Thoughts on a Mother from a Lousy Son
Published January 17, 2007
My mother passed away 20 years ago about this time of year. I’m this unspecific because while on the Christian calendar, she died on 13 January 1987, on the Rabbinic calendar that we use to commemorate holidays, births, deaths, weddings, anniversaries, etc, she died on 12 Tevet 5747, which came out on 2 January of this year.
Thinking about my parents, both of whom have died, is painful not merely because of the normal sense of loss that one feels at the fact that one’s parents are no longer there to share one’s triumphs with, which is a sense of loss that never goes away. It is additionally painful because I was a lousy son. For example, I did not even think to light a memorial candle in my mother’s honor until last night (16 January) when I came home from patrol.
I wasn’t the kind of kid who got into trouble with the law; nor did I do nasty or malicious things to either my father or my mother. But I was unthinking and unable to fathom feelings in others, to such a degree that when a neighbor lady exclaimed to me forty years ago in a tone of disbelief, “Can’t you see that your mother is lonely?” not only did I not know what to say, I had no emotional reaction at all. I probably had this unbelieving stare, the look of a child who had just been explained that 2+2=4, but who understood neither the meaning of one nor two and who therefore could not comprehend so elementary an equation. A high intelligence quotient does not signify emotional understanding, and for a good part of my life I probably had an emotional quotient running close to zero. But enough whining about me.
My mother was born in the summer of 1908 in New York County, and went to public schools in the Bronx. She had vivid memories of the Spanish flu of 1918-19 because she was already ten years old. There is an old rolled up photo of a bunch of children apparently graduating elementary school. This photo was kept in the vault along with my grandmother’s pistol, as though it were a secret.
It was.
For reasons unknown to me, my mother lied to the United States Social Security Administration when she got her Social Security number. She said she was born in 1913. The fact that this was not true didn’t come out until she was in her sixties, when my father passed away. That was when we opened up the bank vault. At the time, New York had a law that required all the contents of a vault to be held for the probate court if not opened before the death of the owner, so we rushed to the bank to empty it before the bank got wind of my father’s death. When I looked at the photo, I could see the date on it, and the fact that my mother was in the picture along with the other children in the school. By the time I was twenty-five, I had read enough Sherlock Holmes novels to deduce the birth date of the children in the photo. Ten-year-olds do not generally graduate the sixth grade in America, and the date gave her age away. It turned out that my mother was the same age as my father.
The writer was born in Brooklyn and lived in Minnesota for a number of years. There he managed restaurants and wrote stories. He moved with his family to Israel where they now reside. He is published by Jewish Indy, as well as by Desicritics.org.
- Thoughts on a Mother from a Lousy Son
- Published: January 17, 2007
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Society, Culture: Religion, Culture: Personal History, Culture: Family and Relationships
- Writer: Ruvy
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- Ruvy's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
Ruvy - I know the feeling, but for me it's only 2 months old. As children we take and take, and never have the chance to repay those who provide for us. The only thing we can do is give to the next generation, with the full knowledge that they'll never repay us.
Welcome to Blog Critics Magazine, Vicki. When attempting to find a link to Chapter 31 of Mishléi Shlómo, the book known to you as Proverbs, I found link after link talking about "Éshet Hayíl" as something carved on the tombstones of beloved women who had passed away. In fact, it was a royal pain in the neck finding the link I wanted, and even after I did, I had to change all the 17the Century English verb conjugations to modern English, to the form I use to praise my own wife every Sabbath.
I also do not want our sons to feel a sense of guilt after we pass away. I work hard at letting them know I love them very much, and care for them, and also making sure that they can trust me with difficult things. My wife is the same, though she probably does a better job than I do.
I made sure to read them this essay as I was working on it. I want them to know their grandma, and hope that if they have a daughter after they marry, they will name her after my mother.
When my wife was pregnant with our youngest son, she was sitting, looking at a picture of my mother. She told me that my mother's mouth appeared to move in her mind, and she said she heard a very calm woman telling her that our son would look just like her, and be like her.
My mother had a very calm voice, and our youngest son looks just like her. He is a lot like her in a lot of ways as well.
Baronius, may you not hear any more bad news, and may G-d comfort mourners.
We all repay our parents with the way we attempt to live our lives. Some of us are more aware of this than others. Sometimes, awareness comes so late, though...
And some of us are wise enough to invest our own selves into our children - who are our shot into the future.
WELL DONE AMIGO.
A very eloquently stated piece, Ruvy.
sr, Duane,
Thank you both for the kind words. Articles like these are the hard ones to write...
Yeah, good stuff, Ruvy old boy ... very moving, and very evocative ... even for an old goyisher.
Well done, Ruvy. I lost my mother in 1998 and not a day goes by without her crossing my mind.
Beautiful piece.
Ruvy, My mother died of cancer in February, 1989.
She was just 57. My father and I had a falling-out a few weeks prior to that; I was angered by the way he was treating her. Because of this, I stayed away from my parents' house. I never saw my mother again, until her funeral.
I wish I'd done things differently. I wish that, no matter how upsetting it might have been to go to that house, I'd have done it anyway. Perhaps I could have protected her. Even if I couldn't have done that, I'd know I had tried.
With every milestone my children--now grown--have achieved, I think of my mother and she would have delighted in the grandchildren she never had the chance to watch as they grew up. Not a holiday goes by that I don't think of her. I wish I could brush her hair back and kiss her on the forehead. She is never far from my thoughts, and she is always in my heart.
Was I a lousy daughter? Probably not. Nevertheless, those twinges of sorrow I feel, imagining her final days...have left an indelible sense of...wrongness.
I empathize with your pain and I'm truly touched by what you've written.
Peace to you.
Nice Ruvy.
The best way to give credit and honor to your mother is to teach your own children the memories and values that your mother stood for. Very few things more dear to mothers than grandchildren. As you talk to your children about your mother, she will be smiling.
Again, I have to thank my readers. This is always a pleasure.
Stan, thanks for the kind words. If you must use the phrase, use it properly - old goy...
From what you write, you're not that old, but age too, is perception.
Donnie, no orphan forgets his parents. Too many people think that only a child can be an orphan, forgetting that all of us are children, even into the sere and yellow. So when we lose our parents, all of us are orphans.
Kitten; you were not a bad daughter at all. Bear in mind that in your actions, you were taking your mother's side. You could not have possibly known that these would be her final days.
Both I and my wife feel the same as you feel about your mother with respect to my late mother-in-law. She would have loved watching her grandchildren grow up. But a major brain injury took her memory away from her and locked her in a nursing home for the last decade of her life. So my wife lost her mother twice; once when she had the brain injury, and ceased entirely being the mother she had known all her life, and again, when she actually died.
Mohijo, it was always very important to me that our children know the grandparents they would never meet. This was the issue of passing on the family history with honor. If I do this for my parents and my wife's mother, perhaps they will do the same for us.
Families are trees. We do the growing; G-d does the pruning...
I've lost both my parents, Ruvy. I wish I had the skills to have penned as beautiful a tribute as yours.
The anniversary of my father's birthday was a few days ago, though he died in 1984, not much older than I am now. I still miss him.
My mother died in 1999. She was a good mother and a wonderful wife to my Dad, and I'm a lot like her, I'm told. I could have no greater compliment.
No matter how many years go by, it still hurts.
"old goy..."
Lol ... sounds very similar to a phrase I use too much
WELL DONE AMIGO.
Let it be known that the author of these words, sr, known in real life as Stan DeCell, will not be heard from again. He too, passed on to his eternal reward. I probably mentioned this a number of months ago at the time of his passing, but it is appropriate especially to note the loss of a funny commenter from this site on an article that attempts, however poorly, to commemorate a loved one.
Rest In Peace, sr, and keep 'em laughing Upstairs.... G-d may not need a Sense of Humor - but his angels could sure use one.
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Ruvy, your tribute to your mother is very moving. I think you express universal feelings that adult children feel for their parents; an expression of guilt for not taking care of them "the way we should have," I dealt with the same when my mother died. Then, I placed her and my guilt feelings in the Lord's hands. Also, it helps me to think of how, as a parent myself, I would want my children to feel after I die: I Will NOT want them to feel guilty about me! And, I feel most parents are that way.
Your passage from Proverbs is beautiful. My mother told me that was the scripture chosen by the family for her Grandmother's funeral, back in the 1930s.
Blessings,
Vicki