For my mother on mother's day

You wonder about my mother. Well, my mother is my hero in life. She was smart, funny, independent (except at the end), creative & terribly honest. She could strike up a conversation with anyone -- and did -- while guarding her privacy -- and she did. She was extremely proper but open minded to new ideas & customs which she never followed. She was a great date & while I was in prep school in PA she used to take me to New York to the theatre, museums, and the like.

Many years later, when I first came to New York to work after college, my mother came to my little apartment to find an empty refrigerator & a dusty floor & insisted that I had to buy food & have a maid. I explained that I never went into grocery stores & that I didn't want anyone cleaning up after me. However I agreed that I would accompany her to the grocery store only to wait outside while she shopped. I did this barefoot. I also agreed to a maid as long as I never met her, never paid her, never had to tell her what to do. This was accomplished, starting one day the very next week while I was at work. This lady bought food, cleaned the apartment, left me notes & I never laid eyes on her. A couple of years went by.

Then Carol & I started dating. One night she stayed over & slept in as I went to work. The next morning as Carol lay drowsily in bed, she heard the door open & a person enter the apartment. Frightened, she wrapped her naked body in a sheet & jumped into the closet where she was discovered by the maid. The next week, I found a note from the maid saying she felt I was now in good hands & didn't need her help any more and she never returned.

As my mother grew old, she became afraid of this and that & my father, ever the doctor & loving husband, took care of her. Slowly but surely over the years my mother fell into decline. Finally she entered the hospital as an emergency patient several times with fluid in her lungs & a weakened heart. The last time she entered the hospital, she suffered an attack of some kind which landed her in ICU where she was strapped down, intubated, fed intravenously, diapered, bathed, handled, rolled over, & examined every few hours.

Nightly we met with her doctor -- my father, my sister & I. My father & sister discussed her medical condition since they are both doctors while I sat across from my mother's physician merely listening. Finally I explained to my mother's doctor that I had a different agenda. I believed he was practicing the best & worst of medicine -- the best because of all the technology & medical advancements, the worst because my mother had no quality of life nor could we ever hope for one. I asked that he make her more comfortable with more drugs so she could rest peacefully. He explained her dosage & I explained that I didn't care -- I wanted it doubled. It was.

Finally my mother died strapped down, intubated, fed intravenously, diapered, bathed, handled, rolled over & examined every few hours. She was sleeping.

The Jewish religion includes a ritual bathing by women from the synagogue who then wrap the body in a shroud to be buried in the simplest of pine boxes. But before that happened my father insisted on seeing her one last time -- something that is not done. And he wanted us all to see her, too.

I entered the storage room where the wooden coffin rested on a table. My father, sister & brother-in-law went left, towards the head of the coffin. I turned right towards the foot of the coffin & as I walked around the pine box, I gently removed the toe tag from her right toe -- just like the movies.

There was my mother, world traveler, great date, funny, smart, independent, creative & terribly honest, lying there in a simple dress, cold & colorless with a toe tag. Thanks to my father, that's the last memory I have of her.

I talked to my mother every day during the several years of her decline. I shared her fright of falling, her frustrations of not being able to write because her hands shook, losing her appetite and her strength, not being able to read (her favorite pastime) & her fear of death. Her own mother had died at age 83. She did, too. I still try to talk to her every day. Some days are harder than others.

Did I have my first out-of-body-experience?

I was attending a town meeting relating to this year's budget & taking notes for a possible article later in the week. As I looked up from my Samsung Netbook I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. That may not be the most accurate phrase to use but I don't know what else to call it. (I'm open to suggestions)

Across from me, a woman was scanning the local newspaper & this was the page she was on.

All I could see is what I've highlighted. There was nothing else on the page except my father's obit.  I wondered if she was reading it. Was she merely scanning it  or had she completely ignored it? How could she do that? 

She seemed focused so possibly she was reading the obit and, if so, what would she think?  Was she impressed with his accomplishments?  Did she wonder about him?

I wondered if she going to look in my direction.  Silently: "I hope she doesn't say anything to me." It's so awkward to thank people who offer their  pro forma condolences without an ounce of sincerity or care.  OTOH, I guess they don't have to say anything. This woman did not say anything. And I wondered, if indeed she hadn't read any of the obits on that page ,how whole lives could be so casually & completely ignored.

On Sundays I generally watch all the public affairs shows, i.e. ABC's 'This Week', 'Fox News Sunday', NBC's 'Meet The Press', Fareed Zakaria's 'GPS', CNN's 'State of the Union' & 'The Chris Matthews Show'.

I will only refer to one show for reasons that will become obvious in a moment.

Besides interviewing the current news makers, The ABC show also offers political humor, generally from Comedy Central or the late night shows & an 'In Memoriam' section where they offer mini-biographies of interesting people who have died during the week. Then they list the names of all the service people --  along with their ages & home towns -- who were killed in our two current theaters of war.

No matter what I'm doing, bored, multi-tasking, day dreaming...... when the 'In Memoriam' section begins I focus entirely on the television set, listening intently to every mini-biography while staring at the pictures of these people & I silently read every name, age & hometown of those who have lost their lives in war.

The vast majority of the prior group are older, the latter group younger.  When I see a name followed by a II or a III, I think how sad that the line was ended this way.  Of the older group, I consider how much they have contributed to this world that I live in.

I want to pay my respect to all these people -- in both groups -- as best as I can at the moment, under the circumstances.  I feel better having tried.

Did that woman do that for my father. I'll have to wonder.

What a good book can do for you.

I just finished reading an excellent little book called "Losing Mum & Pup" by Christopher Buckley on the subject of becoming an orphan.

I enjoyed the book tremendously as it was honest, funny, profane but when I finished it I think I became a bit depressed.

I started thinking about how claustrophobic a coffin might be & wondered if you could really be sure that the ashes you got back (assuming you went that route) were those of your loved one. I mean, how could you tell? And if I wondered about that, I wondered how I might ever be comforted by having a pot of doubtful ashes on my mantel or side table.

I guess I starting thinking about these things because my father is 97 and is dying very slowly of renal failure. He's not in pain & won't go on dialysis (I salute his decision) so it's just a matter of a short while, maybe months.

Whenever he dies he will be buried in a plain pine box next to his wife, my mother. One way or another, they'll be together again. So much for my thoughts about coffins.

But then I started thinking about Carol's wishes. She says she wants to be cremated & scattered in the Mediterranean. I promised I would do that.  Putting the questions of legitimate Carol ash aside, I then wondered what I would want. Once I scatter Carol, I'll never find her again. If I get scattered, where would I want to be -- the Mediterranean too? Is it comforting to think I'd be in the same sea?

And if I went the Jewish burial-in-a-pine-box route, where would I want to be planted? Ridgefield? Puerto Rico, next to my parents? Hmmmm. Not very romantic & besides, I'm 66 & all grown up now.