My Mother Put on Lipstick Before She Let Her Son Carry Her to the Car

Her name was Elizabeth.

She was born in 1933 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. One of seven children. Four girls. Three of them got breast cancer.

I was seventeen when my mother was diagnosed. We were living in Rhodesia — now Zimbabwe.

I went with my father to the hospital the day of her surgery. We sat in the car and waited. When it was over, my dad went in to speak to the doctors. Then he walked back to the car and he sobbed. And sobbed. It was the first time in my life I had ever seen my father cry.

They had removed her right breast. The doctors gave her three months to live.

I was studying my beauty specialist diploma at the time. Every morning I went to my studies. Every afternoon I went to my mother. I washed her hair and put it in rollers. I did her nails. I gave her facials. I waxed and tinted her eyebrows. I gave her body massages.

It was a way for me to practise. But what it was for her, was food for her soul.

My father refused to accept the diagnosis. He found Professor Faulkson at the University of Pretoria's oncology department. The Professor gave my mother a sixty percent chance of survival. And so began thirteen-hour drives to South Africa and back. Again and again. For years.

At my wedding in 1982, my mother was wearing a wig. She was in and out of hospital and surgery for another twenty-five years.

She never complained. Not once. Not through the chemotherapy. Not through the radiation. Not through the operations that never seemed to end. She just kept getting up.

She was a beautiful woman. She loved fashion. She used to say that in her next life she was going to be a model and a fashion designer.

At the very end, my brother came to take her to hospital for the last time. She asked him to wait. She forced herself to stand. She walked to her bathroom. She put on her lipstick. And her mascara. Then she let him take her to the car.

She was unconscious for two weeks. She woke on New Year's Day 2007. My sister held the phone to her ear. I asked her if she wanted me to come. She said no. She wanted me to remember her when she was well. When she was looking good.

Her Smile exists because of Elizabeth.

Every woman I work with — I am, in some way, still sitting beside my mother's hospital bed. Still doing her nails. Still telling her she is beautiful.

Because she was.

On the 22nd of June, the winter solstice, I will be doing the Dark Mofo Nude Winter Swim in Hobart. It is her birthday. I am going for her. For the woman who put on lipstick before she let her son carry her out the door.

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