In Remembrance of My Mother

Hello Girls

These were the words of remembrance read at your Bubby's funeral. It was a beautiful day as is typical in the States during the summer.  I could only glimpse at those sitting behind me but I felt their warmth and love. I honestly did and it helped. 

I was surrounded by your Aunt, Uncle, Zadie and cousins. We all shared the experience of loss and our powerlessness to control the depth and finality of it. There was an incredible kindness from the rabbi who struggled to mute his phone as Siri interrupted the service to say "I am sorry, I didn't get that, could you repeat it..."  

Dad sent a picture of you all before the service, just to remind me of your presence and also my presence with you. It also reminded me that although this piece of my heart and my history disappeared, no longer able to be touched, pushing me into lonely place, the pieces of you filled the air. I imagined saying these words to you. That day, I was talking to you.

It all seems a blur now but the warmth of that day and the week still gives me comfort. We looked through pictures, told stories, reenacted our childhood, laughed and cried together and then of course there were your your cuddles when I returned.

I love you all so very very much. Now, I find myself reflecting on the love between daughters and mothers and how us mothers, although often feeling as though we are fumbling a bit, try to model a course, a way of being. This was the course she modelled for me.

Words said: 

My mom had a few truths she lived by, one of which was that love was immeasurable and by giving love to others helped your love supply grow.

 

Another was that friends easily grow into family, which often made our home a community full of engagement and warmth, everyone had a place around our continuously growing dinner table.  

But  then, of course, in my mother’s world it meant that everyone now needs to be fed or they may starve. Which leads us to the next truth that all meals can be continually recycled or frozen. 

Graeme once commented on how tasty a pizza was that she cooked for him and she said, “Well, I knew you loved it because it is the one we took home from the restaurant last year.”  He was a bit shocked, but I giggled because I understood this level of frugality. It was needed when you wanted to open your home to the world and the world came in.

Most people don’t know the reasons that Mom created and dedicated herself to these important truths. It was simple, she wanted a happy life and she wanted us to have a happy life. 

Mom’s was an incredible journey and at times a very difficult one so to hold on to the hope of a good life she needed courage, strength and endurance.

Due to the death of her father, her hero, a little girls world became a scary place. A subtle but strong message knocked at her door that maybe happiness and a kind life existed but just not for her.  

However, she responded to that message in the same way that she responded to any negative messages and the negative people who would try to deliver them. Those of you who really knew her can probably guess her response and appreciate that it is a bit too naughty for me to repeat here.

Mom unapologetically rebelled against these cannot do’s or you are not allowed to messages. She never shied away from a challenge but instead charged it with a ferociousness, a battle cry and a belief in her right to succeed. 

I think when she lost her father, the blueprint for creating a happy life became smudged. She needed that fierce focus. Can you imagine the fortitude of that young girl? And that is the fortitude that we all who loved her understood and respected. At a very young age, she gathered her resources, placed them in her little toolbox, straightened her stance and said there is no room I will not enter, and no person who will dictate my worth and thus continued on her journey. 

To never again feel the threat of poverty, she knew that she needed to prioritise education because no one can take away her degree and her learning.

 

That meant that as a young woman in the 50’s she was the first in her family to achieve a university education and that involved the sciences, never opting for the easy path, and learning about how the world was made up, seemed pretty cool to her.

The second tool was gathering supportive and wonderful friends, because they, at times, would be her oxygen and in that quest she found my father.  Their love and friendship and shared understandings created a strong and beautiful home. The importance of family echoed in our lives.

Mom had an incredible capacity to love and care about others and let them know why they were special. It was like X-ray vision, she could  see someone’s worth and she couldn’t abide it going unnoticed by others. The sadness of a treasure, stepped over.  She couldn’t allow it. I think that there was a part of her that connected quite personally to that experience. She would not let that happen to the people that were important to her; she would fight for them because they were worthy of that fight and she would not apologise for that warrior stance. 

I remember her saying to me, that guilt was an unnecessary emotion. What she really meant was we cannot compromise who we are or our dreams to make another happy. We have the right to live our lives and prosper. 

And then when I was only 18, our happy home was hit by tragedy with the death of my father. She was a woman in her 40s with two kids in university and another thousands of miles away in Israel. How was she going to keep everyone safe? How was she going to continue to help us achieve our dreams? But somehow she did because sacrificing her or our dreams was not an option. She needed to show us that there was no glory in being stuck spiralling in a tragic story.

I am so thankful that she did not yield to that reoccurring message of not deserving happiness or to be loved again. What a horrible ending that would have been to her incredible life story if she hadn’t been loved again. 

Mom also went back to education, a fun 6 week course in Michigan to study something exciting like chemical compounds, as you do, and in that very romantic setting, she did find love again. 

She met Norman,  a true blessing not only for her but for all of us and they laughed together and they learned together and they danced together and they were happy together. 

He saw the treasure in her and valued her and valued us and I am forever grateful to him for what he brought and continues to bring to our lives and also for the love and care he gave to my mother in her final years. 

And I am also grateful to him for unknowingly being the impetus for mom and my legendary trip cross-country. She always wanted to go on a cross country road trip but it helped that he was waiting for her on the West Coast. We, armed with a 2 man tent and a continuous flow of tortilla chips, cheese and salsa made our way through 9 thousand miles in 6 weeks all to the background music of Les Miserable. I mean we did have a vague idea of where we were going, it was somewhere over there.  It sounds so crazy now but, at the time, it seemed so natural, it was just another adventure to embraced.  

And we did have so many adventures on that trip, literally climbing mountains and literally singing quite loudly to everyone who passed Valderi Valdera. We were Thelma and Louise with a much happier ending.

We awed at star-filled night skies that seemed to stretch out forever and then we held hands and cuddled and shared our dreams as well of course as solving all the world problems.  I feel so lucky to have had that time with her. Her infectious energy and curiosity were priceless.

It is also the time, she shared with me her “Fudge You” song and dance, sang to the tune of “So Long, Farewell” from the Sound of Music. However, we all know it wasn’t fudge you, she was singing. We sang it to those who annoyed us. It also became her words of wisdom to my daughters along with other colourful advice to give the bullies in the playground. I had to pretend to be shocked and warn her that naughty words were naughty words even when said in Yiddish.

  

It was her saying to my girls  regardless of societal rules, we don’t have to accommodate and compromise, we have the right to be strong and unabashedly show our strength and that strength can coexist with warmth, playing, creating and loving. 

 

Which brings me back to Norman, who created with her another beautiful home. She loved him so deeply and it showed in the home they created together, she was so happy there and she wanted to share that happiness with everyone. It was the home I brought my husband and daughters into.

When I introduced Graeme, he was welcomed into this community with wide-open arms and that love spread to my in-laws, my English family. That dinner table now grew across the Atlantic.

This Chatsworth home was full of love and joy.  Georgie and Gabrielle ran around with very little rules, cooked with Bubbie, created picnics in the front room, crafted and played games and allowed their imagination to run wild. They felt their Bubbie’s love and their very unique and special connection to her and also their importance to her. She awed them but they awed her too.  The love she had for them and all her wonderful grandchildren was again without measure.  And again that special ability to realise their strength and beauty and communicate it back to them and give joy was so powerful. I felt privileged as a mother and a daughter to watch that.  She “got them” and they “got her” and both felt admiration, importance and unconditional love. 

I have heard that the price of love is grief and that is so hard. However, although the loss of my mother is so deeply felt, the fierceness of her love, protection and joy transcends and continues.  Her presence is in the voice that guides my thoughts and experiences, the memories held by my family.  It is in the choices I make and it is in the choices my children make. It is in discussions and fiery debates at the dinner table. It is in her resemblance caught in their smiles or the way they look at the world with awe, curiosity, mischievousness and an impulse for adventure. It is in the way we all love deeply, without measure or condition. Thank you, Mom, for creating that blueprint of a happy and passionate life, I know your legacy will live on for generations.