Beyond Words
#birthday memories
Beyond Words
49 Memories
My birthday is a complicated time for me.
My mom passed away in 2001, two days after my 25th birthday. Her funeral was a week later. I struggled to read my eulogy, “Beyond Words.”
Mom’s passing hit all of us hard, but my dad was the most affected. He’d been taking care of her as a T4 paraplegic for 20 years, and had forgotten how to take care of himself.
My mom became confined to a wheelchair at 28 after a freak car accident in 1983. The back tire of her car blew while driving on a dirt road. She was on her way home from work.
Mom then suffered from cancer and the debilitating treatment needed to keep her alive in the last two years of her life.
I was dancing in the corps de ballet for Cape Town City Ballet when my dad phoned to let me know the doctor told him mom would pass within the week. I needed to come home as soon as possible. We were in the middle of a season of Swan Lake at the Artscape Theatre. When I told Professor Triegaardt (CTCB’s Artistic Director at the time) about my dying mother, she told me take as much time off as needed to go and see her in Durban.
The journey from stage to airplane to hospital was a blur. When my mom saw me she said, “My son’s here. I’m ready to go home now.”
I was lucky enough to fly home in time to say the most important words a son can say to his mother:
“I’m here, mom.”
“Thank you for being my mom.”
“I love you, mom.”
“I’m doing okay, mom.”
“I’m happy.”
“I’ll take care of dad.”
Thanks to the morphine, mom died peacefully and pain free in her bed at home in 2001. She was surrounded by her husband and her two boys in the house she said she was going to die in when she first saw it.
It was a lifetime ago, and yet her passing still feels like yesterday.
I’m 49 years old this year, and as I approach my half-century, I feel deep regret for not getting to know more about the amazing woman my mom was.
Name: Ethney Lydia Ashby (aka “Kleintjie”)
First female telecommunications electrician in South Africa.
Born: 1953/07/01
Died: 2001/01/23
Married: to Stephen Douglas Ashby on 1975/06/18
Star Sign: Cancer
Chinese Zodiac Sign: Water Snake
An incomplete list of memories:
Hobbytex painting. My mom ordered these from Australia and used them to paint by numbers. I still have a few small paintings I painted with my mom.
Mom knitted like a machine. She knitted little teddy bears that she stuffed and then sold. She knitted a large Pink Panther for me. I remember it was a gangly thing with long legs and a long tail. It wore a big smile at all times.
Our kitchen was red because my mom loved that color.
I loved it when my mom sat outside our house in the sun. On the weekends she would order my dad and me around to dig holes in the garden, to move plants and flowers around from one corner to the other. One time she fell out her wheelchair while trying to pull out weeds because we didn’t move fast enough.
My dad built a long ramp for my mom to get in and out of the house on her own.
Mom loved her ferns. She talked to them because she heard somewhere that if you talk to your plants they grow better. They grew very well indeed. She was constantly muttering while pruning them on the verandah area.
Mom loved each of her little lapdogs. I remember her Toy Pomeranians: one called Lady and then the other, Sheila. Lady crossed her legs like a lady and ate like a lady. Sheila loved barking at everything. She also had a little Jack Russell Terrier called JR who used to lick her feet when she sat on the bed. Mom only had one dog at a time, and they kept her company.
We spent a lot of time in our parents’ bedroom watching TV. We had very few SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) channels to choose from: TV1, TV2, TV3, TV4, and M-Net. We would watch the 8 o’clock news together after the 7pm show. By 8:30 there was nothing left to watch. Sometimes there would be a 9 o’clock movie geared towards adults. I remember peeping through a crack in the door to watch a science fiction horror TV series called V. It featured aliens who looked like us, but were really lizards wearing human masks. They were here to steal our water and to eat people.
Mom needed a large number of pillows to help her sit upright on the bed, and we spent a lot of time arranging them so she was comfortable.
Mom smoked Benson & Hedges Special Mild. Her bedroom walls and ceiling were stained yellow from the smoke.
Mom loved warm Diet Coke.
Mom loved eating wet and fatty biltong. And she always shared her biltong with us.
Mom took a lot of medicine every day. Her bedside table sat on wheels and contained a large number of pill bottles.
Mom’s toughest day was a Wednesday, her toilet day. She spent most of the night on the commode. She still went to work on Thursday.
Mom wore beautiful gold rings and a silver charm bracelet. These all mysteriously disappeared when she passed away. My brother took her wedding ring to be melted down and made into two gold crosses. I still have mine, although it gets discolored very quickly when I wear it around my neck.
Mom was pregnant with me when she married dad at 21.
I don’t have any memories of my mom walking or standing on her own.
My dad told me that mom would often pass out when she did gardening because she had low blood pressure. She’d squat down for too long to pull out weeds and then when she stood up too quickly, she’d feel dizzy, then pass out, and end up rolling down the hill. I imagine her curled up like a little flower fairy with her ferns. This was a long time before she ended up in a wheelchair.
Mom could play the organ and the piano. After her car accident, she still played the piano when she had the chance. I think that’s what inspired me to learn the piano. Whenever I play, I always imagine mom is listening and cheering me on.
My dad says mom was a great dancer. They used to go out and dance together a lot. I remember my dad dancing with my mom in her wheelchair. She really enjoyed bopping around in her chair.
I started playing the piano in high school, and loved it when I could practice and play “Moonlight Sonata” for my mom. She came to all of Rodney Ashe’s Music School concerts. I made a lot of silly jokes while playing the piano in these concerts to hide my nerves and to make her laugh.
Mom always wrote in neat but tiny capital letters.
My gran told me that my mom always used to say, “Oh man, Quenntis, you are so stupid!” when I was little. Apparently I did a lot of very stupid things. My gran told me about this when I visited in March because she remembers me calling her stupid when I was a toddler. “Oh man, granny, you are so stupid!”
Mom was the only one who could get my brother to tell the truth.
Mom loved collecting these tiny bottles of alcohol they served people on flights. She lined them up on the pelmet in her bedroom. My brother sneakily drank all of them and refilled them with water. We were shocked when we found out.
Mom was very observant. One time she noticed the freeway M-Net electronic board was out of order. She phoned them to let them know and a few months later she received an M-Net towel in the mail as a thank you.
Mom had very strong arms from pushing her wheelchair and from lifting her body up regularly.
Mom made her own dresses. She taught our part-time maid how to use a sewing machine and even gave her a sewing machine. She soon left to work in a clothing factory.
Mom spent a lot of her free time on her own at home confined to her bed. She kept herself busy. We all did. I kept an ear open for her call and always stopped whatever I was doing to go and help her when she called for me.
Mom loved listening to Queen and Michael Jackson.
Mon owned a little .22 pistol. When she saw a strange shadow through the curtains one day she called out that she had a gun because she couldn’t get out of the bed and onto her wheelchair. The potential home invader quickly turned around and ran down the ramp and far away. Mom could be a fierce force of nature.
Mom drank brandy and diet coke when she visited nearby family for Christmas or for weekend braais. We often visited our Oupa Attie and Ouma Ralie.
Mom had two sisters and two brothers. Nolene. Glynis. Malcolm. Donovan.
Mom worked for the post office and was one of the first qualified female telecommunications electricians in South Africa.
Mom worked long hours and often worked overtime. She was the hardest working person I ever knew.
Mom often told us about her wheelchair adventures at work. She would go out the building during lunch time for a smoke break. Sometimes she’d ride her wheelchair in the road because there weren’t any ramps on the sidewalk. I imagine her zooming down the road with a cigarette in her mouth directing traffice and magically creating ramps wherever she needed them.
One time, when we lived at 6 The Crescent Road, mom gave me R10 (ten rand) to go and buy her a packet of cigarettes. The cafe was a ten-minute walk away. I came back home, gave her the cigarettes, and realized I’d dropped the change along the way. I walked back to the cafe with my eyes glued to the ground and found the change near a pedestrian bridge. There was a hole in my pocket.
Mom couldn’t swim and was deathly afraid of water. My dad always held her when he took her into the spa pools at Natal Spa. She would sit on a step with her arms supporting her.
One day I brought Kurt (a new school friend) home from high school. Kurt couldn’t look her in the eye as this was the first time he’d ever seen a paraplegic. He was very uncomfortable throughout his visit. After he left, mom told me Kurt was not welcome in our house because he looked shifty and couldn’t look her in the eye. She was a quick and harsh judge of character.
Mom supported my writing. Whenever I’d show her my scribbled words she would read them quietly and smile, telling me to keep going.
Mom didn’t really understand the strange person that I was while growing up, but she always cheered me on.
When I was a baby, mom didn’t know how to hold me to bathe me. I was a ‘floppy baby’. So she asked my granny Shirley to help her out. I wish she was around now for me to ask more questions about how she struggled to take care of me.
I caused a huge fire because I played with matches in the field outside our rabbit farm. When my mom got home I told her I had caused the fire. She was so freaked out she picked me up and hit me with a bamboo cane. I don’t remember this, but my dad told me what happened. She was a fierce woman. This was before her accident.
I blamed myself for my mom’s car accident for years. I thought God was punishing her for my sins, specifically for the fire I had caused.
Mom went to church a few times after her accident, but she didn’t like how everyone kept praying for her to be healed. She was completely happy being a paraplegic and had come to terms with the fact that her spine would never be unbroken.
Mom and dad visited me in Cape Town when she was diagnosed with cancer. We went up the cable car together and spent some time on the top of Table Mountain. It was cold so she had her shawl around her shoulders. I had been dancing for a while and hadn’t been home in a long time. My dad took some amazing photos of the two of us. I’m forever grateful for these photos. She looks so proud of me and yet so profoundly sad that her time left was so limited. I could sense she was trying to soak up as much of life as she could.
When she visited me in Cape Town, she had a meeting with Professor Triegaardt (the head of the dance school), showing her a letter I had written to her. She was proud of making Prof cry. She told me that Prof asked her, “Why doesn’t Quenntis show us his heart?”
In mom’s last year of life she tried chemotheraphy and radiation therapy, but it made her too sick and didn’t improve the quality of her life. So she stopped treatment. She had stopped working by then and dad took her around South Africa on trips to keep her spirits up.
I creid when I saw mom on that hospital bed. She was so tiny and so thin. She’d lost so much weight and didn’t resemble the mom I knew. Her face lit up when I walked in the door. She said, “My son’s here, I’m ready to go home now.” Mom died at home a few days later, just after my birthday. I found her still warm body first. I knew immediately she had passed away. She was no longer struggling to breathe and looked at peace. I held her warm hand for a few minutes before calling my dad and my brother.
Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday this month. It really warms my heart to read all your messages and your good wishes.
I love you all more than words can say. My love is beyond words.
“Mom”
Mom echoes across
Miles and years of memories:
I listen with my heart.