John and Doreen, December 2008
Life is the distance between two dates.
Doreen Miller (nee Henley) passed away peacefully in a
hospital in Melbourne last Saturday morning, the 18th of April. She was
93 years old.
It was a blessed relief for her.
Her sons, Ted, John, Geoff and Peter were with her on Friday to say a final
farewell, along with Ted's wife Anne, Peter's wife Kay and two of her
grandchildren, Alison and Sophie.
Doreen went to hospital a few days ago after having a fall in which she broke a bone in her arm. But along the way we think she had a stoke, and what with her 'old-timers' I doubt she was aware of what was going on around her. Her heart was weak, age had taken its toll.
But we were all there and that was important.
The word that came to mind while I was talking to my wife Christine on Friday evening was 'selfless'. Like a lot of women of her time she devoted her life to bringing up her children. When you look back on it she's did a pretty good job - like a lot of Whyalla mums from that era.
And when you look at her grandchildren and great grand children you know she did a great job. The ambition of many parents is that their children and their children's children turn out to be fine people, successful people, doing better than they did themselves. I just hope that Doreen is looking back with pride.
Doreen grew up in Melbourne. She was three when her father returned from France at the end of the First World War. That separation molded her character and, I suspect, that of her children. Her father was a captain in the army and in charge of the third casualty clearing station on the Somme (I think.)
During the war her mother went to live with her mother and her sisters and Doreen had a wonderful early childhood with them.
When he returned home her father became the superintendent of the Caulfield Repat but left that to run a newsagency on Sydney road. It was probably not a good decision, particularly a few years later when the depression started to bite.
Doreen was a smart kid, did well at school but was tied to the shop where from an early age she worked nights and on weekends. Her father was a talented sportsman, and I understand he still holds the record for being the oldest person to play his first game with the Carlton District Cricket Club. He played in the same team as Bill Woodfull.
Like Ted she skipped a grade. She went to MLC in Melbourne for her final year's schooling a really posh school but after Coburg High and Princes Hill Primary didn't really fit in. She wished she could have gone to a commercial college, but didn't, being obliged with work in the family business which she managed in her late teens and early 20's.
It's strange, we always treated dad as the intellectual in the family - He'd been to the Ballarat School of Mines - but I can tell you one thing, going to a school of mines, a teachers college or a university never increased anyone's intelligence. Doreen would have deferred to her husband, adopted his religion and way of life.
It could have been a lot different.
She had a sense of duty, she could concentrate, she was focused in those years at the shop - these attributes have been passed on.
She was very quick with figures and could add up a column of number in her head before you could put pen to paper. She was sharp.
I was talking to Geoff's daughter, Sophie on Friday and said that if Doreen had been born 50 years later she would have gone to university and ended up like her grand daughters, Alison, Jo, Lisa, Asha, Sophie and Katie. That, I think will be her greatest legacy and I hope the girls can one day all meet up and honor her memory. It really is an outstanding cast - a truly remarkable cast and they can thank Doreen - along, of course with their mothers and their grandmothers from the other side of their families.
I don't know much about the circumstances surrounding her marriage to Bert, but they seemed to get on OK. I don't think they had a mad passionate affair before they got married, but you don't know what goes on behind closed doors do you. She would not have known Bert very well before they were married. They had met while she was holidaying in Dimboola where he lived. It was a long distance romance, between Whyalla and Melbourne.
Then she found herself in Whyalla for 40 years, after living in a delightful part of Melbourne - near Royal Parade - green, leafy, close to the city ... and Whyalla about as far removed from that as you could imagine.
In the early years of her marriage Doreen dearly missed her mother who died just before I was born. She missed Melbourne, she missed her aunties who helped bring her up while her Dad was in France.
She once told me that she though that I was born 'restless' because of her restlessness and longing for her family and her own 'country'. She was unhappy at that time. It was still war time, this time the Second World War. In between she'd borne the brunt of the great depression, working in the family newsagency selling papers for a halfpenny. This was a time when 30% of people lost their job. Forget about the recession we're having now, restaurants are still chock-a-block on Friday nights!
Did she live a good life? I think 'Yes', but it wasn't the good life, if you get what I mean, the life her children and grandchildren live now; doubtful, but you don't miss what you don't know.
It was a life of duty and commitment, first as a daughter, then wife and mother. She knuckled down and did what she had to do without thinking about what she'd like to do. She just did it.
My Mum was the best sandwich maker I knew. The only person I know who came close was Christine and I can now say, without equivocation that she is the best sandwich maker I know. Thanks God for the Earl of Sandwich!
Doreen was always busy. Maybe the busyness took her mind off other things or pushed them into the background. I suspect so. She passed on the busy gene to a couple of her sons. I never saw her just sit down and read a book, or take the night off and go to the pictures. I don't think we ever went out for tea in Whyalla - where would you go, the Purple Goose or the Black Cat cafe?
There was always preserving, shopping, cooking, sewing, washing, ironing ... to do. And when we were a bit older is was mothers' club, school canteen, hospital auxiliary, then bowls. She was the champion woman bowler at the Trinity Gardens Bowling Club. She put a huge amount of effort into the Hospital Auxiliary.
Growing up I wasn't aware of any particular closeness. I spent most of my time away from home - at football training, tennis training, swimming training - being busy. I still am. Pete is too. I'm sure it's a cover up!
My fondest memories are spending mornings at the beach during summer and then going back down to the beach for tea in the evening. I do remember that I spent the day with her on the day the Queen came to Whyalla. That was one of the few days I can remember having Mum to myself for the day. Looking back, with four boys how much of yourself can you parcel out at any one time.
Life was meant to be busy. We never went to the pictures on Friday night because we had to do homework for chrissakes. I now have the luxury of having Friday night off. Christine insists.
She was the sort of mum that if you were hungry she'd say, 'Eat and apple.' If you were cold she'd say, 'Put on a jumper.' If you were tired she'd say, 'Go to bed.' If you were bored she'd say, 'Go out and play', or she'd give you a job to do.
She looked after our diets. She was a good meat and three veg type of cook, but mixed the meals up with tripe, brains, tongue, trotters and lambs fry. If you mention offal in mixed company these days half the women gag at the thought. We were the family of six that could spin out a dozen bottles of Moyles drinks from Christmas through to the long weekend.
I'll tell you one thing you don't get a lot of these days, desserts - jelly, trifle, custard, baked jam rollie, lemon snow, chocolate crackles, double-layered sponge cake with the round bit in the centre and wedges radiating out. And ginger biscuits; definitely the best in the world, in pairs joined together with icing. Lisa and I ate a whole ice cream container full of them on the way home from Rostrevor to North Adelaide.
Doreen prided herself on keeping fit, she was conscious of her figure, very conscious. It took her some discipline, which she had in spades. In later years she walked for pleasure and exercise going half way with Dad on his walk to work. She kept herself strong and well into her 80's could do a fair day's worth of situps and pressups. I told her, 'So you should, you've had longer to train!'
She wore a roll-on, not a corset! Being busy keep her in trim. I often ask people if they know what a copper is? Anyone who is under about 50 doesn't have a clue. They can't remember the white stick, or the trough, or the bags of Reckitt's Blue, or the wringer, or hanging out the sheets. That's where the women of my mother's generation got their exercise. My lunch time on Monday they'd be knackered, and then they'd have to get tea.
I don't know if she had a lot of fun. I don't think I every heard her whistle or sing though a couple of her sons were quite musical. Geoff was a talented pianist and John played the drums and the comb with tissue paper. I don't remember ever hearing her tell a joke, piss herself laughing or go to bed a bit tipsy. There was a lot of discipline.
She was a cup of tea and one biscuit sport of a person. She lived within her means and managed the family budget so well that at the end of her life there was still a bit left over for her sons.
Doreen lived within her means. She bought meat by the side and drove a hard bargain with the butcher. Selling her a side also meant cutting it up for her as well.
She made our clothes when we were young. We'd be standing on the kitchen table while she stuck pins into us as she adjusted a hem. You can get a picture of her with pins in her mouth as she did it. She did her own dry cleaning. Dad would bring home a 4 gallon drum of Shellite that would last for a few months. James Drycleaners must have hated us.
At one stage Bert was offered the opportunity to take a job in BHP's head office in Melbourne but his immediate boss in Whyalla wouldn't let him go. Doreen desperately wished she'd been able to return to Melbourne.
When I was in grade 7 Dad went away for several months to England and Europe. Mum got a burst appendix, then peritonitis and nearly died. The most courageous thing I've ever seen is a woman with a burst appendix packing cases so her children could be parceled out to friends while the ambulance was waiting outside.
She was in hospital for what seemed like a couple of months. Dad's boss told Dad not to come home, that she was OK. But she wasn't Ok and very nearly died. That Dad didn't rush home stuck in her craw for a long time.
My response at the time was to eat 4 double cut rolls for lunch every day and balloon out.
When I look back I don't feel I knew my mother very well.
l spent a lot of my life avoiding her (and my father) - as I thought all kids did when they were growing up. I know now that I craved the intimacy that I missed, not knowing at the time that I was missing out on anything special. I talked to Mum about it in later years and she said she was aware of that but felt being affectionate to young boys wasn't a manly thing to do.
I'm envious of the close affection that I see my younger daughter, Lisa metering out to her little boys. They get constant reinforcement of what good boys they are.
When you look back there's good, better and best. (I saw that the other day on a Furphy's tank on top of Mt Buffalo in Victoria. Doreen did her best.
As parents we all do the best we can for our children in the way that we know how. With 20:20 hindsight there are always things we could have done more of and things we could have done less of.
Doreen loved us and we loved her.
Geoff drove me to Tullamarine late on Friday afternoon and we went past her old home, the newsagency on Sydney Road in Brunswick, now a branch of St Vincent De Paul.
So there you have it, my Mum, Doreen Miller, selfless, devoted, disciplined ... and busy.
Click here to see Geoff and Doreen in November 2008.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPDobvAU0dE
John Miller