So many times in life we feel the need to think of where and who we came from and to try hard to think about our past with the people who raised us and took us for what we were every step of the way. There’s that unconditional love I keep mentioning.
To think that many of my friends still have both or one of their parents well into their older age is a form of an awakening in me with a bit of jealousy that I am not proud of, but I do admit it does exist along with many other negative characteristics that I have acquired along the way. I’m not perfect, big news, hmm? But neither are you my friend… who is?
Our eldest son’s current girlfriend for the last couple of years lost both of her parents when barely a teenager, fifties, older parents and she was the youngest and my cousin lost one while a college student and the other a couple of years later, also older parents, in their sixties.
Why losing both of mine in my thirties should make me realize that compared to them I was extremely lucky, albeit mine too were older, in their seventies, then why the jealousy with all those that have elder parents and complain about their ills or how they behave due to dementia in their nineties?
Oh I don’t know, maybe it’s because I was never given that chance to complain about my elder parents ills or lack of knowing what to do with their checkbook?
So alright, I complain about everything and anything else, so I got that complaining thing covered.
But that isn’t why I was discussing this topic, no not at all, believe it or not today is the anniversary of my Mother’s untimely death.
Yes, it was thirty-one years ago today that my Mom died in Paul Kimball Hospital in Lakewood NJ at eleven thirty A.M, a Monday. The day we were all going to go out for lunch because they had already moved the day off from school for president’s day…to celebrate our anniversary a day late together. But he did not call me to the hospital until the wee hours of the morning around four A.M. and I drove like a crazy woman to get there… A stroke, I had seen a movie with an actress who had in real life one and these things were fixable, at least for that actress who did survive hers… But Mom had had a major stroke the night before and machines were keeping her alive, and the neurologist said my Mom was no longer in there. Thank G-d my Father was alive to make the DNR, Do Not Resuscitate, final decision, not me. At thirty-one I was still calling my Mom daily on this thing or that, and I was married for eleven years with two kids by then.
Devastating was an understatement. You never realize how much you love, care or need someone until they are not there when you want to call, but you know they won’t be able to pick up the other end of that line…TELL PEOPLE YOU LOVE ALL THE TIME! I did, and no argument last more than a couple of hours and we both forgave the other.
And so my Mom’s dying was shocking when a stroke was not in her health profile, she had survived breast cancer two years before and was living miserably with Rheumatoid Arthritis, refusing to have her knees replaced, feeling that she had had enough surgeries by then. Her bottle blonde hair for the last several months had gone to salt and pepper, not white, and for me that was when my Mom who wouldn’t wear her glasses if someone could see her and said that she would never turn grey, had perhaps given up?
I suppose a radical mastectomy in those days had little or no support like today, and Mom felt not so beautiful anymore but she was to Dad and me and her grandsons who loved her dearly and at six and nine and a half, and never lost someone they saw so often, scary.
I imagine. I was seven when I lost one grandpas and twelve for the other, both grandmas had passed away before I was born. That should have been a clue that my Mom would not outlive my Dad. Although, one died in 1950 from diabetes not allowing them to amputate her gangrene legs, and the other died in a car accident, six months before I was born, that is why I was named for her.
Who knows why any of this happens as it does, unless you are of a faith that believes that birth and death is an all encompassing not able to be changed plan?
Modern medicine has intervened in that way of thinking, I do believe.
But today of all days I am being a good daughter and as you can see I am not just thinking about my Mom and what she meant to me and us, but I have lit the candle for that purpose…thirty-one years after the fact.
Yes, I have no idea why I decided that now was the time to do this, G-d only know and HA, perhaps truer words have not been said by this child of Sylvia daughter of Morris.
And yes in the short prayer we must tell both names while lighting the candle. Moshe is for Morris, but I could not find a Yiddish or Hebrew spoken one for my Mom, Sylvia, how odd I thought since my parents were much better Jews than I. they even were responsible for building the Synagogue in Paramus by fund raising, the one on Spring Valley Road. I found it interesting that Trumps daughter’s husband went to that one, mine and my parents.
On that note or never every forgetting and remembering as if it happened yesterday, not recommended for all, but allow me anyway to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you to kindly to count all your blessings and share all those overages with you know who and we will too!
And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?!