My mother’s funeral was on Sunday. By the time we arrived to the cemetery my mind was both blank and racing. I had preplanned everything even before my mother came back to New York. I found her a plot in the same cemetery as her parents. I prepaid for the funeral home. It was all in place. I can’t tell you how many times I called the funeral home and told them to be prepared, she was coming. Despite pneumonia, allergies, shingles, and Covid, she fooled us every time. We thought we had it all figured out but we never did, except, for years my husband would say, “she’s going to live ’til 102.

That’s exactly what happened.

I engaged the rabbi from Hospice. He visited my mother almost every week and would call with a report. “Your mother said this, your mother enjoyed that, your mother looked clean and her hair was combed, her black hair.”

I had to correct him or at least offer more information: her hair was dyed black by the meshugganah who worked at the beauty parlor in the building. She had no business dying my once-blonde mother’s hair black. And why the heck didn’t she just let it go gray? Or even blonde. “No, I don’t want to attract attention.”

If my mother had realized that her hair hadn’t been done for eight months she would have crawled into a cave and hid. It was inconceivable. It’s all inconceivable. Death is inconceivable. The day was inconceivable. And here we were at the mouth of a gaping hole in the earth looking down at a pine box with a Star of David adorning it.

But first, I had to sign off on papers, pay for overtime for grave diggers—it was late afternoon; I was asked if I wanted to identify her, except it was phrased as “have a final moment.” The answer was “NO. That is no longer my mother, she left quite a while ago.”

So back to the gaping hole that is not only in the earth but in the heart. My dear friend showed up with her husband and the hole in my heart began to fill. Candy, the aide came with her lovely daughter and with one of the other aides. Candy was weeping behind her mask. My son was there with his lovely girlfriend and they did a FaceTime with my sister and her family. My husband, in a wheel chair sat at the precipice of the open earth.

I spoke about  life from a daughter’s point of view. Other comments were made by family. The words just came pouring out weaving time and place into moments. Here’s one you probably read some months ago:

My son went  to my mother’s to pay the rent and to pick up a box of stuff. It was likely January or February. My mother saw her grandson leaving with the box and commanded him to stop. My mother, mind you, never left her apartment except to be taken to an appointment and that hadn’t occurred for a very long time. She’d just get her hair done or visit the doctor, both in the building. She’d most likely be in a wheel chair.

So, when she commanded my son to stop and wait for her, he was puzzled. This soon to be 102 year old woman who had diminished to 4 feet 9 inches, had my son put the box on her rollator: she insisted on pushing it to the elevator. Once they were in the elevator, she pushed it all the way out of the building to the parking lot.

It was, inconceivable. But that’s how she was: tenacious, righteously indignant and protective.

And that’s how the aides were toward her. They made sure she was nourished and attended to up until the very end.

Now, for the cardinal, the beautiful red bird is known as the hinge between Earth and spirit. On Saturday, I was thinking about my mom and one flew right over my head. Since then, Cardinals have been tweeting outside my window and in my tree. Life calls from the other side of the veil. It’s nice to think that angels are near.

When we arrived home from the funeral, we found that our little pet, Swirl, the biggest of the three snails, had passed: disintegrated, shredded. It left behind its former home, a somewhat battered shell.

There was the lesson: what is left behind is merely the shell for the spirit, the essence, for what once was. 

I suppose that mom brought Swirl to heaven with her, where she is undoubtedly having that dinner with my dad, and then, of course, they’ll go dancing in the clouds.

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

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