Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma: Elul and Death-Bed-Side Musings

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma... *
NOTE: This entry was written Saturday, 29 August 2015. In the wee hours of Monday morning, 31 August 2015, my mother died peacefully. I am so grateful for all of the readers - friends and those who don't know us - who honor her and my family by reading this.


My mother has been one of my greatest teachers throughout my entire life. For years, since I got my first email account, twenty-five years ago as a college freshman, my mother and I had a nearly daily (and sometimes multiple times a day) email correspondence. In time, this became a sharing of struggles and mutual support. Always, she shared insights -- about her life, the lives of people we know, and life in general -- that helped me to grow and change inside. Nearly three years ago, that correspondence, and our ability to talk on the phone (we definitely needed bulk long distance in the days before cell phones), disappeared in an instant. She was in the hospital, I called to talk and comfort her, she picked up the phone, and -- with my dad and the doctor in the room there, she suddenly couldn't speak.

Since then, despite her inability to speak, my mother has continued to teach me, day in and day out, about the strength and will to continue to live, to always strive to move forward, to get back up on one's feet literally and figuratively.

And so it breaks my heart that this past Thursday my dad and I finally had to be the ones to say "it's time to let go." She knew, too. I'm sure she did. In her last conscious moments, she looked deeply at each of us gathered in the room. My dad**, my brother, my husband, me.

We continue to watch vigilantly, as her body pulses on.

"If I have done anything to harm you in the past year, please forgive me." My mother taught me to always ask these words out loud, each year in season of Awe. We have usually asked between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

"Repent one day before you die," taught Rabbi Eliezer (Avot). There is no time like the present. I don't expect my mother to live to see Rosh Hashanah, two weeks from now. Right now it is Elul, the month preceding these days -- and a time of preparation for those upcoming days of awe.

Last night I sat by my mother's bed and asked her forgiveness. This is the hardest year, yet. Did I imagine the slight raise of eyebrows, or a minute squeeze from her hand?

I sang to her from Psalms:
עשה עיני אל ההרים מעין יבוא עזרי
I will lift my eyes to the mountains from whence my help comes.
(among others)

 and also from the prayers of forgiveness:

 סלח לנו מחל לנו כפר לנו
Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
(among others)

My mother has taught me to live tradition, not just to know it, by living it herself.

Any sins I commit, by omission, by neglect, or by intent, are my own. And I have plenty.

It occurred to me last night when I returned home, and was trying to find sleep, that there is another way in which my mother has lived that I have not fully lived up to.

I have never once heard my mother say "I don't want to...."
(There is one exception, and it is only in the past year when she has been entirely dependent on other people for nearly every aspect of her life from access to food and entertainment to personal hygiene, and I do not count this as a lapse, but rather as a part of her ongoing desire to have some control and sense of safety in her fragile life during this time.)

I know that I regularly feel that "I don't want to." When I would express this as a kid, my mother would make me do things anyway -- but she always stood behind me, sometimes literally, as I did them. A silly memory of this is when I went to get my driver's permit. I was nervous, it was a new thing, I didn't know what to ask or how. She coached me, but she wouldn't go up to the desk for me and ask for the paperwork -- she made me do it. Nearly thirty years later, I still remember that moment, and am grateful for it. Her coaching from way back continues to guide me when I encounter new things.

But I can be stubborn, and sometimes it takes me a long time to go up to that desk, to step up to the plate as it were.

As my mother lies unconscious, as we watch her body wither, I cannot help but think how I have already missed in the past few years since she lost her ability to speak and write, and how greatly I will miss, her coaching, her conversation, her stamina.

In my mother's honor, I want to strive harder against the "I don't wanna" feeling in my life.

Don't forget to call, talk with, write to, connect with your loved ones. Don't forget to call your Mamma! I'll be sitting by my mother's side as long as I can. I love her more than anything in the world!



Notes:
* Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma...I Wish I Could Call Mine is the title of a book by Lewis Grizzard.I once had all of Grizzard's books, collections of his syndicated newspaper humor column. I laughed heartily through my late teens and my twenties to his work. This is the only book I have kept through the years, though I haven't reread it in at least a dozen.
** For family, and others who wonder or know, he is my step-dad. See my father's day post from this year.