TheBanyanTree: Life

[PJMoney]

Mum rang up a few days ago.  She wanted to let me know that she had sent me
a letter by registered mail.  She registered the letter because she'd put a
cheque in it; a gift for us for Christmas.  

Dear old Mum, I thought.  What a sweet old girl, I thought.  And then I
promptly forgot about the letter; so much else has been going on.  

The eldest boy lost his job down in Central Oz and is moving back home.
He's 36 and the last time he was here, two years ago, he chafed so much
about being his age and having to live with his parents and not being able
to rent a flat - seems like real estate agents have an aversion to renting
to single males of a certain age - that I thought I couldn't bear to go
through all that again.  So I've been running around looking at flats we
might be able to afford to buy so he can live there and live his own life
while going back to uni to get the teaching qualification he was trying to
get before everything went bad for him.  And having done the running around
and found a fixer-upper we're now mixed up with getting all the inspections
and conveyancing done.

I also have the other two boys at home.  From being an empty nester I have
gone back to being a mother again.  The dishwasher is full every day.  The
washing has to be staggered over two days.  One or other of them wants to
borrow my car almost every day rather than drive the un-airconditioned
Veedub that I have never and will never drive.  Petrol bills are
skyrocketing, the noise level in this house has appreciated significantly
and I have more than just my husband to get cuddles from and to annoy.

Then there's our 25th anniversary which is coming up two weeks after
Christmas. This time I'm determined to have a big party because I feel
enormously pleased to have achieved this milestone.  So I've been designing
the invitation, trying to get my husband to decide on who he wants to
invite, thinking about the menu, worrying about the decorations, the music,
the seating arrangements and so on and so forth.  We do, at least, have a
venue booked but all this rushing around has left me feeling very tired.
And I did something to my back a few days ago, I think while I was sweeping
the carport.  However I did the damage it's made it difficult to get
comfortable while lying down.  There can be no sleeping on my stomach - a
favourite position.  I have to lie on one side or the other with one knee
directly above the other - no languorous sprawling possible.  What a
nuisance!

In any case, I had forgotten all about my mother's letter when the notice
came today to collect an item of registered mail from the Post Office.  The
last time we had such a notice it turned out to be a subpoena, or something
like that, requiring my husband to go to court and give evidence in the case
of a defence force member who was aggrieved about having been dismissed.  My
husband was, accordingly, quite anxious about what the item of registered
mail could be until he saw that it came from my mother.  

So he, quite relieved, brought it to me and then I remembered what Mum had
said about the cheque.  We thought it might be a considerable sum, maybe a
thousand dollars or something.  But it turned out to be twenty thousand
dollars.  

I don't know what to think.  It makes me feel terribly sad.  My mother is
preparing for her death.  She's decided she doesn't need the money any more.
She only has to pay taxes on it.  Why keep it?  She can give it away and we
won't have to pay taxes because it's a gift.  I'd rather have my mother than
her money.  I don't want to think about her dying.  Life sucks.