Never mind that the cost of running
Mom’s obituary twice was the same as the cost of round-trip plane fare for six
of her grandchildren and great grandchildren from the East Coast to attend her
memorial gathering in California. I have
another frustration with obituaries.
They have to leave far too much out.
I never explained the reason that I
identified Mom’s parents as her adoptive parents. It wasn’t to distinguish them from “real”
parents. Adoptive parents are very
real. Whoever loves and cares for a
child is the real parent. I said
adoptive parents because later in her life we found four siblings my mother,
brought up as an only child, didn’t know she had. I couldn’t go into detail about how much she loved
her (adoptive) father, whose grocery store in Los Angeles went out of business
as supermarkets prevailed and who went door to door during the Depression
trying to sell products as a Fuller Brush man but not succeeding because he was
too honest and gentle to push his customers, also struggling in the Depression,
into buying something they didn’t need. Mom
loved him and admired him precisely because of his kindness and his putting human
connectedness ahead of success.
I couldn’t explain about her love
for and sadness about her son, my only brother, David, who started having
epileptic seizures at the age of four and her hopes at the Epilepsy Center at
UCLA, where she took him when he was a
little boy and got him completely seizure-free—until he returned home. His
psychological problems were exacerbated by his neurological ones and the
medicine he took to control his seizures and the damage his seizures did to his
brain when they couldn’t be controlled…All the years Mother and I went together
to visit David at Napa State Hospital and the years she went alone when I was
overseas. The years after budget cuts
closed Napa State Hospital to all but the criminally insane, when we looked
into other places for David and found Garfield, where we visited him together
until Mom felt she could no longer leave the house…I had to leave out the times
she asked about David and he asked about her…I had to leave out the plans we
had to take him to see her at Aegis on her 90th birthday, which got
left out of her life.
I couldn’t describe the hours I spent with my
mother after she had dementia and a fear of leaving home—except one Friday when
she realized that she hadn’t responded to Nancy Pelosi’s request for a donation
for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the urgency to save the
country helped Mom overcome her agoraphobia.
But when Mom felt that she couldn’t leave the house, that gave me more
time to be with her, this mother whose life was so active that we had to be
sure she didn’t “have other plans” for Mother’s Day. Once Mom was house-bound,
I could visit her more often. At first
we made a ritual on Friday afternoons of filling out a memory book called The Story of a Lifetime. It was a personal history that included
periods of our national history:
Depression
Era—Her father had worked for the YMCA and even been able to take her mother to
Paris after World War I as part of his job.
(I’ve looked this up and found quite a bit on the Y helping with the
A.E.F.—American Expeditionary Forces or the Armed Forces in France.) When Mom was a little girl, he had a grocery
store, but it failed after supermarkets invaded; a friend’s mother once said,
“Here’s a nickel to buy a head of lettuce in your dad’s store if you can find
one that is fresh.”
World
War II She eloped to start a baby before
our dad went overseas with the Navy.
Before
he left to go overseas, they showed their sympathy for the Japanese Americans
by taking them coffee, tea, and donuts.
Her
father got a good job with the Works Progress Administration supervising women
left behind to fill the jobs men had before being called into the military
The
1960’s--Discussions about Civil Rights—integration in the South, where we were
living—an introduction to Harry Golden and Two
Cents Plain
The
Feminist Era—got her degree, a job, and a divorce and began a long-term
relationship with a woman she met at work
Protested
against U.S. intervention in Central America
Protested
against nuclear proliferation—her grandson’s first words were, “Two, Four, Six,
Eight! We don’t want to radiate.”
Protested
against the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Current
events” showed evidence of short term memory loss when she repeatedly said,
“When I saw that footage of Abu Ghraib, I was horrified that they were
torturing our soldiers. Then I realized
it was our soldiers who were torturing them.
I couldn’t believe it. When I saw
the footage of Abu Ghraib, I was horrified that they were torturing our soldiers. Then I realized…”
A
historic sports event was perhaps the first time we had definite evidence of
Mom’s short-term memory loss. She’d been
watching a Giants game with Jonathan, and in the last minute, the Giants made a
homerun and won the game in the end—an upset victory. They cheered.
Then ten minutes later she said, “I wonder whether the Giants game is
over.”
Took
out this paragraph: In her eighties she
was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and in March 2011 she moved to Aegis Living of
Pleasant Hill, where she played the piano for other residents and staff,
sometimes believing that she was employed there.
Mom’s
partner Kathy thought “sometimes believing that she was employed there” might
seem disrespectful, but to me it was what saved Mom from total heartbreak. Above all else, she wanted to feel useful.
Took
out this: She often spoke of her love for her son David
and was looking forward to his visit on her ninetieth birthday October 25.
For
decades my mother and I went together to Napa to take my brother, a patient
there, out for lunch. Then, when Reagan and Wilson closed Napa
down except for the criminally insane, we started going together to see him at
Garfield, a facility in Oakland for people with neurological problems. I wanted this for my brother, who responded,
“You mean she’s still alive?” when I told him that we were going to take him to
see our mother on her birthday.
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