My Mother Is Dying, My Mother Has Died
posted:
My mother passed away on May 5th at the nursing home. 87 years old. A long 87 years. Raised on a hundred acre farm in what is now Romania, part of a German community on the outskirts of the old Austrian-Hungarian empire. Never made it past a 4th grade education because her back and hands were needed to work in the fields along with her brothers and sisters. Her mother had given birth to 14 total of which only six survived. The good old days. Growing up I heard many stories from her about going to bed at 10 or 11 PM and up by 3:30 to begin the chores.
I also heard many other stories growing up, far too many stories, repeated and relived often in real time, of the onslaught of the Soviet Army at the end of World War II, of her family being displaced from their farm, her parents allowed only 200 lbs. of belongings to take with them. Of her sisters and brothers, along with anyone between 15 and 45, being rounded up and transported to the concentration camps in the Ukraine where many were worked and starved to death as the Russians rebuilt their empire. I say she told these stories in real time because she suffered severely from what is now referred to as PTSD. She was in the camps for 3 years, released only because it was assumed she’d die before returning home. If you didn’t freeze or starve or die of typhus or tetanus, odds were good that you were close to death by the time it was decided you could leave. I didn’t grow up listening to fairy tales with happy endings. I grew up watching my storyteller crumble into hysterical weeping several times a week, re-experiencing her horrors, bearing witness to the cruelty and suffering that happened daily. Suffering so difficult to imagine that on the few times she ventured to describe it to the neighborhood suburban housewives, their response was to assume my mother was making these stories up. Psychotherapy was not an option to an immigrant with limited command of her new language. Counseling had not yet permeated society. Her family, which was to follow her to the States to start a new life, was shut out when Uncle Sam put the kabbosh on immigration, further accelerating her sense of abandonment. Neighbors, comfortable in their ignorance, were useless. My father, himself an escapee from post-war Eastern Europe, was too ill equipped and broken in spirit to handle her emotional needs, consumed as he was by his own traumas and inner isolation. Theirs was a tragic and miserable marriage. Under these circumstances, and with 5 years on my younger brother, I therefore became the designated confidant, listening to her stories on a daily basis, because the truth was she related everything to her experiences in the camps. Even a sunny sky and a shady tree or the smell of bread could trigger a memory of brutality. Her meltdowns were the worst, and you could see them coming as she built up the momentum in her recollections. You’d sit helpless and frightened out of your wits watching the transformation, all the while trying to figure out how to calm her down and talk her off the ledge. Her life was driven by fear and trauma and she was not sophisticated enough to realize the emotional havoc she was creating in her kids. Her extreme disappointment in my father naturally directed her energies to her two sons, and we were burdened with the unachievable responsibility of providing her with her only joy in life. Yet she was a classic European who paid attention to appearances, and anyone stopping by the house would never guess what turbulence existed so much of the time They were, instead, seduced by her infectious laugh and incomparable cooking and baking. My friends, raised on mashed potatoes and bologna sandwiches, thought they had stepped into an exotic restaurant, so filled were they by delicious goulashes and pastries by the time they left. She loved to talk and her accent and slightly convoluted English made her an object of affectionate curiosity to these white, suburban, American kids.
Her laughter came from a deep appreciation of comedy, what might even be considered low comedy, and she was one of the few women I’ve known who possessed a love and understanding for The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, The Rascals and the great Warner Brother Looney Tunes. Not surprising. Comedy rooted in violence and embarrassment. I don’t remember watching Sid Caesar, but apparently I did with her. I do remember well Red Skelton. I thank her for that and owe my sense of humor in large part to her.
She was a tough broad. For someone so driven by fear, she was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. She was the anchor in the family, a case study of perseverance and optimism in spite of her devils and nightmares. She was the one who didn’t hide, behaved counter-phobicly, got things done and faced down neighbors or councilmen or cops. Her health, so ruined by the camps, left her physical condition very compromised for the remainder of her life, and she underwent countless major surgeries. She survived late stage ovarian cancer in her mid 50’s with what can only be described as sheer force of will. She was in her seventies when she had a foot and a half of colon removed and suffered a couple of strokes while under the knife. Strokes, both major and minor, became regular occurrences in her final 15 years and her partial dementia was the result of a brain that, according to the doctors, looked like a minefield in the CAT scans.
Unlike my father, whose life seemed to end upon leaving his homeland and coming to the States, who lived in the perpetual past and never spoke much about his life, when he did speak, past 1945, my mother could be present and connected to day to day events, and think in terms of a future. It was what made her engaging and so full of life when she wasn’t riding the nightmare express. She was very easy to like because she possessed a generous and well meaning heart. It was evident even at the nursing home where the staff loved her and were genuinely upset when her behavior would occasionally turn dark and delusional. We were humbled by the number of nurses and aides who tearfully expressed their sadness at losing a "friend", not an easy thing to say in the dementia unit.
I also heard many other stories growing up, far too many stories, repeated and relived often in real time, of the onslaught of the Soviet Army at the end of World War II, of her family being displaced from their farm, her parents allowed only 200 lbs. of belongings to take with them. Of her sisters and brothers, along with anyone between 15 and 45, being rounded up and transported to the concentration camps in the Ukraine where many were worked and starved to death as the Russians rebuilt their empire. I say she told these stories in real time because she suffered severely from what is now referred to as PTSD. She was in the camps for 3 years, released only because it was assumed she’d die before returning home. If you didn’t freeze or starve or die of typhus or tetanus, odds were good that you were close to death by the time it was decided you could leave. I didn’t grow up listening to fairy tales with happy endings. I grew up watching my storyteller crumble into hysterical weeping several times a week, re-experiencing her horrors, bearing witness to the cruelty and suffering that happened daily. Suffering so difficult to imagine that on the few times she ventured to describe it to the neighborhood suburban housewives, their response was to assume my mother was making these stories up. Psychotherapy was not an option to an immigrant with limited command of her new language. Counseling had not yet permeated society. Her family, which was to follow her to the States to start a new life, was shut out when Uncle Sam put the kabbosh on immigration, further accelerating her sense of abandonment. Neighbors, comfortable in their ignorance, were useless. My father, himself an escapee from post-war Eastern Europe, was too ill equipped and broken in spirit to handle her emotional needs, consumed as he was by his own traumas and inner isolation. Theirs was a tragic and miserable marriage. Under these circumstances, and with 5 years on my younger brother, I therefore became the designated confidant, listening to her stories on a daily basis, because the truth was she related everything to her experiences in the camps. Even a sunny sky and a shady tree or the smell of bread could trigger a memory of brutality. Her meltdowns were the worst, and you could see them coming as she built up the momentum in her recollections. You’d sit helpless and frightened out of your wits watching the transformation, all the while trying to figure out how to calm her down and talk her off the ledge. Her life was driven by fear and trauma and she was not sophisticated enough to realize the emotional havoc she was creating in her kids. Her extreme disappointment in my father naturally directed her energies to her two sons, and we were burdened with the unachievable responsibility of providing her with her only joy in life. Yet she was a classic European who paid attention to appearances, and anyone stopping by the house would never guess what turbulence existed so much of the time They were, instead, seduced by her infectious laugh and incomparable cooking and baking. My friends, raised on mashed potatoes and bologna sandwiches, thought they had stepped into an exotic restaurant, so filled were they by delicious goulashes and pastries by the time they left. She loved to talk and her accent and slightly convoluted English made her an object of affectionate curiosity to these white, suburban, American kids.
Her laughter came from a deep appreciation of comedy, what might even be considered low comedy, and she was one of the few women I’ve known who possessed a love and understanding for The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, The Rascals and the great Warner Brother Looney Tunes. Not surprising. Comedy rooted in violence and embarrassment. I don’t remember watching Sid Caesar, but apparently I did with her. I do remember well Red Skelton. I thank her for that and owe my sense of humor in large part to her.
She was a tough broad. For someone so driven by fear, she was one of the bravest people I’ve ever known. She was the anchor in the family, a case study of perseverance and optimism in spite of her devils and nightmares. She was the one who didn’t hide, behaved counter-phobicly, got things done and faced down neighbors or councilmen or cops. Her health, so ruined by the camps, left her physical condition very compromised for the remainder of her life, and she underwent countless major surgeries. She survived late stage ovarian cancer in her mid 50’s with what can only be described as sheer force of will. She was in her seventies when she had a foot and a half of colon removed and suffered a couple of strokes while under the knife. Strokes, both major and minor, became regular occurrences in her final 15 years and her partial dementia was the result of a brain that, according to the doctors, looked like a minefield in the CAT scans.
Unlike my father, whose life seemed to end upon leaving his homeland and coming to the States, who lived in the perpetual past and never spoke much about his life, when he did speak, past 1945, my mother could be present and connected to day to day events, and think in terms of a future. It was what made her engaging and so full of life when she wasn’t riding the nightmare express. She was very easy to like because she possessed a generous and well meaning heart. It was evident even at the nursing home where the staff loved her and were genuinely upset when her behavior would occasionally turn dark and delusional. We were humbled by the number of nurses and aides who tearfully expressed their sadness at losing a "friend", not an easy thing to say in the dementia unit.
