Maggie Dies

I get up early. There is a missed call on my phone, I see, but I don’t know the number. As I come down the stairs I see the door sausage is moved away from the door as though someone had already left the house. Since it was just before 6am that seemed unlikely.

In the lounge room, I’m still curious about the door sausage being moved in the middle of the night, so I go and have a look to see if the Golf is locked, maybe Mark left something in it and went out to it. (we don’t call him Captain Vague for nothing) The Golf is not there, so I think to myself Maggie must’ve died. I look again at the missed call on my phone and compare it to when (Mark’s sister) Chrissy called me when I was doing laps at the airport and it is the same number. 3.18am was the call.

Well, there you go Maggie, there is your date, 14.07.2022. She was a woman who spent her whole life subjugated to a man who wasn’t all that nice to her. She lived her life trying to make an unhappy man happy, in the process letting her own life slip away. She used to scrub her bathroom and kitchen tiles to a mirror finish, always a mirror finish, which always made me wonder what she was really trying to scrub away.

And even in the end, she only found her own peace in the refuge of dementia. She never really lived her life at all.

I always remember, when Lottie was first widowed and was on her first outing to Bolago, after my dad’s death, Rich and Marg/Maggie gave Lottie a ride home to Melbourne, saving me the 2 hours round trip to drop her home. Afterwards, Marg/Maggie said they would never do that again because Lottie talking from the back seat upset Rich. And rightly, Lottie meant nothing to them, but really no compassion for a woman who had been recently widowed. It irked me. It always has. 

I know it shouldn’t, but it always tainted my recollection of Maggie. Stupid, I know, but we all get defensive when someone bad-mouths our mothers, I don’t think we can help it.

I wished I’d driven Lottie myself, 2 hour round trip, or not.

Oh, I shouldn’t mention that. Saint Marg. Not sure I ever picked up on the saintly bit. But, then I don’t have to, now do I. I meant nothing to her, because in the end with Luke around – Mark’s boyfriend after me. And all of us remaining friends – I think Maggie had trouble knowing exactly where I fitted in. She seemed to forget who I was early on, which also irked me – what did she think of me? I think that is when I first saw her dementia. She genuinely looked puzzled as to who I was, right at the end there? You know, before it became an official dementia diagnosis.

Anyway, she has been in care for 5 years and she was pushing 95, so she lived a long and full life, and I am sure they are all grateful for that.