Wendy didn’t give her mum a funeral. Instead she’s spending all her cash on a gloriously hedonistic spree
Selfish? No, she insists it’s what her mother wanted
THIS MORNING I woke in a glamorous suite at one of London’s most l uxurious hotels and surveyed with a great sense of satisfaction all my worldly possessions neatly packed around me. It’s been a whirlwind few weeks. First, I put my two London flats, including a penthouse overlooking the Thames, on the market for a total exceeding £1.5 million. Then, I sold, bartered or gave away 95 per cent of my large collection of designer clothes, jewellery and furs, as well as all of my memorabilia. Finally, I booked myself in with a cosmetic surgeon for a rejuvenating little facial treatment, to tighten up my wrinkles and turn back the clock a few years.
Invigorated, looking fabulous, feeling rested and with my entire life packed in just five brown suitcases, I’m finally free to spend the rest of my days liberated from the tiresome chains of bricks and mortar and of the tyranny of possessions.
I’ve resolved to see out the rest of my life travel- ling the world, working as a journalist and author along the way. What might surprise you is that I’m doing all this just a few weeks after the death of my mother, Marion, at a time when most bereaved people are still weeping, in shock or getting over the trauma of the funeral.
Not me. I didn’t even give my mother a funeral — a fact, I know, many people will find shocking.
Yet I am far from callous. This outwardly obscene display of extravagance and hedonism is, in fact, me acting the dutiful daughter and following my mother’s instructions to the letter.
Far from callous, I know I am doing exactly as she wanted. Mummy would have been horrified at the thought of me donning black robes, or moping around looking miserable. A fabulous hotel, a little bit of ‘work’ and a grand world tour is honouring her memory in a way a few dour hymns, sung in the front row of a fusty crematorium, never could.
She was, after all, a woman who knew all about loss and death — and how to overcome them both. A German Jew, 36 members of her family were slaughtered in Nazi concentration camps.
But instead of being broken by tragedy, she emerged with a fierce and defiant desire to live her life to the full. It is this spirit that is her legacy to me — a particular brand of joie de vivre that deserves to be kept alive.
I was by her side when she died, aged 88, at t he Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, at 7.30 am on December 22 last year, after a long but fiercely fought battle with cancer.
Later that day, feeling tearful, I forced myself to go to her home, to look through her papers. Here I discovered an envelope addressed to me, headed: ‘Not to be opened until after my death.’
Inside was a letter from Mummy, dated April 2, 1993, written when she was having chemotherapy for her first bout of cancer, and when she believed that she was about to die.
Tears rolled down my face as I read it. ‘I am determined to win this battle,’ she wrote. ‘I am positive, hopeful and there is every chance. In case I don’t, I thank you for being the most wonderful daughter in the world. You made up for any sadness I had in my life. Please don’t mourn for me when I am gone. I hope and think you will read this letter when it is grey with age. I just feel like writing it tonight while the drip is going into my arm. It takes five hours or so and it is fine.
‘Whenever the time that I have to pass on comes, I want you to know that you were the very best daughter any mother could ever have.
‘The memories we have of each other are magic.
‘I am now 65 and even if I do not reach old age… please know that I feel very content and especially the last few years lived to the full.
‘I have been married for 30 years this month, very much thanks to you being so sweet and encouraging me [I was always very supportive of her second marriage]. So you see, I can die so happy. Such a lucky loved mother and wife every day to the very last.
‘That is why you must not grieve. It is natural that mothers die before their children. Whenever the day comes, go out with some of the money that you will have and do something really nice like staying in a beautiful hotel and buy something gorgeous to wear — all in my memory.
‘And remember, wherever you are, just go on living life to the full to the very end.’
Mum went on to enjoy her life for another 22 years, but the words stayed with me. After a tearful, sleepless night, I left her home and headed, not for the undertakers as you’d expect the morning after your mother’s death, but straight for the splendour of the Mistinguett Suite at Kensington’s Milestone Hotel, a fivestar oasis of l uxury, opposite Kensington Palace.
Could there possibly be a more appropriate place to go? I don’t think so. Mummy’s other gift for me was to teach me to truly appreciate the finer things in life.
One of our happiest Christmases was spent in that very same suite in 2009, and she’d adored every minute of the experience. It seemed, therefore, a very fitting place to mourn and remember her properly.
As for her funeral, Mum had made clear she didn’t want one, of any sort. Instead, l i ke David Bowie, she wanted to be cremated, privately, with no one present. The money saved should be spent on more fun, luxury and adventure.
And that is what I have resolved to do. This is no stunt or act of a thoughtless adventuress.
Rather, it’s a deeply considered tribute of a grieving daughter to the mother she loved very much.
I never tire of telling my mother’s remarkable story: a cossetted and loved daughter of a German officer and his wife who lived a glamorous life in Berlin, aged 11 she was ripped away from her parents and put on the Kindertransport — a rescue effort, prior to the outbreak of war, which saved thousands of predominantly Jewish children, f r om Nazi- occupied Europe — bound for England.
Her beloved father, a Prussian officer who had been awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, in the Great War, took her to the station. But as he was about to kiss her goodbye, he was knocked away from the train window by whip-wielding Nazi officers. My mother never saw him again.
In England, she was fostered by a series of families and won a place at the London School of Economics — a serious achievement for a woman in those times. She became a teacher, and met and married my father, who came from Vienna and was Sigmund Freud’s great-great nephew.
Aged 19, she married and had a little boy, Anthony George, whom she named after her father, but he died of cot death after only nine weeks. I was born less than a year afterwards. Eventually, she and my f ather divorced in 1960.
Mummy went on to volunteer to help refugee children from the ruins of war-torn Europe at the Pestalozzi Children’s Village in Sussex.
She loved all children — so much so that when she opened her first l anguage school i n Konstanz, Germany, in the early Seventies, one of her earliest pupils was the granddaughter of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust.
My mother was kind to her, even helping her get her first job.
‘After all, I am alive and her grandfather is dead,’ she said. This for the relative of a man who was the architect of the murderous regime that obliterated most of her family.
She married for the second time in 1963 to Alexander Pigache, a dashing executive of French, Croatian and Serbian extraction. When she recovered from her first bout of cancer, she and her husband sold their three language schools and set off to travel the world.
When Alexander died in 2003, my mother gave me a choice: ‘Either we save your inheritance for your old age. Or we spend it living life to the full together.’ I chose the second option and never once regretted it. Mummy l oved handsome men, right until the very end of her life. Her last love was an American of 49,
After escaping the Nazis, Mum lived her life to the full The day after she died I checked into a 5-star suite
whom she met when she was 83 and with whom she had a fullblooded relationship,
Indeed, over the past painful months, as I’ve remembered how my mother loved to live, I’ve found myself questioning the value of objects that only serve to tie you down, that do not salve your soul or lift your spirits. There have been other revelations, too: I was forced to accept the fact that during her illness, four of her closest relatives did the absolute minimum to make her happy or to support me. Crises do not always bring out the best in people. Quite the reverse.
To make matters worse, the man in my life for the past 13 years chose this particular time to break off all contact with me, other than sending a few texts so banal t hey would have put Hallmark to shame.
Then, to top it all, someone whom my mother cherished stole her beloved husband’s crest ring, which she always wore on her wedding finger, while she was on her deathbed.
It was blow after emotional blow. Battered, but not bowed, and instead of wallowing in grief, I took a leaf out of my mother’s book —and decided to look to the future, instead.
After my stay in New York, where I am going to meet up with her American boyfriend, I plan to head to Connecticut, with my mother’s 95-year-old cousin, Gary, who adored her.
Then it’s back to New York again, where I shall be meeting some of her relatives, before heading off to Palm Beach in Los Angeles, and then to South Africa, where she also has much-loved family.
Once I have found the perfect casket, Mummy’s ashes will be pl aced at t he home of our friend Dwina Gibb, widow of the late Bee Gee Robin, in Thame, Oxfordshire.
Indeed, Dwina has hung a portrait of Mummy there to remember her. It’s a fitting resting place.
My mother loved her visits there and spent hours talking to Robin, a history buff, about her life in Nazi Germany.
Everywhere I go, I will do just as my mother wished, and live my life to the full. My tribute to my mother may be what some might call unorthodox — dramatically unconventional when compared to the sorrows and bleakness of the usual mourning period many find themselves in.
That’s not to say that I won’t miss my mother, because I will. But she will always be with me thanks to her lessons in embracing joy and happiness, which will shape the rest of my days.