It was more than the reticence many still have around anything mentioning the d-word. (This squeamishness can even extend to funeral directors, I discovered, when they inserted "passed away" into my carefully crafted death notice for her. Good grief.)
I sensed uncertainty about the level of sympathy required.
The myth of the evil stepmother persists. I blame Grimms’ Fairy Tales, but stories about their wickedness date back to Roman and even biblical times.
There will be awful stepmothers who have fraught relationships with their stepchildren, but they have no monopoly on that dynamic.
Maybe it is time to celebrate those relationships and the bravery of stepmothers who negotiate them, in all their complicated glory.
I was 6 when my stepmother came into my life, two years after my mother (32) died following an asthma attack.
In those two years, I and my older brother and younger sister (who was only 1 when Mum died) spent time with relatives or at home with a succession of strange housekeepers. My grief-stricken father was trying to cope and run a farm.
We were a bit feral by the time my 20-something stepmother bravely breezed into our lives as our new housekeeper, with her lippy, her city clothes and her stack of 45s.
What a culture shock it must have been for this fun-loving gregarious townie, living up a remote country valley, where contact with other people was limited and she knew no-one.
Family lore has it that soon after her arrival, when she sat us down for a civilised early tea while Dad was still doing the milking, a food fight ensued when she dashed out to feed the chooks.
She returned to find mashed potatoes and goodness knows what else splattered around the kitchen.
A lesser person might have thrown in the tea towel at that point, but not her.
She set about restoring order into our chaotic lives. Adept at cooking, sewing, knitting and the myriad tasks required for running an efficient farm household, she was also wise enough to recognise Mum’s death had affected us.
Her father had died when she was around 11, leaving her mother with six children and their two older half-siblings.
Tongues probably wagged when Dad made the stereotypical move of marrying his beautiful housekeeper, more than 20 years his junior, less than two years after she arrived. It seemed logical to me.
Her life became even busier when they added two daughters to the family.
Her relationship with me when I was a teenager was like that of an older sister. We could discuss then-risque subjects like contraception. I felt nothing was off limits.
She relished any chance for a knees-up but also liked to escape from her frenetic days by trout fishing from a cooling riverbank at dusk, often accompanied by one or more of her beloved Siamese cats hoping for a tasty morsel.
Typical of her ability to excel at whatever she attempted, she became the envy of other trout fishers in the valley when, in her first season, she landed around 60 trout.
After I had left school, a major manic episode saw her diagnosed with what is now called bipolar disorder and treated for it.
Her life changed rapidly in her early 40s, however, after Dad died suddenly, leaving her to raise their daughters.
Soon after, medical misadventure meant she suffered long-term effects from lithium toxicity, impacting her physical ability, speech and balance.
Somehow, she kept her sense of humour in the more than 40 years that followed, not succumbing to self-pity.
Following management of her mental health was patchy and it must have been hard to live in a small community when her mental illness sometimes manifested itself in extreme behaviour.
Her move to a bigger town when she was in her mid-50s was brave, but probably necessary.
In her later years, some of her cantankerous outbursts were baffling and her nearest and dearest often bore the brunt of that.
Although we did not see a lot of each other in her last years, she was always thrilled to see me. I would never leave her apartment without gifts.
Making the pilgrimage to inter her ashes last weekend, I felt pleased I had been able to tell her how grateful I was for her care and the stability she brought to my young life after a time of upheaval.
Sadly, I had to do that by letter, as at our last meeting her hearing aids weren’t working and shouting out my gratitude in a busy hospital ward would have been weird.
Luckily, she was still well enough to read my letter and be moved by it, but I know I should have told her much sooner.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
