That Was My Mother
Sun., January 11, 03:45 PM
We lit a memorial candle (okay, an electric memorial candle) for my mother last week. It’s twenty-one years since she died. Strangely enough, she had been on my mind in the preceding weeks, as I thought of things I would tell her… It’s even stranger when you realize we were never the kind of mother-daughter duo who talked on the phone all the time.
If you happened to read what I posted about my mother some six years ago, you know we weren’t close. I just wasn’t what she had in mind for a daughter although, in retrospect, I was more successful in some things than my siblings. I was, after all, the only one whose children provided b’nai mitzvoth for her to attend. (That’s the plural of bar mitzvah, and it includes bat mitzvah as well.) But our priorities were decidedly different, and since she was always right, I must have been wrong.
Where my mind went instead was to examine her life when she was my age. At that time she had been a widow for four years, and I know she missed my dad terribly. They had been married for thirty-nine years, and he absolutely adored her till the day he died. After the three of us had moved out of their house — the “audience” removed — they were a lot more affectionate than they had been when we were around all the time.
At any rate, she moved on. She continued working for a couple of years, then sold her house and bought a little condo in a gated senior community. Thrifty or not, she was content to pay a fee in order to have the services she needed — caring for the grounds, removing snow, someone to call if she needed help with anything at all. Someone came in once a week to help with the heavy housework. Basically, she was safe and she was comfortable.
One of her favorite pastimes was following the money market; she would check the prices when a CD became due and move her money to the bank with the best rate. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t play the game too.
Mother made some new friends, learned to play bridge, went on some trips with the group. She watched Phil Donahue regularly, because “I have to know what’s going on.” She loved “The Golden Girls.” She continued to watch “Wheel of Fortune,” one of my dad’s favorites, though she hated Vanna’s wardrobe and couldn’t solve the puzzles. I happen to be a puzzle person, and she would say to me, “how did you know that?” “I’m very good at this,” I would reply. (Allow us some pride in our small talents.) She read a little, though it gets harder as one’s eyes grow older, and she still enjoyed a good joke.
As I said, she was comfortable; it was a blueprint for a decent retirement. It was more or less what I had planned for myself. But it is not going to happen.
Mother and her siblings lived into their seventies and eighties, longer, I think, than anyone in their families had done. Therefore, they never thought about such difficulties as osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s. My dad at his sickest was never as difficult as my husband. I won’t say better or worse; it was just different for her.
The hardest part for me, even as I’m glad she had a good life, is listening to all the ads for retirement homes, travel and other perks. It just isn’t going to go that way.
