After sifting through monuments of childhood, Margaret McNally realised it was time to confront her own belongings – and those of her late husband
In the midst of this country’s housing crisis, my mother has called time on living in our four-bedroom, one-bathroom home of 52 years. The 90-year-old matriarch of our family, who ran the modest Moonee Ponds abode with spit’n’shine precision, will now join my 95-year-old father, who has a two-year head start on life in aged care.
My parents are lucky to afford residential care at a time when financial insecurity can slide into homelessness for so many. They’d worked hard throughout their lives (one for wages; the other unpaid for home duties) to buy and keep the 1927 weatherboard and wood-stumped house above the heads of their five-kid brood.