than the others. The mattress stood upright against the wall, as if awaiting execution. An old worn walking stick leaned nearby, as if waiting for her to return.
She left her stick,
aye, when away, they took her.
They took her away to,
hospital hearth where,
cash strapped care,
chilled the air,
all delivered up,
an ugly,
public,
ward death.
The memory of it affects me deeply.
I saw her the day before. She died 9am following, or was that just the time when they noticed? My last visit, I saw her slippers were in the same kicked off position, under the side table by her hospital bed, still festooned with the same dust ball I had noticed two weeks before.
They could easily have not noticed, those busy-busy bodies of nurses.
I had agreed to meet with the director of the hospital unit, to arrange her move to a nice private room, so she would regain some sense of dignity before her death. She was a proud yet gentle soul, of great personal integrity, warmth and compassion. An elegant woman who never abandoned her femininity, from the day she embraced the ideals of equality between the sexes, in the 1930s.
They rang that meeting morning, before I left the house.
“Hello, fog? It is Dr. Anan here. I am sorry to tell you, your friend died at 9am this morning.”
Today, I stood in her bedroom; it looked like the aftermath of a TV drug raid. It looked defiled and abandoned. I touched her cane. I stared blankly and felt nothing. The hustle and bustle of the removalists subjugated any sensation of presence, burying my emotional response, the volcanic upheaval my soul sorely wished for.
I walked out of that hive, the drones more like fierce wasps destroying a rival nest.
Outside, at the front of the house, I stood before her beloved sentries. Two old stone lions that had dutifully followed her ancestors, when they travelled out from England.
These two weary fellows had stood guard at all the homes she had lived in. She first got to know them when four years old, at the home of her grandmother, who owned a gracious old mansion on the harbour side, in Mosman. She did not like her grandmother, who was authoritarian and judgemental, but she had no option but to stay there. Her grandmother’s attitude to her was the antithesis of what this testy old woman’s religion professed to extol.
The hypocrisy taught my friend to be an atheist. The authoritarian attitude taught her to rebel. When 18, the Second World War gave her escape and in the WAAF, in Melbourne, she met my mother. They became life long, wickedly humorous friends.
Her mother had been incarcerated in an asylum, when she was a very young girl. Her father struggled to make ends meet, while leaving her for safe keeping, in her grandmother’s care.
Then he died. They both died.
From the age of four, my friend spent many a solitary hour in the grounds of that old place, trying hard not to be seen and never heard.
In leonine eyes,
a history hidden;
in leonine earlobes,
childhood secrets spat,
whispered and whimpered;
those sad-stone lugs,
chagrin imbued, became,
softened by,
mossy green.
Envy these sentinels,
stilled harbours of woe,
wise was their wizardry,
aiding a child's,
sense of sanity.
Stone creatures inscrutable,
truths unfathomable are,
their craggy cracked faces;
staring,
silent,
knowing,
stoic.
After eighty six years of friendship, these lions still proudly lay mossy, giving me courage, before this precipice of change; they, defiant of the drama unfolding, await their new destiny.
The executor invited my mother and me to come over, while my friend’s possessions were taken away for auction. My mother had to collect a drawing she did for her.
I wanted to go the day before and just sit quietly, midst her now “still life’ background, ponder upon the times we laughed and the times she buoyed my flagging spirits. To sit within her home, imagining; her writing at the desk, laughing in her lounge, painting her colourful and deeply verdant garden.
But no, it always seems such things can never be. When we arrived, there was chaos. The house a mess, paper, objects, stuff strewn everywhere, nearly all of her furniture was already packed in removalist trucks, a constant stream of blue overall clad men coming in and out, their bullishness a cipher for Chinese Olympic Flame guards, keeping me away from my sorely needed solitary moment. I felt like leaving immediately, or screaming; ‘GET OUT!’
I remained silent and subdued, the uneasy waves not breaking my stilled surface.
I still needed to see and stop for a moment; be where she chatted to me over the phone, to sit where she wrote to me, with that incredible copper-plate perfect, calligraphic handwriting, to know the visual stimulation she drew upon, as she filled her notes and cards with praise, thanks and fun and always remembering her favourite ‘fur-niece’ Stella, our dear old pug dog, and the long 'chats' she had with her over the phone.
But no. The executor had to rush off. Poor man was sick. He left us with it.
The removalists were too busy and mother couldn’t remember where her desk had stood. This was my first, and last, visit to my friend’s home. When I returned to Sydney, nearly two years ago now, she kept putting me off visiting, keeping me at arms length, via the phone and by card. I think she didn’t want me to see the physical state she was in; she probably thought I would make demands that she get better medical help.
I would have, and she would have hated me doing it.
Rooms now gapingly empty, antique adornments missing, in their stead the accumulated detritus of years, hallmarks of her indifference, having stumbled into social self exile, years past; from dust to dust, we and our houses shall all go.
Faint dust-shadow imprints of missing paintings, dust free lines of an old Chinese screen cleanly zig zagging across an unswept corner, clues to an absent Victorian chaise longue, and Edwardian armchairs, having left the gnarled ball stamp of their feet upon the old, worn, wide boards.
I found myself momentarily alone, in her bedroom, this place whispered death, more than the others. The mattress stood upright against the wall, as if awaiting execution. An old worn walking stick leaned nearby, as if waiting for her to return.
She left her stick,
aye, when away, they took her.
They took her away to,
hospital hearth where,
cash strapped care,
chilled the air,
all delivered up,
an ugly,
public,
ward death.
The memory of it affects me deeply.
I saw her the day before. She died 9am following, or was that just the time when they noticed? My last visit, I saw her slippers were in the same kicked off position, under the side table by her hospital bed, still festooned with the same dust ball I had noticed two weeks before.
They could easily have not noticed, those busy-busy bodies of nurses.
I had agreed to meet with the director of the hospital unit, to arrange her move to a nice private room, so she would regain some sense of dignity before her death. She was a proud yet gentle soul, of great personal integrity, warmth and compassion. An elegant woman who never abandoned her femininity, from the day she embraced the ideals of equality between the sexes, in the 1930s.
They rang that meeting morning, before I left the house.
“Hello, fog? It is Dr. Anan here. I am sorry to tell you, your friend died at 9am this morning.”
Today, I stood in her bedroom; it looked like the aftermath of a TV drug raid. It looked defiled and abandoned. I touched her cane. I stared blankly and felt nothing. The hustle and bustle of the removalists subjugated any sensation of presence, burying my emotional response, the volcanic upheaval my soul sorely wished for.
I walked out of that hive, the drones more like fierce wasps destroying a rival nest.
Outside, at the front of the house, I stood before her beloved sentries. Two old stone lions that had dutifully followed her ancestors, when they travelled out from England.
These two weary fellows had stood guard at all the homes she had lived in. She first got to know them when four years old, at the home of her grandmother, who owned a gracious old mansion on the harbour side, in Mosman. She did not like her grandmother, who was authoritarian and judgemental, but she had no option but to stay there. Her grandmother’s attitude to her was the antithesis of what this testy old woman’s religion professed to extol.
The hypocrisy taught my friend to be an atheist. The authoritarian attitude taught her to rebel. When 18, the Second World War gave her escape and in the WAAF, in Melbourne, she met my mother. They became life long, wickedly humorous friends.
Her mother had been incarcerated in an asylum, when she was a very young girl. Her father struggled to make ends meet, while leaving her for safe keeping, in her grandmother’s care.
Then he died. They both died.
From the age of four, my friend spent many a solitary hour in the grounds of that old place, trying hard not to be seen and never heard.
In leonine eyes,
a history hidden;
in leonine earlobes,
childhood secrets spat,
whispered and whimpered;
those sad-stone lugs,
chagrin imbued, became,
softened by,
mossy green.
Envy these sentinels,
stilled harbours of woe,
wise was their wizardry,
aiding a child's,
sense of sanity.
Stone creatures inscrutable,
truths unfathomable are,
their craggy cracked faces;
staring,
silent,
knowing,
stoic.
After eighty six years of friendship, these lions still proudly lay mossy, giving me courage, before this precipice of change; they, defiant of the drama unfolding, await their new destiny.
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Comment by tlcorbin
Comment by Louie
randomthoughts
Phil's Wellness Tips
Louie
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
I appreciate it very much.
Juanita was my great friend, confidente, counsellor, comic audience and "Aunt".
cheers
fog
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
tanx very much indeed, you honour me with such praise, and I am glad, not for me, but it means I managed to convey some of the amazing character I admired and loved so much, my "Aunt" Juanita!
cheers
fog