She would have been 93...

Mom & me on her last Mother's Day, 2012

I wish I could tell you this gets easier, but I can't.

I'm in the beautiful Betkshires and the sun is shining and my children are raucously splashing in the pool, but I'm in the bedroom quietly crying.

Today would have been my mother's 93rd birthday.

I know I was lucky she made it to 90. But that doesn't matter. On her hundred and twentieth birthday, should I live so long, I will still miss her, mourn my loss.

The world is a poorer place without my sweet, saucy, loving, funny, brilliant mother in it.

Even though she was barely there when she left. Even though she was a wafting wisp of her former self, I felt the earth sigh and plunge a few degrees colder as I watched her animating spirit vacate the premises, that wan day, two and a half years ago.

I don't have time for this sodden mantle of debilitating grief. The boys' B'nei Mitzvah is a little over a month away, and I am frantically busy between now and then. Two school years starting, Dan traveling for work nearly non-stop this fall; and we're down to one viable, often already booked sitter.

And yes, it's a joyous occasion we're preparing for. And yet the sadness keeps leaching in. There will be no grandparents present to dance the hora at their Bar Mitzvah party. No great aunts nor uncles neither.

I knew it was nigh unto impossible for my mother to dance at their weddings, and witnessing college or even high school graduations unlikely. But for a while there, we had held out hope for her presence  at their Bar Mitzvahs.

I would have asked the universe for three more years with her, if I could have. But I know what the answer would have been. Our time is our time. No more, no less.

And for the rest of my time, I will miss her for at least a little bit of every day; and a whole lot more on days like this, her birthday, when she would have been 93 years young.

If only...

The day after Mother's Day

Me and Mom on Mother's Day, 2012, her last

I couldn't write on Mothers Day, the feelings too raw, the wounds still unclosed. Yes, even here, more than a year out and counting. So I gave myself the day to muddle through.

I shined at breakfast - lox and bagels produced by my offspring and husband - but then faded midday. In spite of abundant sunshine beaming in through our windows, the winter's accumulation of grime rendering them near opaque white in the brilliance, I took to my bed in the early afternoon.

"Mom gets to nap on Mothers Day!" I declared, making it sound fun. But really it was a retreat from the empty space my mother should have occupied.

Ethan was mad that I had slept though our potential stroll through the park. Instead we had a rushed half jog along Riverside to Jake's playing field, peeling off as we got there, me to accompany Jake to his weekly baseball game, Dan joining Ethan on the basketball courts nearby.

I love my son dearly, but must admit, watching special needs sports is simultaneously like watching paint dry and having your heart ripped open repeatedly. The pace is glacial, the triumphs beautiful and painful. I sat on my blanket in the sun and baked myself into a semblance of peace.

Afterwards, waiting outside the boat basin cafe for our table to come up and Ethan and Dan to appear (hopefully somewhat concurrently, and in the right order) Jacob befriended a dog named Sophie and talked to me about classical music. He picked up a stick and wanted to conduct violins "like Squidward" so I lazily googled "violin concerto" planning to let YouTube entertain my boy. I had forgotten the landmine there.

My mother loved music. My childhood home had been filled with it, from classical to folk to jazz and then rock as her musical taste evolved through the 60s and 70s.

My mother's amethyst and glass beads moved with a sweet heaviness around my neck as I swayed to the tinny Tchaikovsky pouring out of my iPhone. My mother also loved sunshine and the water, flowering trees and children. I was surrounded by the things she loved, as I often am, she who took such joyous bites of out the scrumptious world.

The rest of my boys arrived with perfect timing and we were seated at an outer table overlooking the sunset river, just as I had desired. Ethan was a bit grumpy surveying the menu, declaring nothing to be quite to his liking and questioning why we had to eat there.

"Because I love it here. It makes me happy to eat outdoors and by the water, and it's Mother's Day so I get to choose." I was trying not to whine. I really didn't want a scene.

For once he took my answer without a fight and resigned himself to a dinner of calamari and fries, supplemented with bites of everyone else's dishes.

I then did something I rarely do, I ordered a "Mommy drink" something silly and frozen and alcoholic, because dammit it was Mother's Day. It came with three maraschino cherries on top which Ethan devoured with abandon, his first time encountering such beasts. 

"Is this what they mean when they say 'and a cherry on top?'" he asked. Yup.

We walked back home through the park as the twilight thickened, the air heavy with the promise of a soon-coming summer. Up ahead the the George Washington Bridge's majestic sway cut through the haze, spanned over to the other shore.

"Look, Grandma's favorite bridge"  I pointed out. But I didn't have to. They knew.

They all knew.

One year ago, today

Mom, January 3, 2013

One year ago, today, I got a phone call.

A late night phone call.

One more in a long series of late night calls that began nine years ago, when my elderly parents moved back to New York City and into my care.

But this one was to be the last.

You never know it's the last.

Until it is.

4 am, I remember this one was.

Mom had fallen. Again.

I rushed to her side in the Long Island hospital her nursing home had sent her to; a cold, bleary ride in the pre-dawn quiet.

Another broken hip. A matched set. (I wrote a post about it.)

But this time my mother was older, frailer than the last time. This time my mother had already been through the ringer, and unbeknownst to anyone yet - but soon to be quite evident - she was also becoming septic from an undiagnosed infection.

A year ago today, my mother went into the hospital, and began the final, short sojourn of her life. She began dying.

I was by her side nearly the whole time.

I was with her when she passed, five days later, at 3:15 in the afternoon of January 17th.

I have been dreading the return of these dates, these days. January 12th through 17th.

They were excruciating to go through last year, every moment both drawing out and swiftly fleeting, galloping towards that end.

And when they are done, the wheel will turn; from first year to second year without my mother. It will be a different thing. And yet also more of the same.

I know everyone's parents die, eventually; that this is the natural order of things.

I know that ninety was a good run.

I know I was lucky to have had such a loving mother.

I know I was lucky to have had her for so long.


I miss her every day.

Three funerals and a wedding

Last night I was at a friend's daughter's wedding, this morning at a friend's father's funeral. Three dear friends of mine lost parents this past week. You hit a certain age, and this is what the landscape starts to look like, the odds tipped towards death. I understand. (But I don't have to like it.)

Everyone who died was quite old, in their eighties and nineties.  They had rich, full lives, a long run, loving children and grandchildren by their side. These things are all good. These deaths are sad, not tragic. I know.

And yet, as a daughter who has lost a mother, I feel it all so keenly, the tears streaming down my cheeks for men and women I barely knew but whose daughters' hearts are currently breaking, as they now face the world motherless or fatherless for the rest of their lives.

Even the wedding was not free of minefields for me. It was a lovely affair, the bride in her 20s, our friends - her parents, so proud and happy. There was food and wine and dancing. After the hora, the DJ hit a nostalgia pocket, and when he dropped the needle on "In the mood" I suddenly fell to pieces, quietly sobbing on Danny's shoulder.

I had suddenly been transported back to my childhood,my mother teaching me to lindy-hop in the kitchen -- table pushed back against the egg-yolk yellow walls, kicking up our heels on the gray linoleum tiles, the cats looking on in bemusement from their warm perch atop the water-heater cabinet.

I loved and missed her so much right then.

It comes in waves like that, unexpected, never unprovoked, sometimes unwelcome, sometimes a gift. They are entwined, like that -- the loving and the missing.

And for now, I'll take it, since its all I've got.

Three Years (and nearly two months)

Me, Mom & Dad, Summer 2009

Three years ago, today, just after the 12th slipped into the 13th, my beloved father died.

Every year since then it has been a day of mourning and reflection for me, becoming a little less intense with each passing year, but still the ache remained acute.

But this year, today felt very odd, eclipsed by my mother's much more recent passing - nearly two months ago on January 17th.

My mother's death still hangs over me, feels much more recent still than two months.

If I close my eyes and think of her, I am, unfortunately, transported back to the final minutes of her life. That moment when her heart snapped and everything changed is burned deep into my mind's screen, sharp and bright, hopefully to be fading in intensity over the coming years.

But for now I remain somewhat ghost-ridden.

I regretted not being there, by my father's side as he passed. I had taken my first break in months, and many people told me that they think that allowed him to finally let go, that my absence was giving him permission to die.

Maybe.

He managed to do it quietly, with no one there to witness.  My sister Lois had gone to the bathroom down the hall, and said she felt a wave of heat and nausea pass over her, out of nowhere, at what she later calculated was probably the moment of his leaving, for when she came back into his room, he was gone, my mother unaware, fallen asleep sitting upright in the chair by his side.

At the time I felt like had missed out on something.

Now I'm not so sure.

The look on my mother's face as her eyes popped open, bugged out, unseeing, as she huffed and puffed as her heart was literally bursting, is something that will probably haunt me for the rest of my days.

I can talk about it most freely with my cousin Jessica, who, as an ER doctor, is no stranger to death. Other people I know I will creep out, make uncomfortable, so I hold this moment silently, in my mind and heart. But there it remains, indelible, most every day.

Even today, when I feel I should be remembering, mourning my father, yet still, my mother and her death hangs over all.

Though it is comforting to think back on the two of them at the same time, for they were such an entwined and loving couple. Fifty one years together.

I don't know where our spirit, our essence, goes when we pass. Truly I don't. I feel something remains, for I felt it leave my mother, witnessed how her body was just so much lumpen clay after it was gone.

And so, in the not knowing, I can only conjecture and hope that whatever wisp of energy that was my bright mother has found my father's counterpart out there, in the ethosphere, and their stardust particles are swirling about the universe in tandem, dancing together once more, forever.

Some Heart: Sylvia Steinhardt's Eulogy

Mom, Thanksgiving 2012

Today, Sunday March 3rd, we held a memorial service for my mother, Sylvia Steinhardt, who died in January.  We celebrated her interesting, 90 year long life, and we said goodbye.

In attendance were my husband and kids, my mother's 85 year old "kid" brother and his family, my brother Bruce (Sylvia's step-son) and most of his family, plus many friends, in-laws, and a pair of dear old friends of my parents, nearly the last surviving members of that once-large clan.

Photos from various points of my mother's life were on display. Anyone who wished to share a memory of Syl was invited to speak, and quite a few did, including both of my sons.

But first I read a blog post (found here) written immediately after, and about Mom's dying moments.  And then I read this eulogy:

The day before she died, the cardiologist who first met my mom in the ER a few days prior came in to her room to speak with me. "When you said her aortic stenosis was critical you weren't kidding. It was SUPER critical. In fact" - he added, clearly quite impressed - "I have never seen anyone with such a tight valve still alive and so asymptomatic... That's some heart your mother has!"

And I say yes! That was some heart my mother had.

In fact I would say it was her defining feature: My mother’s capacity to love and be loved. Her big generous, open heart, and how many hearts she lives on in will be her defining legacy.

She had a warmth, a natural curiosity about people. Spend five minutes with her and she'd know your life story, the names of your children (or parents, or both) and where your ancestors came from.

She was also genuinely gracious, sincerely grateful to everyone for everything done for her.

In the hospital, in her very last days, she even whispered a "Thank you" to the nurse giving her a shot of vitamin K. The nurse turned to me, her face alight, and told me she had never been thanked before for giving a patient an injection.

That was Mom.

My father, as much as he loved his family, was defined by his life's work: his photography.

My mother, like so many women (especially of her generation), was defined by her relationships, the people she loved and who loved her. And at this she excelled, oh so well.

Mom made friends everywhere she went. At Carnegie East House, the assisted living community she had moved into with my father, and where she continued to live as a widow until her disastrous, hip-breaking fall last May, she had two close friends of a similar temperament: smart, funny, artistic, literate, left-leaning and bohemian. Not your typical "little old ladies" by any stretch of the imagination.

They called themselves "The 3 Musketeers" and took every opportunity to laugh at the foibles of old age and their situation, vowing not to become like some of the farbissinas* at the joint.

The staff at the nursing home where Mom spent the last six months of her life were shocked when I called to give them the news of her passing. "Oh, no! Not our DDF!" they all cried.

That was her particular nomenclature: I have been her D.D.D. for years - Dear, Darling Daughter - (and she my D.D.M.). And the women who looked after her at the home had become her D.D.F. - Dear, Darling Friends.

It was somehow fitting that nursing home where my mother spent the last six months of her life at was back on her beloved Long Island - a place that defined and encompassed so much of her life - where she grew up, held her first jobs, where she raised her family - me - where she came into her own as Sylvia Steinhardt of Steinhardt Gallery.

As she was living in the same community as her brother Walter - Port Washington – they were able to spend much time together at the end. His visits, and those of his children – my cousins – and their children, brought her so much pleasure.

Whenever I would visit, she would point out the flowers brightening up her nightstand. “Aren’t these lovely, Walter always brings flowers, he is so good to me.”

What was amazing about Mom was that this kindness, this deeply loving nature was found in a woman also funny and complex, sophisticated and keenly intelligent. How intelligent?

When I was about ten, Mom decided she wanted to take some classes at Nassau community college. Since she had never been to college, she started with Freshman English. For her final paper, did a study on how the classic English ballads changed when they came to America that included an amazing analysis and an audio tape recording of both Peter, Paul and Mary’s and Led Zeppelin’s version of Hangman. It was graduate level work... for a Freshman English class. Needless to say the professor was stunned. (She got an A+.)

I was sometimes sad thinking of what my mother could have done, might have been if she had grown up in a family that valued girls and thought them worthy of higher education, but sadly, that wasn’t the case.

My grandmother valued WORK and MAKING MONEY, and so that’s what my mother did, after graduating high school, finding a job in a furniture store, then coming to work at her family’s candy shop afterwards in the evenings.

Shortly thereafter, the US entered WWII, and mom found herself joining the throngs of other young women swept up in war work… yes, my mom was a Rosie the Riveter.

She worked at Grumman Aircraft in small airplane parts through the war. And I remember feeling terribly proud of my mother for doing this, when I became aware of how brave and radical that was.

After that, mom began to work in clerical positions, eventually to become a top fundraiser for the Joint Defense Appeal – the fundraising arm of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.

This job was in THE CITY, where Mom had finally left her parents home and moved to, with the help of a good therapist, and much to her mother’s dismay (the shanda of an unmarried daughter leaving home having kept my mother bound there too long before she finally broke free).

At this point my mother began an exciting phase of living her own life: going to museums, plays, films, listening to jazz, dating interesting men – including William Styrone’s roommate - (and even living with one for a while). But she still hadn’t found her one true love.

That she finally did in the summer of 1958, at a resort in the Berkshires called The Music Inn, where my father, recently divorced, was also vacationing. They met, sparks ignited, they discovered that they lived mere blocks away from each other in Greenwich Village.

Vowing to play it cool and go slow, they then proceeded to see each other every day, becoming inseparable as soon as they got home to the city. And in a few short months, on March 1st, 1959, they married.

And then, things changed, rapidly. My father had two teenage children from his previous marriage – my brother Bruce and sister Lois – and immediately after my folks married, my Dad’s ex-wife had to leave the country for almost a year (it’s complicated – don’t ask), and left the kids with them.

A friend of my mother’s had joked that in marrying my father, she has gone from swinging single gal in the Village, to matronly mother of teenage kids on the Upper West Side in one fell swoop.

And that wasn’t far from the truth. Furthermore by the time Bruce and Lois had returned to their mother’s home, Mom was pregnant herself… with me.

My mother loved being pregnant, had wanted a child of her own for a long time, and had been unsure if she would even be able to have one at the unheard of old age – for that time – of 37.

She loved to tell me stories from her pregnancy – of how she had gained so much weight right off the bat, that when she, at 5 months along, went to the maternity ward to visit my Aunt Eva and see her new niece – my cousin Jessie, someone said to her “I know who’s going got have her baby tonight!”

How, while absentmindedly crossing Broadway against the light, a truck driver had yelled out to her: “Hey Lady, watch where you’re going, you know you can get knocked DOWN, too!”

And THAT is classic mom – having a great sense of humor. As well as a tendency to curse like a sailor. Salty as well as sweet.

Her humor - and her cursing – stayed with her, through to the end. When she was in acute rehab, trying to heal from her broken hip, she was working on walking down the hall with a walker. It was hard. She was weak and tired and in pain and the therapists were pushing her to take a few more steps. “I don’t want to.” She complained. “I just want to sit down, can’t I fucking sit down?”

“Sylvia…” said the therapist with a disapproving tone of voice.

“Oh.” Said my mother “I’m not supposed to curse.”

“Yes” said the therapist,

“It upsets the other patients.” Said my mother.

“Yes!” the therapist chirped, glad she was “getting it.”

“OK” Mom said. Then with PERFECT timing that would have made a borsht belt comedian proud, she added, under her breath: “Fuck ‘em”

In this she and my very funny father were well matched. In fact they were well matched in nearly everything, a true pair of soul-mates, bonded by a love that burned bright to the very end.

She took such loving care of my father as he was failing, he the center of her life, her anchor. It was not easy to be with him in those last, plummeting, months, when he was so difficult, drifting & out of rationality. But Mom made sure to only curse him out when her back was turned to him so that, deaf, he would have no idea.

After Dad passed, Mom missed him fiercely. She frequently teared up thinking about him, telling me yet again and again: “He wasn’t just my husband he was my best friend.”

And they had had a good life. They LOVED to travel, and for twenty years - after I left home and before they became too frail - they explored the world together. Mom and Dad took trips to Greece, Hungary, Italy, Turkey, Alaska, Mexico, Trinidad, Israel, and Bali - to name a few places on their expansive itinerary.

And, true to their nature, these were not your standard touristy tours of national monuments. Because my parents were genuinely interested in other people and cultures they went deep into the hearts of these places, seeking out the spots the locals frequented, letting themselves enter into the true spirit of journeying.

Even when they took tours, these were folk dance tours, and they involved going to small villages, learning the local dances from the people who lived there, then joining hands and joyously dancing together with them.

What afforded them these wonderful trips was that the family business, Steinhardt Gallery, had finally become incredibly successful - the move from Westbury to Huntington perfectly timed to coincide with the resurgence of Huntington’s downtown.

Earlier I had said that Mom was defined by her relationships, and yet that is not entirely true. She was also defined by and hugely proud of The Steinhardt Gallery - that she had been a part of, as my father’s partner, since the beginning. It was where both Mom’s impeccable taste and people skills could come together and flourish.

She loved being surrounded by and dealing with beautiful things, She loved getting to know and interact with the craftspeople she bought from, the customers – who often became friends, and the staff, who became an extended family.

In fact, my parents really ran the business like a family, in a good way. Everyone who worked there, and all the artisans they dealt with were treated with fairness and respect, and, always, warmth and humor.

My mother loved the fact that she was not just Sylvia Steinhardt but Sylvia Steinhardt of Steinhardt Gallery. And it always made her day when someone would either recognize her or the name of the gallery when they were far from home – on a cruise up the Alaskan coast for example, or on a Caribbean island. “Oh,” they would say ”I LOVE that place, all my favorite gifts come from there.” And Mom would just beam.

And I loved being a part of the Gallery, too. Growing up in a family business meant being intimately connected with my parents working lives in a way that folks whose parents go “off to the office” can never be.

This is one thread in the fabric of the close relationship I had with my mother. She loved children and being a mother. She included me in her life, sharing her passions with me, telling me her stories and listening to mine.

I remember countless trips to art museums; watching classic Japanese movies on channel 13, snuggled together on the sofa; Mom teaching me how to Lindy in the kitchen during a nostalgia craze in my high school years.

And now, everywhere I go, everything I light upon, I find traces of her. And I find evidence that so much of who I am has come down from her.

Recently, I found myself in the dentist's chair, the radio tuned to the classical music station. Beethoven's 6th symphony came on (the "Pastorale") and I found myself conducting with my hands. "Oh, you know this one?" my dentist asked, surprised, explaining that he usually has the radio tuned to classic rock but his previous patient expressed a strong preference for WQXR.

"Yes," I told him, "it was my mother's favorite symphony, she played it often in my childhood."

"Sorry," he apologized, knowing of my recent loss, "that must be painful." But somehow it wasn't. It instead filled my heart to the brim with gratefulness that my mother had passed on her love of music, that she had shared with me, her child, all the things that brought her joy, and that their beauty lives on in me now.

As much joy as Mom found in parenthood, she found that joy doubled as a grandmother, seeing her feelings replicated in me. She loved watching me revel in my own children, yet another bond between us: we were both mothers.

Mom also just flat out loved being a grandmother, first to my brother Bruce’s children, Rachel and Simon, and then recently to my twin boys, Ethan and Jacob.

She never happier than when holding her baby grandsons, rocking them to sleep. When they were toddlers, Mom always got down on the floor to play with them (even though with her bad knees she needed help to get back up afterwards) and seemed as delighted in building a block tower or putting together the pieces of a simple puzzle as the boys did.

Delight. That’s a word that describes mom’s enthusiastic response to so much in life. Not that she didn’t have her dark days, but she was always pulled back to the light by her passions.

Mom loved, among many other things, and in no particular order: people, purple, chocolate, art, nature, the ocean, lox and bagels, chocolate, Birkenstocks, a good joke, flowers, family, birds, dogs, cats - in general and Willie, her last cat, in particular, The Steinhardt Gallery, seltzer, handmade things, chocolate, Scandinavian furniture, travel, folk dancing, bird watching, African violets, Art Nouveau, word puzzles, artichokes, lobster, Maine, Long Island, music, poetry, Paul Klee, Shakespeare, Broadway Musicals, modern dance, champagne, hugs, Sunday mornings, babies, silver jewelry, the Chrysler building, chocolate, her husband Jim, children – in general, and Me, her child, in particular.

She loved me in a way that left no smidgen of doubt. She loved me so deeply, so freely: as a mother loves her children – with pride and acceptance and gratefulness for my mere existence.

I whisper in my children's ears (now, mostly while they are asleep): "I will always be your mother, and I will always love you."

She taught me to love like that, my one and only mother.

And I loved her in return, fiercely.

And I miss her every day.


(p.s. If you are a regular reader of this blog and some of the words of this eulogy seem familiar congratulations, you are observant. I did, indeed lift and rework a few paragraphs from a number of past blog posts to use as elements in its creation.)

The view from here

In the dark of a too early morning, I crack open the door of the boys' bedroom to wake Jacob, still deeply under, in the top bunk.

I entreat him to rise with whispers, remind him to stay quiet himself, so as not to awaken his brother, asleep below, as he sits up uttering his usual first word of the day “Stupid.”

“Jacob…” I whisper-scold.

“Don’t say the bad word” he repeats in a singsong voice.

“Shhhhhhh.” I remind, again. And in a louder, more urgent whisper “Come down now, Baby, the bus will be here in a half hour and it won’t wait, you have to get ready for school.”

“Stupid” says Jacob, one more time, as he lumbers down the ladder, his ancient blue bear firmly clutched in one hand.

Then, at the bottom: “Can I have a hug, Mommy?”

And thus begins our day.

By the time Ethan is up - after three visits to his bedroom, progressing from a cheerful “good morning” through a gentle shoulder shake, the flashing on and off of lights, the radio blasting an obnoxious rock station and the (idle) threat of a cold water dousing – Jacob is long gone, sent off with a kiss onto his long bus ride to his wonderful Special-Ed school on the far, other (lower, East) side of town.

(I try not to think about it too much, because it makes me sad when I do, but, yes, my boys, my twins - due to luck, genetics, a whim of the gods of autism & neurodiversity, and probably something I ate or didn’t eat when I was seventeen - lead very separate lives.)

Ethan and I talk, always; words his currency, as they are mine.

We talk a lot or a little, depending in the day. Did the Knicks win last night? How about the Nets? Chatting away through breakfast eaten, lunch made, bags packed.

Some days I take Ethan to school, yet others I send him walking with the neighbors, two boisterous boys whose testosterone-filled company he favors lately.

Already he has begin to resist my goodbye kisses when others are present. "Mooooooom" he protests as I hand him over in the lobby, though I know tonight he will still curl up into my lap as we watch the game together, after homework has been done (please God, let the homework get done without torture tonight).

<*> <*> <*>

And then I am alone, with too much to do, but no heart for any of it.

I am supposed to be writing my mother's eulogy right now. With the snow delaying her memorial service, I have had a long time to accomplish this seeming simple task, even longer to contemplate it, as I knew, bone deep, that the end was coming soon.

And yet I just... cannot. Words are failing me.

I wrote a beautiful eulogy for my father. Poured all my love and crystal knowledge of who he was into it.

But my mother... my mother.. my mother...

All I want to do is keen and cry.

In spite of so many words spilling out of me immediately after her death, I am now experiencing my grief in a visceral, animal way.

I am angry, bereft, pained; and in no space to make pretty words of it. For even at the very end, drifting away from her memories, from the shaped, sharpened form of herself, my mother was still filled with light and love.

And when we held hands the bond between us thrummed, strong as the day that I was born and we became mother and daughter.

My mother was unwavering in her love, and the space it took up in me is now dark, hollow, memory's embers being a paltry substitute for the heat of a living presence.

And there has been, yet, barely time to mourn, so filled are my days with the minutia of things that must be done; mountains of laundry and paperwork; all the threads that I dropped when constantly dashing off to my mother's bedside must now be gathered and stitched back in, the fabric of my life holey, like tattered lace.

<*> <*> <*>

The boys mourn my mother, each in their own way.

"I see Grandma, in my brain" says Jake. And I am never sure if that means to him what it does to me. He still asks to go see her sometimes, the concept of death as a permanent state being perhaps too abstract for him to fully grasp.

Ethan and I bake blueberry muffins, Mom's perennial favorite. No matter how low her spirits or appetite, I could always entice her to eat a blueberry muffin and a cup of hot cocoa.

Come to think of it, we're drinking a lot of cocoa, too.

Mom...

I raise my mug to you.

Mom, enjoying cocoa & a muffin with me, December, 2011

Each mourning is different

Me & my parents, 1962

Second time around and I'm realizing... each mourning is different. A mother is not a father, and the missing manifests in different places in my body, in my life.

And then there's the fact that it's both of them gone now, and as an only child I am thusly the sole surviving member of my nuclear family. The only one who knows, who remembers our own particular family's micro-culture... what we ate; what we sang; what we said to each other to greet the day, to bid goodnight; what we liked to do on long summer days, on starry winter nights.

The people that brought me into this world are gone. Elvis has left the building. And while it's ridiculous to think of myself as an orphan at 52, with all the attendant images of storm-tossed waifs and wide eyed boys in desperate need of mothering, there it is - that term - popping into my brain at odd intervals.

"You're a member of the orphans club now... so sorry." says my friend, softly. My dear friend, Rachel, who I do not think I could have gotten through these three weeks without, is herself a long-time member, the edges of her pain blunted, but never quite extinguished.

And I don't know how this would feel if I'd had a conflicted, difficult relationship with my parents. My guess is both easier and harder. More relief, more longing, less simple loss and keen missing. But it's all conjecture.

I had these parents: a pair of interesting people who loved me much and well. They were kind and generous and never withholding in their love. It was unconditional and freely given. I always knew I was both loved and accepted.

And now, of course, that spigot is shut off. Gone.

As much as my children and husband may love me - and they do, as much comfort as that brings me - and it does, it is not the same as the way my mother's eyes lit up as I entered the room, thrilled by my mere existence, my simple proximity to her.

And I know how lucky I am to have had that. I know far too many who have never known this kind of love. And I know that at times in my younger life I have felt burdened, smothered by this love, for yes there was some neediness on her part in there, too. But that has all washed out, years ago now, water long passed under all the bridges.

And what I am left with is a wistful aching, memories that are both fond and painful because the wound of losing her is still so fresh and new. Everywhere I go, everything I light upon, I find traces of her.  And I find so much evidence that so much of who I am has come down from her.

I am in the dentist's chair and the radio is tuned to the classical music station.  Beethoven's 6th symphony comes on (the "Pastorale") and I find myself conducting with my idle hands. "Oh, you know this one?" he asks, surprised, explaining that he usually has the radio tuned to classic rock but his previous patient expressed a strong preference for WQXR.

"Yes," I tell him, after I have spat blood and grit into the tiny sink, "it was my mother's favorite symphony, she played it often in my childhood."

"Sorry," he says, knowing my news, "that must be painful." But somehow it isn't. It instead fills my heart to the brim with gratefulness that my mother passed on her love of music, that she shared with me, her child, the things that brought her joy, and that their beauty lives on in me now.

My mother always liked the springtime best. Whenever I spot the first yellowing blooms bursting from the branches of the forsythia bushes that line Central Park's transverse passages, I am possessed by the urge to share this vision with my mother. Golden harbinger of spring, forsythia made my mother deliriously, unreasonably happy.

I am prepared for the mix of heartbreak and bittersweet pleasure this spring will bring, as each fresh round of blossoming unfolds.

And now Mom has managed to derail her winter's memorial service, which had been due to be held this past Sunday. She has somehow summoned an icy February Frankenstorm to come upon us, necessitating the postponement of her ceremony; kicking it down the calendar into late winter or early spring.

Forsythia season for sure.

Nothing about this is easy

I am unlovely in my grief.

Underslept, rarely showered, breaking out. My face a blotchy patchwork of red and too pale. A total mess, ten days on now.

Wait, it's eleven. Soon it will be two weeks. Soon it will be the memorial service come upon us.

And I have a eulogy to write. Photos to dig up.

Mom's ashes to collect. (I got the call today, but I couldn't; I just... couldn't. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe if Dan comes with me.)

I have so much to do; so much todotodotodotodoooooo.

And I want to do absolutely nothing.

To stand still, frozen, like a winter tree, just being for a moment; no leaves, no flowers, no pesky photons to synthesize from. Just standing; my roots dug in, holding me up. Life still flowing at my core, but you wouldn't know it from looking at me.

I flip, like a flopping, water starved fish on deck, back and forth back and forth: I want to be left alone / I have to be with people.  From minute to minute I never know what I'll need.

I go see friends then run away and hide in the bathroom. I banish everyone from the house, then frantically call my cousins to talk.

When my father died, I had to take care of my mother, to be there for her. I had her to mourn with; I had Bruce and Lois, my father's other children from his first marriage, by my side, making all these terrible arrangements together.

But I am my mother's only child, and she is the second parent gone. So there is no one else. Just me. I am the sole surviving member of the nuclear family of my birth.

(And yes, there is the family I chose, the family I made, and I thank the heavens every day for their existence. But it's still not the same.)

I feel greedy and selfish taking time away from my family to mourn, from my children who need me as much today as they did two weeks ago. And yet even here I am hardly here, translucent, worn thin as the cotton of my mother's ancient favorite nightgown.

(More sad tasks on my list: drive out to Long Island to retrieve her boxed-up final belongings from the nursing home. And then what do I do with her teeth? Her hearing aid? I can neither throw them into the trash nor keep them.)

I took her glasses from her face in the hospital ER, promised to give them back when she was up to the task of reading again. I carry them around still in my pocketbook, come upon them when fishing for change and keys.

I put them on though they blur my vision, not cure it.

I want to see through her eyes; I want to see her clearly.

I want the sadness of the last, broken, lonely months of her life to wash away in all my tears. I want to remember the woman who loved birds and cats and babies and champagne and modern art and handmade things and the Chrysler Building in all its art deco glory. The woman who reveled in the crystalline beauty of the natural world.

The woman who loved ME so deeply, so fiercely, so freely; who loved me as only a mother can love a child.

I whisper in my children's ears (now, mostly while they are asleep): "I will always be your mother, and I will always love you."

She taught me to love like that, my one and only mother.

Me, her one and only child.

Ninety years, four months, fifteen days

Mom and me, August 1960

Ninety years, four months, fifteen days.

That was my mother's allotted time on this earth.

Fifty two years, five months, seven days.

That was how long we had together.

And now... one week apart.

(And yes we have spent many, many days, months, years, separated in this time, sometimes by continents, sometimes by oceans, sometimes just by emotions - adolescence, anyone? - and yet... and yet... we were always, somehow, still THERE with each other, connected by that invisible, permanent, virtual umbilicus that binds mother to child; infinitely expandable, invincibly endurable.)

I remember the first time I truly contemplated the impact of my parents' demise. I was relatively young, still - my late twenties. No husband, no kids, a very different life.

I was in the midst of many exciting happenings - though for the life of me now I couldn't tell you what they all were. I dimly recall I was deep into rehearsing a play (as assistant director and stage manager) and being on my way home from a rehearsal up on the Columbia campus.

I was driving, flying down Riverside Drive and wanting to call and tell my folks about how well things were going, about plans that were afoot. And I couldn't.

They were traveling at the time, far, far away on the greatest adventure they had ever undertaken. They were in Bali, in a little village, inland, upland - Ubud I believe it was called. And there was no way to phone. I knew the name of the guest house they were staying at, and of the proprietor, but this would do me no good.

There was ONE telephone in the whole town, in the "telephone house" and it was only to be used in case of dire emergency, which this was not. And it was only available in the daytime hours between ten and six, which, with the fourteen hour time difference, this most certainly was not, either.

My parents had never been so completely inaccessible to me and for so long (it was nearly a month's trip) and I felt frustrated by my inability to speak with them.

And then my stomach dropped and I started to cry. Because this thought rang out in my head: "This is what it will be like when they are dead. Only it won't just be for a few weeks, it will be forever."

And as the feelings washed over me, I sobbed and sobbed, thankfully alone in my car, then pulled myself together, feeling grateful for the temporary nature of our separation.

And yes, we had many more years together, my parents and I.

And yes, by the end it was their diminished capacity for cognition that was keeping me from sharing all the ups and down of my life with them; the strong, care-taking parents of my twenties so long gone as to be nearly recognizable.

But still, through it all, we were connected; their love of me a constant, never-questioned core.

And now the umbilicus is sundered, existing only as a phantom limb, aching in spite of its absence.

And I can visit with my mother (and father) only in memory.

And dreams.

So perhaps, though it is 4AM and I will need to be up in two hours to care for my own children, I should try, once again, hopefully successfully this time, to sleep.