Bethesda angel sculpture in Central Park, New York.

On Tuesday I went to see my mother with a bag of food in hand: a challah, two potato knishes, two kasha knishes, a container of little meatballs and spaghetti and a large container of vegetable soup. She was thrilled. This is her soul food, and despite the fact that her meals are supplied by her residence, she felt a lot safer should she not abide by the daily menu.

challah

potato knish

kasha knish

I went through her mail: my plea to the VA was responded to, a denial of my request for more funds, but the door was not totally shut, I can still send in an itemization of her medical expenses. I am, still, trying to figure out how to juggle money  to make her income cover what needs to be covered. It’s not working.

Each time I see my mother I hear the stories, usually the same ones, of her childhood, and how incredibly wonderful her parents were, especially her father. But something different happened on Tuesday: my mother said she hoped that she would see her parents again. This made me realize that she has been face to face with the end and is wondering what would “happen.”

Long life can be a blessing and a curse. The older one gets, the stronger and more valid the realization that the end is near, or nearer. Although my mother says she is not afraid, I know she is. I am.

We sat on her bed. Actually, I sat and she leaned. She is too short for her feet to hit the floor. She kept grabbing my arm to punctuate her story, to augment the meaning and to give it drama. Her stories have more and more to do about victimization: the mean lady at the desk, the noise from here or there that she has to endure.  She insisted that she figured out that there had to be an empty room beneath her where a lot of noise was coming from and that there were people watching and cheering a ball game, employees of the building. She says she called the main desk several times and was told by the woman who answered the phone that no one was available to come up and check out the problem. My mother had the solution: she would call the police.

Calling the police is my mother’s latest tactic to obtain truth and justice, but this time the threat didn’t have to be carried out and the noise abated. The story she created may or may not have been true. But threatening to call the police might just have.

And then the story morphed into this: she was listening to television while lying on her bed and resting. She heard voices, she heard people in the room, scurrying. She felt presences. She opened her eyes slightly (she has macular degeneration) and saw blurry, smoky forms moving in the room.

She said she hoped they were her parents letting her know they are near.

This kind of gave me the chills, for as much as I would like to believe that the “presences” were my mother’s parents, I would hate to think if people were walking into the room which she keeps unlocked.

As difficult as it is for the person who is readying for the passage to the unknown, those around them have it rough too. It weighs on me. When will it happen? What day will it be? What will the weather be like? What date will go on the stone. How will I be notified? Will it be a call in the middle of the night? How will I handle it? What will I do first?

I’ve lost many loved ones to death: a parent, a spouse, several friends, two physicians (one to a heart attack and his successor to suicide when his wife left him). Pets.  I have endured the heartbreak of loss again and again. It is lousy.

When my father passed away on a sunny January morning in Florida in 1991, I had had a week of premonitions just before, and then it happened. He had a stroke in the shower. When I finally got down to Florida a few days later, leaving a three-year-old behind with his dad, my job was to accompany my mother, to the hospital, and authorize the “pulling of the plug.”

My mother sat next to my father’s bed and spoke to him against the rhythm of the breathing machine. His eyes remained closed and her words bounced off him. She pulled the covers over his shoulder. She patted him. He was already gone, her Jack, whom she loved, hated, fought with, had two children with. Who she was strong for: stronger-than-him-for. She got up and left a place for me.

I spoke to him in silence for quite a while. The machine was no longer on. There was no breathing, no sound of whooshing or whirring. When I left my chair and walked to the door stifling a cry (though my father made a lot of my life miserable), his back was blue.

I saw death. It was the first time.

My mother was tough, together, maybe even relieved. We stood in a parking lot perhaps it was that day. She put her lipstick on and then it disappeared from her hand, no where to be found, POOF! It was not on the ground, under no nearby car. I told her that dad wanted something that had been close to her lips. We were staying at my aunt and uncle’s house, and later that evening, my aunt jumped up from her chair and said she had been poked–something my father would always playfully do.

My mother endured a lot in her lifetime and I don’t know where she got her toughness from. She seemed to keep an emotional distance, put her own survival first, throw in some drama and carry on. She is one of the thousands who are considered part of The Greatest Generation. The ones who endured snow “up to here,” who had to share a Kwepie Doll and one little baby carriage with three sisters and who thought nothing of taking turns. One who almost died of pneumonia at least ten times and who lived in a “cold water flat” and had to climb three-flights of stairs. One whose parents’ first language was not English, hence her first language was not English, but she learned.

One whose marriage was a great disappointment.

I can go on and on but not now. It’s getting to me. The day is coming. The thought is catching in my throat.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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