Tiny Stories

There are four books on my shelf. I can’t feel them, these electronic copies, but the pages are shining on my tablet, bright in the darkness of my room. It is cold, spine chillingly cold, as a southerly blows snow from the south, and only one dry-skinned hand emerges from layers of blankets. But the stories are of warmth, of growth, of learning to love again. Three “incredible” books I find boring, self-aggrandising, repetitive; a fourth fills in time during bouts of insomnia. I browse the shelves again, and his name appears, a man whose writing I adore. It is Albert Wendt, now in his 80s, tracing his life in Ponsonby, the garden he shares with aiga and friends. And a cat. Immediately I reconsider this man who I’ve held in awe for years, since I read "Ola" a decade or two ago. Tanoa: an aloof, bird-stalking, pillow-cruising cat. Wendt, writing about hip replacements, friends dying, Vegas losing its pull. Writing about cicadas and sweet tomatoes. There's a tiny slip of pap...

My mother leaves in autumn. It is not text book dying, pain carefully managed in a contemporary setting, but a struggle for her to go. The nursing staff are kind, but there is only so much you can do at the end without breaking the laws of our country. I think about birthing, the intense but somehow worthy pain of labour, and wonder if death is the same, hard work to let ourselves go, stubbornness and fear slowing the process. We drive across the region, wineries and orchards marking the space between the twin cities. He chooses the Cadillac, mum’s last ride the classiest of her life. There are just the three of us: me sitting oddly on the right minus a steering wheel to hold; mum in the back, her koru-crested casket a nod to simplicity. When we arrive, I place the flowers from my friend’s garden on top of the poem, grateful for their colour and compassion. “If I die in autumn”, I begin as I stand beside her at the catafalque. It’s a couple of days short, but she wouldn’t mind. Already...