Missing my mother, and feeling grateful for her life

The four months leading up to my mother's death on Nov 26 – which this year fell on Thanksgiving – and the three months after in 2006, were the worst.

I had found out in August of that year – on my birthday – that she had lung cancer. Maybe Stage 3, but it, turned out, actually Stage 4. I said to a friend, "What am I going to do?"

"You'll do what she did when you were sick. You'll be there for her," she said, referring to my battle with leukemia.

In the months before her death, I was holding down a full-time job as a newspaper reporter and running a house with three kids in it, and racing back and forth to New York, trading shifts with my sister, Diane, as my mother quickly became bed-ridden. Meanwhile, the evil empire – a.k.a. the architects who had bought our building to convert to condos – were wreaking havoc in the lives of the elderly rent-controlled residents they couldn't kick out. One of the remaining few tenants at 1200 Fifth Avenue, where I grew up, said that they thought the new owners were trying to kill them. In updating the heating system, they butted out a wall in our already small dining room, upsetting my mother because she had a special drawer built onto the wall to hold her precious silverware, some of it previously belonging to relatives who had been killed by the Nazis. They painted the wall an unsightly green. My mother loved her Yankees, but she called it the Green Monster, in honor of the left field wall at Fenway Park, home of her grandchildren's beloved Boston Red Sox.

The condo owners removed the old windows and put in heavy top-to-bottom single paned monstrosities that were difficult to open, and furthermore, not installed properly, a point proven when one fell on an elderly resident, injuring her and sending her to the hospital.

We wondered if all the dust and stress had had something to do with her getting lung cancer. Inside me, a relapse was brewing. (I had been diagnosed with leukemia in 2003, treated with extensive chemotherapy and received a bone marrow transplant.) Later I wondered if the stress and all the bad air had set it off the relapse that occurred some six months later.

The new owners violated city codes by failing to turn the heat on that fall. They preferred to pay the fines. They even begrudged us the space heaters they were supposed to buy. My mother lay huddled under quilts and blankets. It was like a florist in there, so many people had sent flowers. Friends and relatives came and went. I lay next to her, holding her hand.

She was drifting in and out of reality when Thanksgiving came. I wanted to bring my children, Ben, Joe and Katie, to New York to have it by her bedside, but she said to please go home to Western Massachusetts and have it with them in the dining room of the historic colonial where my parents had loved to have Thanksgiving with us. Meanwhile, I finally decided to take a leave of absence from my job so I could spend her remaining days with her. She died before I got the chance. When I cried and cried and cried, I couldn't stop thinking about Thanksgiving.

A wise cousin said to me, "You gave her the greatest gift. She wanted to picture you in your home with your children, and you let her be the mother and tell you to do that." She had not been alone; my aunt and uncle and cousin were with her, and it was all for the best.

We had three months to clean out the apartment. When a toilet broke, the EE (Evil Empire) at first said they didn't want to fix it because we were leaving soon anyway. They finally caved in.

Every Thanksgiving, this all comes back to me, and I wonder how it will be.

It was Ben's year to be with my daughter-in-law's divorced father and his wife. So for Thanksgiving, it was me, Joe, Katie and Jim, my former husband, at my house. In the two days before, I must have gone to five stores picking up this and that. I figured I did not need do buy the yahrzeit candle that Jews burn on the anniversary of a loved one's death. I thought I had a stash. But when I reached back into the cabinet, there were none. The stores were closed. I made a few calls to Jewish friends, to no avail. Then I remembered a friend's mother had given her an electric one. We had joked about it at the time, but it came in handy after I called her and she said she would lend it to me.

At her Thanksgiving morning yoga class, our teacher, Michelle, talked about a positive way to view bad things: "This bad thing happened...AND this good thing happened." For example, she found out that she needs to replace her heating system, AND she still has heat in her studio to teach classes for now.

I raised my hand.

"At the last minute, I realized I did not have a yahrzeit candle to burn for my mother," I said. "AND my friend had an electric one." I said I think my mother would be OK with this. Michelle said she thought so too.

I applied Michelle's phraseology throughout the day.

"I miss my mother so much, and she had a wonderful long life."

"We had a horrible end to our life in the apartment, and we had a wonderful life there."

"I am sorry not to be with Ben, Meghan and (baby) Nell, and I get to be with my other two wonderful children and I am friendly enough with my ex-husband to have it with him."

I had a bad divorce, and now I can cook Thanksgiving dinner with my ex-husband.

I had leukemia three times, and I had the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and my bone marrow donor, Denise, to save my life.

When I took my mother's beautiful serving spoons out of the drawer in the hutch, I said, "Hi Mom," as I looked at the photo of her doing one of her favorite things, arranging flowers.

I knew my mother was there, and it was OK.

Remembering. Wondering. Thankful.

My mother, Lynne, arranging flowers from my garden four years ago.

Two years ago today, my mother died after a short battle with lung cancer.

Tomorrow, of course, is Thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving two years ago, I was consumed by grief and by guilt, while also being buoyed by all of the love around me, from my children, family and friends.

Quintessential New Yorkers, my parents always came to our house for Thanksgiving; they loved the mood of the holiday in New England. My mother, with help from the kids, set the table, turning it into a work of art. Distrustful of Western Massachusetts florists, my mother brought a centerpiece from New York.

My mother loved getting dressed up to go out to dinner with my father, Alfred. She also loved wearing sweaters and slacks for Thanksgiving in the country, always with flair.

After that became cumbersome, we ordered the centerpiece from the local florist. When it arrived, my mother sighed, shook her head, took it apart and redid it with her usual flair. She cleaned the silver and ironed the tablecloth, despite my protestations that she needn’t bother. Cleaning up loose stems and leftover silver polish, I got a little annoyed, and then guilty about feeling annoyed. I was glad that she was there, and I had no idea how I'd do it without her.

I could be annoying too. I insisted on going for my traditional Thanksgiving Day run before putting the turkey in. We ate late, so when I got back from my run I felt that I had all the time in the world to stretch and lollygag. Inevitably, my mother would say, “We better put that bird in.”
Yes, Mom, if you say so.

The last-minute preparations were usually chaotic, but eventually we sat down to the feast. My father gave a short speech about being thankful to be in America, the best country in the world despite its problems.

My mother came alone for four years after my father died in 2002. But two years ago, she couldn’t get out of her bed. For most of that fall, Diane and I had taken turns going to New York to be with mom, first in the hospital and then at home under hospice care and with full-time aides. The once-lovely apartment building where we grew up was in shambles, having been caught in the wave of classy co-op developments in New York.


In top photo, Diane, left, and I stand in front of the apartment building where we grew up.
In bottom photo, me, Mom and Diane leave the building for some sort of ladies' outing in 1964.

Working around the mostly elderly rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants who could not be made to leave, the developers tore out walls and replaced old pipes, making a big mess and not cleaning up after themselves. Big fat rats scurried up and down the back staircase. There was debris everywhere. And did I say there was no heat? It was illegal, but they chose to pay the fine rather than to spend the time and money to work faster to get the heat going. They did give the tenants space heaters, certainly not enough to heat a whole apartment. My mother spent much of a month curled up under heavy quilts; the one time she did try to get up, it was so cold she just wanted to go back to bed.

I last saw my mother two days before Thanksgiving. I told her I would bring the kids down for the holiday, and we could eat on stack tables in her room. She begged me not to. She wanted to picture me in my own house, not hanging around her bed. I stayed home, planning to turn around and go back down on Monday. She died on Sunday. I cried my heart out, wishing I had gone. But my cousin Joanne and others told me I had given her the gift of letting her be the parent. She had asked me to stay home, and I did what she asked.

I was so attached to both of my parents that I often wondered if I could survive without them. I thought that somehow, when they died, the earth would open up and swallow me. They both lived into their 80s, lived good lives and were sick only for a short time. What more could you ask? No matter how old they are, you want more.

Before my father died, I remember asking a childhood friend how she coped with her father’s death. “You don’t get over it,” she said. “But you get used to it.”

I got used to it. My sister and I leaned on our mother, on each other, on our children and on a whole lot of loved ones. I ran a half marathon. I played good tennis. I did yoga. I drank a lot of water, took care of myself, got plenty of rest. I spent extra time with my mother.

I didn’t get swallowed up by the earth.

I did get cancer. After each parent’s death.

My initial leukemia diagnosis came just about a year after my father’s death.
I relapsed less than a year after my mother died.

With the relapse, was it something I had breathed in from the construction? I doubt you could make a direct connection.

Was it grief, which, both times, created a vulnerability causing cancer to pounce?

The straight scientific answer is that, no, loss of a parent cannot cause cancer.

Still. I am left wondering if there was a relationship. But what happened happened, and now I must focus on the present.

Tomorrow, Joe will put the extra board in the table and help put the tablecloth on evenly. Katie will set the table the way my mother taught her. We’ll take out the turkey that Katie made years ago out of a tiny upside down flowerpot for the body, construction-paper feathers and pipe-cleaner legs. I’ll clean the silver (sigh) and try my best to make a decent flower arrangement, hoping my mother’s hands will guide me. We’ll prepare a small feast. A few friends will come. Ben will deliver what his annual “Al Gordon speech,” in my father’s place.

We will be thankful. We will try to think of my parents’ presence, not of their absence.