Jacqueline Trestrail
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On this day 40 years ago in 1978 my mother, Jacqueline Anne Trestrail, left this world after a relatively short battle with cancer - she was 46. Jimmy Carter was President and Annie Hall won best picture at the Oscars that year. I mark the occasion every year alone with my own personal remembrance but it occured to me on this 40th anniversary that only a handful of people alive ever really knew her - not even her 8 grandchildren or great-grandchildren got to meet her. So with that in mind I thought it long overdue that I share for those interested some of my own memories and observations of a much loved lady who was an enormous presence in our family.
Jackie was an only child born to Desmond Fahey and Mary Emily (Didi) Nothnagel in Blue Range, Diego Martin, Trinidad & Tobago on 31st May 1932. She went to school in Canada where she developed a love of the arts and was active in various school plays, revues, and stage productions. Her time abroad was an experience of a lifetime which she thoroughly enjoyed and would greatly shape her into adulthood. She loved to get in costume too at Carnival time back home in Trinidad and play mas'. In fact we returned to Trinidad for a family holiday the Christmas after her diagnosis and I was lucky enough to march and dance with her on Jouvay morning 1978 from St Clair to Frederick Street. She was sick at the time but I didn't know how sick - no one did. We had to stop and rest a few times. It must have been physically taxing for her but I think she wanted to do it just one last time with her family around her. What I didn't know then either was that trip was no family holiday - it was her swan song; her last opportunity to meet with her surviving mother, loved ones and old friends again and in her own mind say goodbye before inevitably fate would intervene. She did it with great strength and grace, and her instincts proved to be right - sadly we left Trinidad in February and returned early to NZ for treatment but she was dead by July.
My parents married on October 3rd 1953 at Greyfriars Church in Port of Spain and were inseparable until her death on 20th July 1978. Being an only child she was devastated when her own parents refused to attend the wedding because she was raised a Catholic and my father committed the intolerable sin of being Presbyterian. My mother had only love and forgiveness in her heart and of course forgave them but it hurt her tremendously. Mum had 4 children of her own, and with the racial and political tensions in Trinidad in the late 1960s exploding (literally) around us my parents emigrated to New Zealand. We arrived on Christmas Day 1968. I don't know how she felt about leaving Trinidad but I always found it perplexing that there is not one photograph of our voyage out to New Zealand - not one photo of that momentous journey on-board ship or on arrival. There might be a perfectly valid explanation for this but I find it curious.
Jackie loved the simple and truly important things in life - God and family foremost. She was old-fashioned, but not puritanical, and wouldn't say "sh-it" for sixpence or swear intentionally. Instead she had her own wonderful expressions for any occasion. If shocked, angered or excited she would exclaim with a loud "Aye Caramba!" or a "Jumping Jehosaphat!" or "Ah chuts!". You might hear her yell "Christopher Columbus!" or "What in carnation is this!". I recall as a teenager she gave me a little red bible to keep and to hopefully read. In my teen angst I defiled its cover. She was livid that I would do such a thing and for one of my punishments I had to write out 100 times "I will not swear or take the Lord's name in vain ever again". No matter what the punishment, it was her disappointment in me that always hurt the most.
But like a good Caribbean girl she did like to kick her heels up and loved to have some fun. To relax she enjoyed a shandy on a hot summer day or a Penfolds dry sherry in the evening, and a cigarette occasionally until she gave them up. She baked hops (Trinidad bread), various cakes, cookies and treats, pastelles (savoury Trinidadian dish) and Christmas puddings, ice creams, ponchecreama (creamy drink made with rum) and my father's favourite prune tart. She would spend hours writing letters to her friends and family back home eager for news. Phone calls from back home were always cause for celebration and always a bittersweet reminder of a past life. She had an artistic eye, and in her younger days loved to paint and beachcomb for driftwood and shells. But most of all she loved reading novels. She was always reading in her solitary moments tales from Leon Uris, James Clavell or James A Michener - writers who wrote on an epic scale. She adored classics like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and Fiddler on the Roof. It was her escape and it was what calmed her soul.
As for me it's the incidental things I remember most. The smell of the Oil of Ulay and Ponds skin cream she applied at night or the familiar scent of the 4711 cologne from her dressing table; or reading to me The Owl and the Pussycat as a boy in Trinidad or the way she smiled with her slanted front teeth. She had a beautiful smile. Then there were all those awkward family photographs that seemed to take forever on her old Rolleiflex camera through the viewfinder that hung to her midriff. Just how she used to multi-task was amazing. But that's just me, I'm sure all of us have our own sentimental highlight reel. All I have left now are the memories and a handful of keepsakes such as some paintings we bought together for her 25th wedding anniversary and a ceramic lamp made by her own hand. One of my most prized possessions is her old book of English Verse which she kept from her schooldays. It still has all her handwritten notations in it which I absolutely cherish.
And still I remember the last words she ever spoke to me like it was yesterday.
1932 ~ 1978
Copyright © Keith D Trestrail | Year Posted 2023
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