
Look, here is the
entry. My mum is in bed. And a little work hours you work in Chile
from 9 to 9 at night. She was unwell, very unwell. She came from Australia,
actually, to visit me when I was living in Calama (North of Chile).
She was very ill, and she stayed in bed. And I was living with my
older sister and her daughter, even though I didn't see them much,
but I think that the bedroom was the centre of the house. You just
get inside here, and it was looking in all this dark, not because
it was the dark of the house itself. It was dark... the feeling, you
know. My father had died, about five months before. Then, my mum came
to me, to live with me. And she wanted to bring with her all the little
things she had, so we had to build a cupboard here full of those little
things she wanted to keep. I didn't like it, I didn't like it at all,
no, I didn't like the idea of having all these things, that it looks
like a messy, you know? |
But
the nights what I found there, the nicest thing was, in Calama (North
of Chile), it is very cold in winter, very cold, 17 degrees below
zero in winter. So you have to have some sort of heating, you know?
So that was inside the room of my mother, the bedroom, she had the
heater on all the time, it was an kerosene heater. And always with
the kettle on top. When we used to come in to say hello -- actually,
I forgot to put here the television. One of the centre of the house
was her room. She couldn't move, she used to have Systemic Lupus Erythematosus,
so it was painful in her whole body. So we had to always keep her
very comfortable. So she used to need a lot of care. And that was
the centre of, what I said, the house. Everybody got there, so we
have the heater there, with the kettle, so we came at nine at night
and have a cup of tea inside the room. You know here was everything.
It was good because in that time I got to know my mother, I could
say...
.
And I drew the eyes because she was very proud of her green eyes.
And everything was, um... The windows, the windows I think there were
big windows, and the daylight came in there, but I never saw the light,
because I was working. I would get up, have breakfast and go, and
then it was night, so it was dark too. You know what I mean? So it
wasn't a very nice room.... But when I reflect back to this, she was
very unwell... Actually, she died after that. But during her illness,
she unified the whole family.... |