[Fredslist] The Gift

Sun Apr 18 10:33:40 EDT 2010

The gift

 It was January 13, 2010 when I arrived to bring her home.  Mom was living
in Florida for 22 years most of which was without my Dad.  She was fiercely
independent and nothing was allowed to stand in the way of that.  On New
Year’s Day she declared to all her doctors and to me that she was done with
hospitals, with surgeries, and Diabetes was done having its way with her.
I held back the tears as long as I could but I finally said “you know that
you are telling me I could lose my mother”.  Using a very matter- of- fact
tone she replied “yes”.  Her voice sounded empowered and crystal clear as if
she had won a victory.  So I told her that if she wanted to come North to be
with her family, which was something we had been working on since
Thanksgiving,  that she needed to tell her doctors that they had to make her
well enough to travel.  With that we set the date at January 17th.

Our plans to fly commercially dissolved the minute I saw her.  She was in no
shape to travel but I could not leave her there either.  I made a promise
that she would not have to do this by herself anymore.  The conversation was
not even an option six months earlier.  After packing up her life and her
house so that we could rent it, I airlifted my Mom out of Florida.  

During the packing process I ran across some amazing things about the life
of my family and most especially about my Mom.  I learned that my Mom may
have had a mild case of OCD.  It was a friend, who was a guidance counselor
in a previous life that was helping me pack one evening, who noticed the
clues. 

Is that what her penchant for perfection in the minutia all these years was
about?  It might have made me understand her better. I came to understand
that perfection was an elusive state of being. Once attained, it flitted
away as instantly as it arrived.  Instead, I chose to focus on excellence
and gently guided my children toward the same.   Perhaps if I had known
about my Mom’s OCD I might not have done that.  

But also perhaps it might not have driven a wedge between my Mom and me that
lasted most of my adult years.  She used to say that she just wanted the
best for me.  Her desires to give the best to her children were executed
with strong armed tactics wrapped in verbal assaults if we didn’t comply.
The meta-message taught was that if it wasn’t perfect it wasn’t good enough
ergo I wasn’t good enough.  I came to resolve that problem the day I walk
out on my Mom over something incredibly silly. It was thirteen years ago. We
came to an unspoken understanding after that. [ I don’t know that my
brothers have.]  This past July was the first time my Mom said that I was
amazing when I came South to take her home from the rehab center.

My packing adventure led to a 10x10x13 box of photos that trace back to the
19th century.  Long forgotten names and unknown faces that represent a
lineage not passed on except in pictures.  I was hoping my Mom might shed
light on some of the people in those pictures so I shipped the box up North.
Later conversations revealed the images of my name sake – my paternal
Grandmother Esther and her mother Anna, my paternal grandfather David – but
many more go nameless.  There were many pictures of my Dad as a kid. There
was his Bar Mitzvah picture and his graduation from high school.  I never
realized how handsome he looked till then.   He never showed them to me.  

I found two bibles that belonged to Grandpa David and my Father.  They were
given to them at the time of their Bar Mitzvah’s. They were in amazing
shape.  I found hand made beaded bags and delicately crocheted table runners
that did not look old at all. They were made by Grandma Esther.  It amazed
me how well my Mom took care of them.  Her OCD connected the grandparents I
never met to me and my children through their belongings and creative
contributions.  It is a family lineage to be prized and treated with
delicacy and respect.    

There was a box of coins in my father’s dresser.  While I doubted any of
them had value, it amazed me they were there.  It was a mix of dollars,
half-dollars, and foreign coins.  Most were no more than 50 years old. Some
come from Romania where my paternal family hails. One or two dated back to
the 19th century.  They were Morgan dollars.   As it turns out my nephew is
into coins. So I gave them to him to see what they were worth and what
should be done about them.  One of the Morgan Dollars is worth $250 because
of its color and how well it was taken care of.  Another coin would have
been worth $10,000 had it not been scratched somewhere in the early 20th
century.  Now it is worthless. 

Then there were the funnier things.  Like the snack size ziplock bags of
little safety pins we found in the jewelry box.  They are hard to come by
but my Mom made sure she had many.  There were multiple combs that reminded
me of when my Mom would sleep on a satin pillow case to keep her hair
coiffed between beauty salon sessions on Tuesdays and Saturdays.  The combs
were unique and specific because they were used to put stray hairs back in
place.   My Mom was a 5’8, model tall, elegant creature of habit.  Tuesdays
and Saturdays were beauty parlor days.  She had been doing that since she
was 16 years old and kept it up even in the rehabilitation centers.  

As a Mom and housewife everything she did was habitual. Tuesdays and Fridays
the cleaning girl came. The king size bed was made a certain way and if the
mattress was an eighth of an inch off from where it belong no one could move
forward until it was just right.  Thursdays were food shopping days and
generally that night we had “bagel night” or Chinese food.  Bagel night
consisted of everything we bought at the deli counter that day.  They would
be rewrapped and placed on the table in “smorgasbord fashion. On Friday
nights it was always pot roast.   Steaks, when she made them, were always
cooked with onion powder, garlic salt, and paprika. On Sunday mornings we
had bagels, lox, and cream cheese after Hebrew school with three sets of
Sunday papers. 

In my Mom’s closet were these incredible and expensive suits that were
preserved over 40 years.  There were magnificent bags. Some were the same
style but in different colors that were now in vogue again.  There was the
Mary Poppins bag we nicknamed one year because my husband kept throwing
sample sizes of rice crispy treats into it when she wasn’t looking on the
day we took the kids to the movies. They were about 9 and 12 years old then.
It made them laugh.  My Mom always carried so many things in her bag. It was
incredibly heavy. How she never got a back ache from it baffles me still.

I had 48 hours to pack up my mother’s personal affects.   The crystal set
she dragged me to see at a little boutique down the block from my first home
was packed gingerly.  My Mom had remarked to her neighbor the month before
that she wanted me to have it because I was with her the day she bought it
and had it shipped to Florida.  At the time it seemed like it was just
“things”.  But I was struck at how important it was to her that I was there
with her when she bought it. Considering we barely liked each other then.  

I was bringing my Mom to a nursing home the day she made that remark to her
neighbor because it was too dangerous for her to stay home and she wasn’t
well enough to travel yet.  As it turned out there were three separate sets
of crystal.  Fortuitously it may become one for each child. 

The items that tripped me up the most among all the packing were the shoes
which I left for last.  I made sure that everything in the house was gone by
the time I tackled them.    The personality of the house changed as the
things were moved out.  It also felt vacant.

My Mom had shoes that lined the top and bottom of her walk-in closet.  They
were encased in clear plastic shoe boxes that stacked three high or they
were in their original boxes that looked as new as the day she got the
shoes.  There were many 3 inch and 4 inch high heals.  Considering how tall
my Mom was that said a lot.  Considering she became an amputee 8 months
earlier said a lot too. The shoes were 10 years old in some cases.  My Mom
was a 9 ½ triple A. It is a very hard size.  Her shoes were expensive.  I
remember her paying $200 for shoes as a young adult thirty some odd years
earlier.  These shoes were no different.  I wear a nine medium and no one in
my family has her size either. 

I decided to tie the shoes together in their containers and store them with
the rest of her items that were placed in an air conditioned storage
facility down the road that day. I also decided with conviction that someone
would need such a difficult size somewhere and they would love these
magnificent shoes. The thought that I was packing her life up because she
would not return home kept nagging at me all the while.  

As it turned out My Mom won’t be. We gathered together today, my older
brother with his wife and two grown boys, my twin brother with his wife and
three little children, and me with my husband and two grown daughters. It is
March 21, 2010 and we gather for the last time as a family with My Mom.  She
is terminal.  

There are only weeks left according to the doctor.  It’s one week before
Passover so we decided not to wait and instead gathered to celebrate in her
room.   Even though it has nothing to do with Passover, I duplicated Bagel
night with a small dose of Chinese food and some other things to cater to
this eclectic clan.  My Mom, who barely eats at all, asked for a piece of
steak so I made it her way.  Well done with onion powder, garlic salt, and
paprika.  After all it is the little things you remember and keep with you.

She stayed alert through out the four hours.  Her lips perched in a way that
conveyed she was “kvelling” to see her three children and her grandchildren
ages 7-29 come by to see her.  She said little, interacted little, but her
smile, the few comments she made, let us know she was there, she was
present, and she was aware.  At the end, after the clean up, she was falling
asleep.  As the last one to leave I kissed her good night as she stated with
a smile “it was a good day”. 

Her feisty side has given way to adorableness.  Gone is the independence and
perfectionism. What remain are the courage and grace she demonstrated
through out her adult years and especially in the last 3 years of her life
as she fought hard to keep her life on her terms.  Unfortunately Diabetes
had its way.  So now my Mom descends at 75 years of age on her terms and we
honor her that way. 

Epilogue

Nineteen years earlier my Father extracted a reluctant promise from me that
I would take care of my Mom when he was gone.  The promise transformed into
a blessing and a gift. On April 18, 2010 Evelyn Berkowitz passed away
peacefully and on her terms.  I think I will miss her most. 

Ester Horowitz

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