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I think what you wrote is absolutely beautiful, and most of all utterly truthful.
I visited our mother three days before she died. I had some time alone with her and I did tell her that her son was fine, living his life and happy and that she did not need to worry about him anymore. She squeezed my hand when I told her this.

I also told her that I was fine and that she could go when she was ready because she did not need to worry for me any more either.
Our mother struggled with issues of guilt near the end of her life. Six months ago she said to me, "I wasn't a very good mother to you and I am sorry." Then she said, "I love you." That brought me much peace and healing and for the last part of her life I was able to comfort her and help in her care, feeding her, holding her hand, wiping her nose and face. I spoke with her and also took Tarsha, Ashaan and Israel to see her. Israel often visited her alone and the nurses told me that he was incredibly gentle and compassionate with her.

I observed Ashaan and Tarsh also being very caring and compassionate with her. At one stage she thought Ashaan was you and we did not correct her because it was just too hard and her mind was so far gone, but it brought her much peace to think that it was you and you were there with her, so we left it as it was.

Her funeral was lovely, well as lovely as they can be. I chose mum’s last outfit and I chose her an off-white skirt and top that had faux pearls on them. Her hair was done and she wore her big hair clips that she liked.
June and Maree preferred a closed casket but I asked if it could be left open. I did not want mum shut away like that during what was the last tribute to her life. She looked absolutely beautiful and peaceful.
In her coffin I placed a teddy bear that I had bought her and the photo of her cat Lucinda. June placed a packet of menthol cigarettes and a box of matches. Maree placed in the casket the cufflinks her father had left with mum many years ago and a note.

I spoke at her funeral and then Maree spoke and then June recited a beautiful poem that she had made up herself.

When the funeral was at the end, we placed the lid on her coffin and then placed the screws in the lid and tightened them down. We didn’t want a stranger doing that, thats why we did it.
At the funeral three songs were played. First was In the Ghetto by Elvis Presley, in the middle of the service Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens and lastly as everyone filed out of the chapel, Don’t Forget to Remember Me by the Bee Gees.

At the funeral were quite a few people including two elderly gentlemen who had worked with Grandad McKelvey and they attended out of respect for him. They were lovely and made the comment that June is a dead ringer for Grandad. They met all of our children except for Marika and Shiloh who could not attend the funeral. Marika was very sick (she’s ok now) and Shiloh could not get any more time off work. Personally I believe that he did not want to attend, but I was not going to force him.

Heather, Kim and Jessica were there as was Trevor. There were other people too whom I did not know but my partner also attended.
The next day June and I drove down to Levin to pick up mum’s ashes and we took them back to Ashurst. From there, June, Maree, Tarsh and I travelled with mum’s ashes to Masterton, everyone else followed behind in other vehicles.

It was bitterly cold in Masterton, terribly so, but we interred mum’s ashes with Grandad in a little ceremony there. Coleen Amundsen (mum’s bridesmaid and cousin) Janet McKelvey, Lisa McKelvey and Robbie McKelvey attended the ashes interment.

After that we all went to the RSA and spent time with Coleen and co. Coleen told us some very interesting things that we were not quite aware of.
Mum started to lose her eyesight at six years old. By the time she was nine they had discovered the brain tumour and removed it when she was nine. Up until mum was six years old she was a normal child like everyone else, once she had the operation to remove the tumour, Coleen said she was never the same again. Greta was terribly mean to her and apparently used to burn her with a fire poker if she did not do her chores properly. Apparently mum was nothing more than Greta’s housemaid.

We do not know how long mum had the tumour before she was placed in the home in Levin, but it seems that it may have been years. She refused treatment for it, which is understandable considering her first experience of “help” with it. When people have severe head injuries their personality often alters drastically and it changes the way they process thoughts and emotions. I cannot help but wonder how much this contributed to mum’s constant irrational state. My feeling is that it probably contributed greatly and when you throw in her childhood experiences with Greta, her only mother role model, it is a great wonder to me that she didn’t do worse by us.
I am not saying that everything was out of mum’s control, but I think a great deal of it might have been quite different had the authorities actually acknowledged what she had been through and the dramatic consequences to a person’s personality and ability to behave rationally as a result of those experiences.

I do not have any issues with you whatsoever in regard to you not attending mum’s funeral and not being able to come and see her before she went. Maybe it is kinder for you that you did not because it was most certainly heartbreaking to see that once beautiful woman reduced to what she was at the end. I know that she was by no means perfect and that she did do some awful things to all of us, but I do not believe that any of it was personal. I believe it would have happened no matter who her children were, so do not think that she personally felt anything nasty toward you because of who you are or how you live your life. Deep down I know that she loved you. You were her only son and you should have seen the huge smile on her face when she mistook Ashaan for you. There is no doubt in my mind that deep in her heart she loved you dearly. Hang on to that.

I think that our family, well, us siblings at least, are so fractured that it may be that we will never be able to function as a unit. As you said, our relationships with our mother were varied and complex to the point that there isn’t much common ground between some of us in regard to mum. On the other hand, between others, there is much common ground. None of us were taught to interact with each other in a “normal” fashion because our mother did not possess the skills to teach us how to do that. But perhaps if we can nurture relationships one to one, then maybe there is hope for us at least on a one to one level.

But I want you to know that I love you dearly. You are the only big brother I have or will ever have. No matter where you go or what you do, I am proud of you and think of you always. I am always here if you want to talk, but if you do not want to talk, that is okay too. I just want to know that you are okay, happy, healthy and pursuing/living your dreams and desires.

Thank you for your message - I was really shocked & saddened to read she had passed away and wanted to let you all know I am thinking of you all.

I feel both shock and a deep sadness – I had hoped I would see her for one last time, certainly to come over and support you all – but I was not sure ...not sure of anything really...you can understand my ambivalent feelings - though you and probably the rest of the family are in shock, as am I, we all recognise the difficult relationships we had experienced with our mother in our up-bringing. Those relationships for each and every one of us were different, and transmuted over time. Some of us were at once ‘the chosen’ and at others ‘the damned’ – we lived in the spiritually barren and emotionally barbed world of conditional love. You and I remember the storms that raged within that house – we all weathered them – the constant storm.

We all were aware of her own personal struggles and demons which she wrestled with for most of her life - a struggle which most of us were witness to and at times the victims of. I have no idea where her struggles started or from where they came – perhaps there is some truth in generationally inherited behaviours – and perhaps some of her displacement could be sourced in part from her history with her own mother – some of these behaviours seemed to play out again with our mother’s own first daughter, our sister, [edited] – I have great respect for my eldest sister in this regard – [edited] suffered the first storms...whilst I was very young [edited]was my protector for that I will be forever grateful and hold the greatest affection – being as we were exposed to those strange happenings of 1965 – we somehow got through them together. If you need a starting time for the cracks in our mother’s world I suspect it started here - Wanganui 1965...I do not know exactly what happened – you have some clues in the documentation you managed to salvage from the old Department of Social Welfare – for which we have copies, our history – I thank you for that much, knowing your history is a powerful thing.

Our mother was a deeply troubled person – you know this already, we all lived in the same crazy dynamic that was our family – I call it the psychic car crash that was our home.

I hope she left this world with all or some of you around her to send her off on her new journey – I know, if there is such as a thing as heaven, that her Dad, Mother, and great-Aunt Maude will be there to greet her and guide her – I hope too that with the lifting of her burden she will attain her spiritual lightness and be finally set free – to fly.

It might be that there will be those who judge me, or even all of us as a group, as being unworthy as “children’ of our mother – well, let them, but only if they experience what I personally endured for 17 years or what [edited], you or [edited]endured, then let them find the words to judge – in that we; certainly me, have shown limited interest in her whilst she was a live. If anyone is guilty of this the most it is me – I carry this gladly – for we know the truth and it endures. Our mother had moments of lucidity where reason prevailed and she could be very charming, innocent, child-like –but when the black veil dropped over her she could be unpredictable, irrational and well, crazy... I do not know if I have ever admitted this to you, or {edited] particularly, I was terrified of our mother – she did her very best to psychically attack us all, undermining our sense of self-worth, we were never good enough or we were ‘just like our father’ – which was rather ironic since most of us didn’t really know what he was like – apart from being told he was ‘no good’.

I commend both you, [edited] level of compassion and familial solidarity during this very sad and difficult time. There is a sadness – but overall I always wished my mother no ill and thought of her with great compassion – the sadness is that I never got to say goodbye, to tell her she did the best she could do with what she was given – and in a strange way I am thankful for that much – we would not be who we are, we would not have odd doors opened for us if it weren’t for our mother unlocking doors in the sky.