On Mother's Day, It Is Good To Remember They Are More Than Just Our Mums.

Elfriede Giselle Edelmann was a brilliant, beautiful, and complex woman. She also happened to be my mother, a task she did with conventional and unconventional aplomb.

She was someone with an incredible emotional intelligence that was underutilised by her family and the world in general. My mother was an outsider who longed to conform but had learned in her youth that way always leads to authoritarianism. After so many experiences of betrayal as a child, her heart was broken when she was 36. During the summer of 1967, her best friend, more a sister, a confidant, a person who understood the fickleness of the human heart, died of leukaemia at the grotesquely young age of 32. It would take years for my mum to recover from that grief, and naturally; her children suckled emotionally her despair over losing the one person that knew all her secrets and her joys.

Women who met my mother long after her beauty was defeated by mortal sickness still recognised her profound beauty and depth of person more so than men who are- by their nature- often too shallow for their own good.

Elfriede was born in 1928 in Germany during the dying years of the Weimar Republic. My mum was the illegitimate daughter of a Berlin trade unionist who moved from lover to lover as a bumblebee flies from flower to flower in spring. Her mother was a free spirit who managed seedy hotels in Hamburg's Reeperbahn. When my mum's dad walked out on their family, my grandmother found another lover to help pay the bills to rear her daughter.

Unfortunately, My grandmother's lover found that a baby cramped his style. He was a businessman who saw a fortune could be had in selling tobacco products to Nazis. To keep her man, my grandmother agreed with his proposal that my mother must live with a foster family on weekdays.

On weekends my mum was allowed to visit her mother because her lover; returned to his wife and family in another city.

It was not a great solution, but it was a solution that worked as best as it could in Nazi Germany.

My mum and grandmother survived Hitler, the war and post-war turmoil. However, my grandfather and my grandmother's lover did not. One died of a heart attack from eating too much cake in 1944 whilst much of Europe starved.

While the other, my granddad died during the grim Battle for Berlin in 1945 when he was pressed ganged at 52 into defending the Reich with Hitler Youth children by his side.

As it was a time of Nazism and misogyny, my mother suffered much in her youth. But she was philosophical about it. "I lived, so my suffering will never be as great as the dead."

Yet those years of Nazism left a smudge on her soul, and no matter how joyful she might appear in the company of others, there was a persistent melancholy in her heart.

After the war, my father, a member of the Allied occupation forces, courted the woman who would become my mother. It was a rocky love affair that had a few breakups. In a more modern time, my parents would probably have never married or, in my mother's case surrendered so much of herself to ensure that her partner had the support to emotionally survive across the span of his life.

Eventually, in 1947, they wed in Hamburg and then returned to my Dad's native Yorkshire.

In 1999, after 52 years of marriage, my mum died of cancer at 70. My mother's journey as an individual ended before she found a resolution to the many chapters of her life. I find that the greatest of tragedies. But I also know she would not have survived my brother's death in 2009.

Many became acquainted with my mother through my dad, Harry Leslie Smith’s book, Love Among the Ruins, and The Empress of Australia. There is, however, no exploration of her life in middle and old age when she was afflicted with ill health and was compelled to be a caregiver along with Dad for Peter, my mentally ill brother.

The emotional strain and even guilt that was produced in caregiving for Peter took their toll on my mum's health. She developed rheumatoid arthritis and severe heart disease. I was in my 20s and 30s then, so I still possessed the narcissism of youth and believed no matter how bad my mum's health became, she would bounce back because she was my mum.

Old age was a great disappointment to my mum because she rightly believed she deserved- at the very least, an easy third act. Now, that I have confronted many health issues through my 40s and 50s and while on the cusp of my 7th decade and am facing what looks like a terminal illness, I understand better her disappointments in the ageing process.

Had she lived longer or been allowed to choose a different path, I think- she would have become a marvellous writer or academic. Like so many women from that time, the world of academics, writing, or journalism was not afforded to her.

Throughout her life, Mum kept a journal because she had few people she trusted enough to give the full content of her heart. Sadly she destroyed much of her writing before her death. I have only a few scraps remaining from her written notes.

As it is Mother's Day, I have enclosed a fragment from long ago that she wrote.

“The Sun was like a red ball in the sky, the mist was rising, and the grass was still wet with the morning dew. It promised to be a lovely day. But everything felt different in me. Children’s excited voices floated through my open kitchen window. I heard them running, trying to catch up with friends. Their words were hurried and burst with so much to tell because it was the first -day of school after a long hot summer.

Once- my house stirred with activity. There was hardly time- for my children to finish their breakfast before they began the first day of a new school year. Between arguing and joking with each other, my boys checked to make sure they had packed into their school bags the lunches I made for them at the break of dawn.

Then, each of my children sped out of our front door with the speed and surety of a bird who learned to fly free of its nest.

Outside my house, the commotion of children on the move reined over the pavement until the nine o’clock bell from the school; located at the back of our house rang, and stillness came to our neighbourhood.

But on this day, everything felt wrong because even though there were still children rushing excitedly to school, mine were not there. My boys were now grown young men long past the days of primary or even secondary schooling- making their way into the adult world.

I was alone and; felt abandoned as I had felt when I was a child after an air raid and couldn't find my mother. Then the quiet broke. Outside, I heard a realtor pounding a “For Sale” sign on our front yard like he was an undertaker hammering a nail into the coffin containing the remains of my past.”

My mother, brother, and father are now dead. I think of them often and hope that whether my time left on this earth is long or short, I can introduce others to these unique people who do not deserve to be forgotten, as they made many contributions to making our society better for us all.

I will always regret that my mother wasn't able to reach her full potential as a human being because of history, illness and then premature death. She deserved to get the same as my Dad got which was closure, redemption, and the best last stand a human could hope for. Happy Mother's Day Mum. Love always, John

Elfriede Edelmann Smith Oct 20, 1928- July 2, 1999

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