A Wedding, Four Letters, and a Mother's Last Gift

Jessie McIndoe was 14 the first time she stepped into her mother’s wedding dress. The custom-made satin and lace confection fit so perfectly—mum and daughter shared the same slim build – that the New Zealand schoolgirl immediately turned to face her beaming parent. I’d love to wear this one day, she said, ensuring her lips could be easily read.

Within weeks, the dress was forgotten as Jessie and her parents, Denise and Paul McIndoe, faced frightening news. Cancer had seized hold of Denise’s diminutive, endlessly energetic frame. A stage-3 breast cancer diagnosis rocked this small, tightly knit family and launched Jessie on an 11-year journey that would reunite her with the wedding dress and deliver a single, precious, last message from her mother.

Denise had always been small but healthy, though doctors realised she was profoundly deaf soon after her birth in the North Island city of Palmerston North. It was 1960 and a rubella outbreak had swept through New Zealand, damaging the baby girl’s inner ear while she was still tucked inside her mother’s womb. The hearing impairment failed to slow Denise down as she grew into an outgoing, outdoor-loving woman who cycled, sailed, sewed and loved to laugh.

In early 1989, a hearing-impaired girlfriend invited her to dinner. The friend’s brother, Paul, made such an impression, the pair were engaged within three months.

There was plenty her sociable mother could do, though, including cheering from soccer sidelines and creating costumes for all of Jessie’s dance recitals, organizing camping trips with other families and immersing herself in vintage car club activities. She also worked full-time at a hearing-impaired support agency while completing a not-for-profit management diploma with the help of an interpreter. Or communicating silently with her daughter across a crowded room, using hand signals.

When Denise found a lump in her breast, she faced the diagnosis, the subsequent mastectomy and rounds of chemotherapy and radiation therapy with her usual stoicism and humour. As teenaged Jessie and her father cycled through fear and worry, they also had to laugh when Denise accidentally tried to text friends using her morphine pump. The patient recovered well and wasted no time resuming her old interests, adding dragon boating to help regain strength and meet other cancer survivors.

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Their garden wedding was a humble affair with a single extravagance. Denise knew exactly what she wanted to wear on the day and commissioned a local seamstress to create a dress with long, lace sleeves, a high neck, a fitted silhouette that flared mid-thigh to a lace train, and all lined in silk. After the ceremony, the garment was tucked into a trunk and stored alongside other family treasures while the McIndoes made a life for themselves in the kiwifruit-growing town of Te Puke. They found a brick house near the fire station, five minutes from the supermarket, and within walking distance from local schools.

Six years after their wedding, Denise gave birth to the couple’s only child. Baby Jessica was the last of her generation to wear the christening gown that her aunts and older cousins had worn before her.

The child grew up easily understanding the altered cadence of her mother’s hearing-impaired speech. She also knew sign language and learnt early on to face any hearing-impaired person when speaking. From age three, Jessie would answer the phone if it rang when her father wasn’t nearby. Mum can’t talk, the toddler would tell callers. Can you phone back?

Eighteen months on, doctors announced she was in remission so the trio celebrated with a family photo shoot beneath Rotorua’s towering redwood trees. But Denise had a persistent cough and a series of niggling infections that refused to heal. Eventually, severe back pain landed her in hospital, where an ultrasound showed a shadow on her liver. A biopsy confirmed the cancer had returned. This time, the tumour was too big to remove and the first round of chemotherapy made her horribly ill. There were no more treatment options available and she returned home, to be cared for by hospice nurses, friends and family.

Sixteen-year-old Jessie helped with the drainage tubes, dressings and medication as well as her mother’s whims and needs. When Denise announced she wanted to swim in the sea one last time, Jessie and Paul found a way to get her to the water’s edge to paddle.

Only one person knew of Denise’s final wish, though.

As her liver failed and her body weakened, communication with visiting nurses became more difficult so her colleague and friend Maureen Baker stepped in to interpret. Initially, the two women used sign language. Then, once Denise was unable to speak or open her eyes, they used tactile sign language; a version of the hand signals made famous by Helen Keller, who is well-known for overcoming the limitations of both blindness and deafness.

Unbeknown to Jessie, Maureen was helping her bedridden friend with an extra task. As her own life ebbed, Denise painstakingly wrote or dictated notes destined for four key days in her daughter’s future. She poured her love into short, simple messages that were written inside each of the greeting cards Maureen had purchased. As they signed and wrote together, the women spoke about the life Denise wanted for her daughter.

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On 15 October 2012, just four weeks after her mother’s diagnosis, Jessie was summoned from the classroom. Jessie’s coming, Maureen signalled into her friend’s palm. Jessie’s here, she tapped when the girl arrived home, still in school uniform, to wait while her mother took her last breath.

Two days before the funeral, Maureen handed Paul a small box containing a bundle of envelopes. Each one, she told him, should be given to Jessie at the appropriate time.

The first envelope contained a card to be opened two months later, on 25 December. Denise had always made a fuss over the festive season, decorating the tree, baking treats, wearing a Santa hat to work. She wanted Jessie to have something to hold in her absence.

The second envelope would go to Jessie on her 18th birthday and the third on her 21st. The final card was to be handed over on her wedding day.

Jessie took over the cooking and many of the household chores while living with her grieving father. As the initial milestones passed, the teenager grew into a self-assured young woman. Quiet and practical like Paul, with Denise’s compassion and strength. She became a professional baker, often sweetening the lives of those she cared for with exquisitely decorated cakes.

As passing years eased the knot of sadness, Jessie met a bright, kind, intensive care nurse who captivated her from their first date. When he slipped an engagement ring on her finger, Jessie knew three things; she wanted to marry Gabriel Brockelsby, she would wear her mother’s dress, and the nuptials would mean she could open her mother’s final card.

There was some panic when an initial fitting found the dress was slightly too snug, but Jessie’s high school sewing teacher, Carol, came to the rescue. Carol had known Denise and now lived six doors down from the McIndoe home. Leading up to the wedding day, measurements were taken and rechecked, seams were unpicked, the neckline lowered and lengths of lace carefully cut and rejigged.

On a sunny November morning, Jessie unclasped the fine chain she always wore around her neck, then slipped her mother’s wedding band and engagement ring off the necklace onto her right hand. She picked up the flat rectangle envelope that was sitting, waiting for her alongside a photo of her mother wearing the very dress that would hug her figure as she walked up the aisle in a few hours.

The day had been planned for months, from the special women who would help her dress to the four different cake flavours and the modern jive-style dance she and Gabriel had been practising for months. But first the envelope.

The bride-to-be looked nervously from the envelope to her future husband. Gabriel sat alongside, delivering the same support he would soon promise in wedding vows he had written himself. Jessie had no doubts about the pending nuptials but felt daunted by the significance of the envelope in her hands. Much as her wedding day signalled a joyous new beginning, it was also the final time she would open a gift from her mother.

As she read the few laboriously penned words, saw the familiar handwriting and the ‘love from Mum’ signature at the bottom, Jessie allowed herself to experience the deep sorrow of loss. Then she dried her tears and prepared to relish every jubilant moment of the day her mother had pictured as she wrote the last card.

Wearing the dress was a comfort, the closest Jessie had come to being wrapped in her mother’s arms in 11 years. Perhaps the garment will be treasured and refashioned by a future daughter. For now, it has been carefully cleaned and folded into a box, awaiting the moment Jessie will unpack it and encourage her own children to touch the lace and silk that connect them to their grandmother.

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