Rumour
9th November 2004, 04:11
I'd like to share with you an incident that happened in my life surrounding the death of my nana, and some of the memories I have of her.
In the last few months of her life, her health was poor and after some weeks of not being able to eat and weeks of tests beforehand, being in and out of hospital, the doctors realised it was due to bowel cancer. After the surgery to try and remove it didn't work, my family knew she had only so long left to live, and my mother would every other weekend - and often every weekend - make the four hour drive to be by her side. I can only imagine how exhausting it must have been.
I always remember her as being generous. You could never have enough food at her house, even when you were stuffed full after lunch she would still be offering you a banana, an apple, an orange, a cookie, to boil up some eggs, a piece of date loaf... I'd feel bad sometimes for having to keep saying no.
Not everyone was as disinclined to take advantage of her, however. Sensing death, the vultures were circling and it made me absolutely livid with outrage to hear that ex husband of one of my cousins had asked and gotten a $5000 cheque from her, and that another one had tried to get her to change her will so that when she died her house wouldn't go to her only two daughters, one still suffering from the effects of a stroke, but to him instead. That was when I was glad my mother became a trustee of her accounts, because she was in no state to be making those decisions and was such a generous soul she would have done it.
I have a lot of good memories about my nana, and I try to keep them close: the mammoth climb to the house she once had, the ant trails in the backyard that seemed like a wilderness to play in, the smell of her house, the way she liked to have a bet on the horses, the tv being up so loud as she got a bit deaf, getting $20 in a card on my birthday like clockwork, the letters she wrote....
I drew a picture of her for my mother, and it was by her bedside in the hospital. It sits in my lounge now and the scan I have of it doesn't nearly do it justice. I said a reading at her funeral. You know the one, they like to say it at weddings. The one about love, but here it was most fitting also.
I Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
My Nana (http://www.innertraveler.com/publicgallery/showphoto.php?photo=845&sort=1&cat=500&page=1)
In the last few months of her life, her health was poor and after some weeks of not being able to eat and weeks of tests beforehand, being in and out of hospital, the doctors realised it was due to bowel cancer. After the surgery to try and remove it didn't work, my family knew she had only so long left to live, and my mother would every other weekend - and often every weekend - make the four hour drive to be by her side. I can only imagine how exhausting it must have been.
I always remember her as being generous. You could never have enough food at her house, even when you were stuffed full after lunch she would still be offering you a banana, an apple, an orange, a cookie, to boil up some eggs, a piece of date loaf... I'd feel bad sometimes for having to keep saying no.
Not everyone was as disinclined to take advantage of her, however. Sensing death, the vultures were circling and it made me absolutely livid with outrage to hear that ex husband of one of my cousins had asked and gotten a $5000 cheque from her, and that another one had tried to get her to change her will so that when she died her house wouldn't go to her only two daughters, one still suffering from the effects of a stroke, but to him instead. That was when I was glad my mother became a trustee of her accounts, because she was in no state to be making those decisions and was such a generous soul she would have done it.
I have a lot of good memories about my nana, and I try to keep them close: the mammoth climb to the house she once had, the ant trails in the backyard that seemed like a wilderness to play in, the smell of her house, the way she liked to have a bet on the horses, the tv being up so loud as she got a bit deaf, getting $20 in a card on my birthday like clockwork, the letters she wrote....
I drew a picture of her for my mother, and it was by her bedside in the hospital. It sits in my lounge now and the scan I have of it doesn't nearly do it justice. I said a reading at her funeral. You know the one, they like to say it at weddings. The one about love, but here it was most fitting also.
I Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
My Nana (http://www.innertraveler.com/publicgallery/showphoto.php?photo=845&sort=1&cat=500&page=1)