Saving for an unexpected funeral

I grew up in a suburban Australian family in the wild nineties, where parents let their kids ride their bikes, no phones and you knew to come home when it started to get dark.

Considering my father worked manual labour and my mother was a full-time stay at home mother, we had a good life. My parents did a good job shielding the bad stuff from us. I am the oldest of six and the only boy, with five younger sisters varying in age.

I remember one day the electricity being cut off and my mother had been crying about it. She always tried her best to hide it from us but being the oldest I knew. My parents spun this into being fun and that we would camp, my dad fired up the bbq, and for kids at a youngish age, they managed to take a bad situation and make it fun.

I will never honestly know my parents managed to feed, clothe and send six kids to school. Today that would be an impossible task for pretty much anyone.

Years onward, I would eventually come to grips with the fact my mother was suffering from anxiety and depression. She refused to seek help despite everyone around her trying, and she found comfort in drinking. Growing up, I knew she drank, but I never fully understood the gravity of the situation.

My mother inevitably found herself in the back of an ambulance at the age of 46, and her body was shutting down. Years of drinking had damaged her liver, and her body was poisoning itself. She had left it too late. All of us were overcome with guilt that we could have helped her.

She was under constant observation in the hospital. She had two I.V lines hydrating her body. They struggled to get the lines in her arms. Her veins had shrunk, making it a difficult task. They had to put the lines into each of her thighs.

After the first day, she seemed to be getting better. I saw glimpses of the person my mother used to be before anxiety and depression consumed her. For a brief moment, we all had hope.

And on the third day, she was gone.

We received a call at 3 am to come up to the hospital, they didn't tell us what had happened, to get there ASAP.

My father immediately had to make funeral plans. And yet, he had no money whatsoever. I could tell it was tearing him apart, and no one else seemed likely to step in. He considered selling his possessions to get enough to pay for the burial and service, but my dad doesn't really own much.

I was only twenty at the time, but I had been saving every bit of money I had earned into a bank account. I had a sizeable amount in there, and I was going to buy a brand new car as I had been driving around in a rusty station wagon.

Doing what had to be done and not wanting my mother to be buried without a resting place after giving her life to her family, I paid for the funeral and service. It took pretty much everything that I had, saved from my low paying McDonald's job and other things I did to earn money.

I made sure my father knew that this wasn't money he had to pay back. He felt guilty, but I know he felt proud. Despite everything else I have done in my life, my desire to be charitable, nothing I have done since will ever be as good as what I did for my father and mother.

Rest in peace.