Remembering Mom
I don’t remember when I first started
writing tributes to Mom. I know I wrote
poems for her sixtieth, seventieth, and seventy-fifth birthdays, and in her
eighties I started Eighty Reasons to Love and Admire Mom. Eighty-one Reasons to Love and Admire
Mom. Eighty-two reasons… It wasn’t at all hard to think of reasons as
she went up in years, but as her short-term memory started to go, she’d call me
and say that she’d just found the tribute I wrote her, and she was so sorry she
hadn’t seen it earlier and thanked me. But
she had seen it earlier, and she had thanked me. Many times.
For what turned out to be her last birthday, I imitated the style and
font of Time Magazine’s featured 100
Most Influential People of All Times and inserted a picture of Mom on the cover
along with Time’s choices. I also used her as the subject of my sample
essay for my students, and they even stopped texting long enough to listen, and
then they applauded her. I want to
applaud her too and mention whatever we left out of the obituary.
It was sad that Mom, who lived such
a full life and was so youthful, upbeat and outgoing, developed, with
Alzheimer’s, fears that made her feel confused and afraid to leave the house. But when she became house-bound, at least I
had more time with her. Up to then, she
was so active and outgoing that one Mother’s Day, when we called to see where
we could take her, she already had other plans.
(She changed them!) She always
celebrated our birthdays and holidays with her great enthusiasm, and she was
never too busy to go see David. She and
I did that together for many years—until she was afraid to leave the house. Once she was house-bound, I had more time with
her. I started going over every Friday,
at first with a book Dana sent called The
Story of a Lifetime, with guiding questions—maybe like the ones Megan used
when she interviewed Mom for a social science assignment. We also read to each other. One book she loved reading was about Galileo! After she moved to Aegis, we continued to
read aloud, often from the book she wanted to give everyone for Christmas: Contrary to Popular Belief. (You’ll all get one.) But the warmest memory I have is of lying
down with Mom and just cuddling. One of
the times we did this, she stroked my arm and said, “This is comforting.” We were planning her 90th
birthday, which was going to be a sing-along, so I’d start a song as we lay
there on the bed, and she’d join me.
After we sang “Bali Hai,” she said, “Oh, Tina, that’s such a beautiful
song. If you got that for me for my
birthday, I think that would be my favorite gift, but I wouldn’t tell the
others.” Even when she had Alzheimer’s,
she thought of others and wanted to be kind.
On my last visit with her, she had a new roommate, Dory, and I remember
Mom’s attention to Dory, who was sitting on the couch while Mom and I were
lying on the bed. “Don’t you want to put
your feet up?” Mom asked her. Mom never
forgot our names, and she asked about David.
She really wanted to see him and was looking forward to his visit on
October 25, 2011, her 90th birthday, which she missed by just a few
days. Notice that in one of the
pictures, Mom made a woman named Mary, another resident of Aegis, the center so
she wouldn’t feel left out.
Kathy mentions the song “You’re the cream in
my coffee,” and I was there one of the times –just this past year—when Kathy
and Mom did a spontaneous rendition of that song, and I’ve put it in this
memory book. Kathy also mentions “I’ll
Be Seeing you,” which I think is one of the most beautiful songs ever
written. Mom’s “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”
comes from the songbook I’ll be Seeing
You—one of the items Kathy had on the table at the memorial gathering.
People used to say when they saw Mom
in her seventies, “I’d love to be like her when I get to be her age.” I’d respond, “I’d like to be like her at the age I am now.”
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