CHAT SESSION 28 with Liz Hicklin
Catch up and listen to our chat session https://megaphone.link/LCRUI9539561491
Monday 6th Nov 2023 1pm https://rppfm.com.au
At 92 Liz is happy to say she enjoys a busy life. Born in Manchester, the fourth child of a businessman and Methodist Lay preacher; at the age of three, Liz was left crying in the street, when her parents drove away in the family car on some sort of expedition. Liz heard her father say, ‘We must harden her.’! Was that preparing Liz for a life that followed?
Liz trained to be a nurse in Manchester and Cambridge and met a young poet whom she did not marry but who influenced her life enormously. Her brothers had emigrated to the States and Canada, Liz followed and nursed over there for a while till she met a girl who was going to Australia and talked Liz into going with her.
After various expeditions to the outback, falling in and out of love, with an opal thief!!!, Liz settled in Melbourne and worked at the Peter McCallum clinic. Falling in love once more, with a handsome Canadian, he fulfilled his dream of becoming a professional fisherman, before marrying Liz in a Brisbane registry office. They settled in Caloundra, a simple seaside village, and Liz worked in the hotel as a maid and waitress. When the fishing season finished, longing for some sort of life, they returned to Melbourne and Liz resumed nursing. Liz’s husband wanted his own business, so they bought a pet shop with a Tattersalls agency in Caulfield. There was a three bedroomed house at the rear. Liz had two girls and a boy and had a very busy life for about 14 years. They then bought a house in Brighton and the children attended local schools. Their eldest daughter Leeza, once an A grade student, started showing signs of disruption at school. Her life spiralled out of control when she discovered recreational drugs. She obtained a gardening apprenticeship and left home at the age of seventeen.
When they decided to sell the pet shop Liz started a Reproduction Doll Making studio after seeing the craft in the U.S. She was learning everything herself and at last was doing something that she enjoyed. Her husband did the doll repairs and renovated their home which was just across the road.
Liz’s youngest daughter Jane, by now, a very capable finished artist in an advertising agency, started showing signs of personality disorder. Leeza had two children and because of her drug dependency was unable to care for them herself. Her chaotic life led Liz to Law courts, family courts and prisons, city, and country. One child, a boy was adopted by his father, and the girl became a ward of the state in Queensland, and fostered by a very caring family, as we thought. Meanwhile Janes condition was worsening, and she was no longer able to work and making frequent suicide attempts. The effect on Liz and her husband was soul destroying so they decided to sell their Brighton house and business and retired to Balnarring. At that time Liz’s husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
Boyd meanwhile had started his career in Graphic design and was extremely doing well. Jane started to paint in the naïve style and was selling via the newfound technology. She was renting a flat, and visited home occasionally when her restlessness was apparent. Leeza was in the Thomas Embling prison and had visits from Liz and her children. Out of the blue, they got the word, Jane had died from her cars exhaust fumes at the back of her studio in Carlton over the weekend when it was deserted. It was 2002. She was 41.
The family’s grief was overwhelming. Her memorial was held in her favourite park, The Victoria Gardens in Malvern and afterwards at a friend’s house. For the first time all her paintings were hanging together, in most of them Liz noticed a little parachutist in the sky. They had never discussed it, but is this what it felt like to suffer a mental illness, not able to get through? Sylvia Plath describes it in the Bell Jar.
Liz was doing creative writing by this stage with University of the Third Age and wrote a children’s book, Peter the Parachute each verse with an applicable poem of Jane’s painting. It was launched at the Alfred Hospital fund raising night and Liz sold a few hundred copies, with the profits going to The Mental Health Research.
In 2002 Leeza was released from jail and returned to live at home. She gradually got used to life on the outside world and became a clairvoyant at the Mornington market and gained a considerable clientele. Liz had started making sculptures which she also sold at the market. Leeza met a nice boy and spent time at his place. Things at home were relatively harmonious. Leeza developed paranoia, broke up with her boyfriend, suffered insomnia and became generally unwell. It was market day; Liz woke her daughter early as was the pattern but said she had not slept and would follow Liz later so Liz left for the market. Bill, Liz’s husband tidied the kitchen which was his morning routine and then went outside to attend to jobs in the garden. He was confronted with Leeza's body. She had taken her own life. By the time Liz arrived home doctors and ambulance had taken Leeza away. She was 45.
Writing this is tearing Liz’s heart strings and she does not know how they got through. It was a few days before Christmas and Liz’s sister came for her annual holiday from the states. They held a service in the lovely Balnarring Uniting church. Liz recognised some of her daughters’ old friends, now recovered drug users who are now serving as drug councillors.
Bill and Liz’s two girls are buried together in Mt Martha cemetery with a beautiful plaque, the words sent from Liz’s niece, a Buddhist. May your wounded hearts heal one day, and the souls of Leeza and Jane return safely to the source and continue to shine upon you. 2007.
It is 2023 now, that terrible time and our lives are fading. Bill died 10 years ago, and Liz moved into a retirement village where she can see the sea and is as happy as a bee. She joined Peninsular writer’s group, most of them are half her age but they have kept her young. She has written a true story Limerance, about obsession and unrequited love, and her Memoir, Kiss and Cry. Liz won a slam poetry competition at Cloones Book fair, and it had brought her a certain amount of notoriety, reciting it on the ABC.
This year Liz travelled to the States to attend her ninety-eight-year-old brother’s memorial with her 94-year-old sister. They are a family of long livers!
On his death bed Liz’s husband divulged that he was not a Canadian but English. After returning from service in the second world war after an argument with his family he went to Canada for four years later emigrating to Australia. Who knows why he masqueraded as a Canadian all those years and why? Liz and her son feel cheated, the lie almost cancelled out their marriage. Was that the source of the mental illness in the family, he had attempted suicide.
After everything that Liz has endured, she still has a get up and go attitude! She gets dressed up and shows up to each event with a smile and her calendar is filled with where to next! Liz will make everyone laugh and her energy is contagious. Being in her presence is a blessing. If there is one woman who has the X-Factor, it’s lovely Lizzy!
Liz is going to Ireland to a writer’s retreat in November 2023 and onto England to visit one remaining relative. Will she go with a bang or a whimper. Who knows?
Kiss and Cry. Liz Hicklin’s memoir.
Writer, Poet, comedienne, great grandmother
Available at all Peninsula book shops and through MMH Press https://www.mmhpress.com/kissandcry or your favourite online bookstore.
Limerence by Liz Hicklin https://www.mmhpress.com/authors/liz-hicklin
My hope is that when you’re looking at yourself in the
‘The Daily Mirror’
YOU SMILE
EMBRACE BEING YOU
AND FIND 10 MINUTES IN YOUR DAY TO NOURISH YOUR SOUL!
To get in touch with Cathy email smileinthedailymirror@gmail.com
'The Daily Mirror' acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Custodians of the land and acknowledges and pays respect to their Elders, past and present.
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