A week ago was my mother’s 90th birthday. She was not here to celebrate with us in the usual way because two and a half years ago she took off—she left her physical body and ran ahead of us to join her loved ones on the Other Side (also known as Heaven). She couldn’t wait to see her parents again, her sisters, some of her dear friends, and especially her son, my brother, Steve. She made it quite clear during her last year here on Earth that she was ready to move on. She was not at all afraid to die. She felt her work here was done.
Lillian was one of 6 daughters born to Armenian natives for whom death and loss were a close companion. You see, they had to flee Armenia in the 1920s due to the Armenian genocide which was taking place in their homeland. My grandparents had witnessed the massacre of hundreds of their own friends and family (among the more than one million killed in total), including their own parents and siblings. As they fled across the Syrian desert, they witnessed the deaths of many of the people with them who succumbed to starvation. They watched others attacked and slain by the machete wielding oppressors. My grandparents’ own 2 babies (not included in the 6 mentioned above) did not survive due to disease. In fact, my step-grandmother who came into the pictures years later and had survived these atrocities, told us how she went on to birth 12 babies, only to have all of them die in childbirth or infancy. I had no idea how my ancestors could have survived all this.
According to my mother, some of these experiences were the bedtime stories told to her and her sisters by my grandmother. It was not at all meant to upset. It was my grandmother’s way of sharing what had happened, telling the stories of their lives, and probably was a necessary way for her to express her pain. I mean, the pain has to go somewhere.
With this history of her family in her in her back pocket, as well as in her DNA, my mom faced the many adversities of her own life with grit. She had a tumultuous marriage with my father, and their weekly, sometimes daily, arguments came to blows on a few occasions. Their 16 year age difference, clashing generations and cultures, and my father’s own rageaholic personality (no doubt drawn from his own painful past) were a perfect recipe for a dysfunctional family environment. But she forged on raising us 5 children with love and commitment. She was often exhausted, and sometimes depleted of joy. Yet her resolve to take care of us kept her going.
Mom was a violinist as a young woman, and was expected to set that aside when she married at age 18. Her passion, her outlet, was squelched. Her firstborn son, my older brother Steve, was born with a congenital heart condition that left 2 holes in his heart. In the 1950s and 1960s, surgery was out of the question. At age 21, she began the journey of caring for a child who would not live a full life span. My mom’s own sister died of tuberculosis at age 36, and her mother died soon after that. Then eventually, by 1979, my older brother’s body was too frail and sick to hold on much longer, and Steve’s spirit was set free. My mother, naturally, was in bitter grief. In all the years to follow, she endured the pain of missing him by listening to audio cassettes of the music that my gifted musician brother had composed and recorded. This helped her to feel close to him.
My mother’s coping mechanisms were in place. She was a smoker since age 16, a drinker (at times), and a gambler. She took prescription pills to help her go to bed at night and different pills to help her get up in the morning, as was typical in the 50s and 60s (check out the lyrics to "Mother's Little Helper" by the Rolling Stones). She loved the distraction and atmosphere of the horse races and Las Vegas and spent time engaging in these activities whenever the opportunity arose, usually a few times a year. These were the rare occasions we saw our parents having a good time together. Yet in 1974, when the strain of her stormy marriage became too much for her, she even attempted, and survived, suicide…twice. Interestingly, each time, she informed one of us after she had taken the potentially lethal dose of tranquilizers so that we could intervene. I don’t think she really wanted to go. It was a cry for help.
That is not to say my mother didn’t make sure to take good care of her kids. All 5 of us were well fed and clothed, hugged and kissed, and indulged on birthdays and Christmases. We were driven to dance lessons and scouts, taught to bake and sew, read to, and she was always there for our recitals and graduations. We were very much loved. And of course, each of us, as well as our own kids, was taught how to play Black Jack as soon as we could count to 21!
But we also, thankfully, saw the healthier coping mechanisms that helped her make sense of the stresses and heartbreak in her life. She had been a writer since childhood and as an adult spent time writing novels as a way of expressing her deepest feelings.(Despite numerous submissions to various publishers, none of her books ever made it to print.) She went back to school at age 50, after we were grown, to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in English, and another bachelor’s degree in Philosophy. These then allowed her to teach English at the local community college. By now my dad had retired and mellowed. And from time to time she even dusted off her violin and played many of the old classical pieces she used to play. Mom was intelligent, witty, strong-willed, funny, and outspoken. She was a firecracker. Her students adored her, and people who met her for the first time were endeared by her wild spirit, sense of humor, and heart of gold.
So in 2018, 49 years after her son Steve had passed away, 15 years after my dad’s death, 2 years after her boyfriend of 13 years made his exit, and a year after my son Eric, her grandson, had been killed in a car accident, my mother’s health began to fail. She was now 86 going on 87, and she had no intention of sticking around much longer. Her body was becoming more feeble, and her mind fluctuated from very forgetful to sharp-as-a-tack. She refused to go to doctors anymore, so we pretty well assumed her stomach pain might be due to stomach cancer, as tests from a couple years previous had indicated that possibility. Despite all her smoking, her lungs never developed cancer. But quit smoking? Not on your life! She could hardly eat anything anymore, but don’t anyone dare take away her cigarettes!
In her last 5 months, Mom became very frail and needed 24 hour care to make sure she was getting the right dosage of her medications (provided by hospice) and was well fed, at least as much as her tiny tummy could allow. And believe me, she protested often because of the cost of the care. We also discussed the possibility of an assisted living facility, a very nice one nearby, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “I want to die in my own house!” I guess I couldn’t blame her.
We had two amazing women, two absolute angels, who took good care of her and gave her a lot of love. When they weren’t there, my siblings and I took turns spending time with her, chatting, picking up groceries, watching Jeopardy and Seinfeld, and doing the crossword puzzle. Gone were the days of her getting out of the house to do senior aerobics at the gym or visit with her friends. Most of them had died by now anyway.
When I was there visiting my mother, I’d have a cup of tea with her. She was a talker and I was a listener—for the most part. We talked about what was happening in our lives now and about wonderful memories of the past. We talked about her dad and mom, Steve, my dad, and my son Eric. Sometimes she would glance at me with a bit of a foggy look in her eyes and take a moment before she’d ask, “Did Eric die?” Those were the moments when the dementia became a bit evident. I’d tell her yes, and she would cry for a bit.
But often she was perfectly lucid. And she was quite funny. She’d make jokes, and then I’d joke back. She’d laugh at my jokes and I’d laugh at hers. She had developed a bit of a dark sense of humor as she approached death. On her bad days, where the pain was more apparent, she’d straight out tell me as I was leaving, “Well, I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow. So I’ll say good bye now.” And she wasn’t kidding! She wasn’t sad about it. She was very matter of fact. And I’d say, “Well I hope I do see you tomorrow.” I was pretty sure I would. Then the next day I’d see her and I’d say, “Well, you didn’t die,” and she’d say, “I guess I was wrong. But I’m rarely wrong!” Once she even was having a pleasant conversation with the handy-man who was doing some work in the kitchen for her. When he was done, he asked her if there was anything else he could do for her, and without a beat she said, “Sure, could you kill me?” and then laughed about it. Honestly. That woman! I told you she was a firecracker.
My mother and I talked about death. She told me she was looking forward to it. She felt she had done her job and wanted to be with Steve and the others. She also reported seeing Steve and Eric, her parents, and my dad around the house from time to time. I had heard about this. As a person approaches death, they are often already beginning to become aware of the spirit world. They sometimes touch that space between this dimension and the next. This brought me much comfort.
She would slowly walk me around the large backyard to show me which plants were growing, which flowers were blooming, and which trees were producing fruit. The fig tree and the peach tree were her pride and joy. And then, as we sat again at the little circular stone table and two chairs in the patio area, she’d have another cigarette. She’d look around, enjoying the beautiful day, the magnificent trees and the blue sky, and on some days she would say, “It’s a great life.” This always gave me pause. She said that life was great! After all she had been through, all the pain, the struggles, the fights, the losses, the death of her beloved son, the despair, the desire to take her own life, the grief…my dying mother, at age 87, sat in the backyard with me and told me that life was great.
Mom died on December 16, 2018. My sister told us that, just hours before, she had walked my mom to the restroom, even though my mom could barely make it. But she insisted. Then my mom asked for a cigarette, and though she could no longer inhale the smoke, she just held it to her lips for a moment. (A cigarette to the bitter end!) She then went to sleep and never woke up. She had done it on her terms. As difficult as she had been to deal with at times, I had to hand it to her. She did it her way. I had to respect that.
There’s always a lesson…in everything. My mom taught me how to live. Despite everything she had gone through - all the tears she shed, all the abuse she took, all the times she wailed about the unfairness of life, all the times she cursed this earthly existence - when all was said and done, she was able to look back over all of it and say, “It’s a great life.” I still am blown away by that. I am still awed by the deep wisdom in that. I still stop and ponder the truth in that.
Thank you, Mom, for this gift you have given me, you have given all of us. I will live my life on my terms. And when I join you where you are, we can have a cup of tea and a cigarette.
Happy birthday, Mom.
