Matilda's long life is safely in God's hands

Published: 2 May 2010
By: Selina Venier

105 and going strong: Matilda Cumner, previously a Bulimba parishioner, now lives at "Emmaus", Nudgee

HOW did she arrive at 105 years of age?

"I don't know how," a very straight-talking Matilda Cumner, who was born on March 28, 1905, said late last month from her new home at "Emmaus", Nudgee.

"You take what you can get."

Allowing a little more thought, beautiful Matilda - or "Til" to many in the Catholic Women's League in Brisbane's Bulimba parish where home was for 72 years - gave credit to her family.

"They'd come and stay with me on the weekends," she said of her daughters Rita and Berneice, both within earshot.
"But I would tell them to go home and be with their husbands ... their families."

About 18 months ago, after many weekends of such company and a fall, Matilda decided quite matter-of-factly she'd make the move to the northside care facility.

She hasn't looked back - or more pointedly, hasn't asked to revisit the Bulimba home first built when Berneice was "on the way".

"Mum just said one day, 'I'm ready'," Berneice said of her Mum's decision to move northward.

Maryborough-born Matilda and husband Clarence raised six children - two other daughters and two sons - at their Bulimba home.

Losing her father at age 15 and mother when she was 24, Matilda then lived with a married sister in Woolloongabba, Brisbane.

"(It was a time when) it was safe to go to a dance of a night time and not be afraid to get out of a tram," she remembers.

The "Egg Board" was "to blame" for her meeting "Clarence Isaac".

"He was a Queensland Egg Board accountant," Matilda said of her husband who died in 1979.

"... He got to know a relation of my sister's and we got together through that ... so you can blame the Egg Board."

Clarence - a convert to Catholicism - married Matilda on April 22, 1935, at St Joseph's Church, Kangaroo Point.

"Mrs Cumner" to everyone nearby - including "old family friend" and current Bulimba pastoral associate Good Samaritan Sister Mary Randle - said she "always wanted to grow up and have a whole lot of kids".

Matilda said that, as a new Catholic, Clarence especially "loved going to Benediction of a night time".

Their first-born, named after St Rita because of Matilda's "devotion" to her, was born in July of the following year.

Rita's youngest sister Monica died aged 46 - something their mother agreed was "difficult".

Matilda's daughters said "kindness" was the virtue constantly modelled by their mother.

"When her sister suffered a stroke many years ago, Mum devoted a whole day each week to visit her and her young family," Rita recalled.

"... Even though she had a young family of her own and had to travel by public transport."

Matilda, who "sleeps with Rosary beads under the pillow", attended Sunday Mass until her late nineties in Sts Peter and Paul church, Bulimba, and received weekly visits from an Extraordinary Minister of Communion until her admission to Emmaus in August 2008.

Nowadays she attends Mass daily.

Bulimba priests Fr Bryan Lee, Fr Harry Bliss and current parish priest Fr Tom Elich have all conferred the Sacrament of Anointing on Matilda.

Sight-impaired, she "loves listening to the radio" and keeps up with news and current affairs that way.

Her daughters also described her as "a cricket fanatic" and were quick to count up the 27 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren, Matilda asking, "Does that include the little one born the other day?"

Various family members live in Brisbane but others are spread as far as Ireland, Lismore, Maleny, Stanthorpe, Toowoomba, Melbourne and Sydney.

"As many as possible" came to celebrate Matilda's 105th birthday this year for a "special morning tea".

Significantly, two of her nieces, now nuns - Sr Clare and Sr Imelda (Irving) - also came and continue to "love their Aunty Matilda".

Sr Clare and Sr Imelda are part of the Wool-loongabba family with whom the 105-year-old once lived.

Although she said she's "lived an ordinary life" a most extraordinary event transpired "one frosty morning" when Matilda was 12.

"I was at Mass and Archbishop (James) Duhig asked one of the altar boys to approach me," she said.

"He (Archbishop Duhig) wasn't there all the time because he travelled around ... (but) the altar boy told me to go and see the archbishop in the presbytery.

"I thought, 'What have I done?'

"I went and he presented me with a great, big Bible.

"Everybody thought I was lucky ... I thought I was lucky."

Berneice said the Bible was "a family treasure" which sounded to also describe the matriarch of their uniquely blessed family.

"Not worried" about the future and relishing in the "serenity" of her age, Matilda said faith has "always been a big part" of life.

And that beautiful life, in God's hands, continues.